Politics and History BSc

Compulsory

• Africa and the World

  Since 1918, Europe has experienced war, genocide, economic depression, ideological conflict and the loss of its colonial Empires, as well as wide-ranging and unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change. This module examines this history, exploring the events that enveloped the continent, considering Europe’s interactions with the wider world, and examining the experiences of Europeans who lived through these changes. 

• From Bolshevism to Brexit. People and Power in Europe

  Since 1918, Europe has experienced war, genocide, economic depression, ideological conflict and the loss of its colonial Empires, as well as wide-ranging and unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change. This module examines this history, exploring the events that enveloped the continent, considering Europe’s interactions with the wider world, and examining the experiences of Europeans who lived through these changes. 

• Race, Multiculturalism and British Politics: Concepts and Debates

  This module delves into the politics of race and multiculturalism in contemporary Britain by focusing on a number of concepts such as racism, islamophobia, integration, and national identity. Through examining key scholarly texts and debates, students will develop essential skills in critical reading and analysis.

• Reason, Unreason, and the People: Political Thought from Hobbes to Freud

  This module introduces students to the main thinkers in political thought through the idea of reason and unreason, and asks: who are the people?

• Introduction to Comparative Politics

  The module introduces students to the study of comparative politics and examine how the design of political institutions reflects competing visions of democracy and the implications this has for the processes that link citizens and policymakers. Students will focus on various aspects of the political system such as the differences between parliamentary and presidential systems, federal and unitary systems, electoral rules, party systems.

• Global London

  Through focusing on the concept of ‘Global London’, this module shows you how the social sciences can enable you to better understand their lived social environment. It introduces you to the techniques used by a range of disciplines within social science for gaining and validating knowledge of the social world and equips you with an academic skill base appropriate for university study. 

Compulsory

• Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice

  This modules aims to provide students with the skills to analyse political data and introduce methods for gathering and understanding data. Students will be encouraged to critically engage with the use of existing statistical data in political discourse and demonstrate the importance of quantitative analysis in domestic and international politics.

• From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World

  Preparing students for their final year dissertation begins in the second year in From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World. This module introduces students to a variety of analytical perspectives, research methods and techniques used in designing a research project in politics, international relations and international politics.

• The First World War: Causes, Course, Consequences

  This module aims to introduce the main areas of debate surrounding the origins, course and consequences of the First World War and to introduce the range of different interpretative and historiographical tools used by historians in categorizing and understanding the First World War.

• Historians and their Craft

  This module prepares students for the Dissertation by introducing them to some methodological and theoretical issues that historians encounter in the practice of history. Students are introduced to ways in which historians have engaged with other disciplines. They reflect upon public history and why history matters in today’s society by tracing developments in historical method and examining different approaches to history.

• Elections, Parties & Voters in the UK

  The aim of this module is to examine and evaluate the major issues and controversies in the study of elections, voting behaviour and political parties in Britain, and to provide a basis for comparative analysis. It seeks to provide a sophisticated examination of changing election outcomes, changing electoral behaviour, party ideology, party organisation and party systems. 

Optional

• Australia and The Modern World

  The module focuses on Australia’s connections with the wider world from the European maritime voyages to the Pacific in the eighteenth century up to contemporary times. Major themes dealing with varied aspects of Australia’s role in the modern world have been selected for study.

• Climate Politics

  This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.  

• Colonialism and Decolonization in Africa

  Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

• Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• Comparative Electoral Systems

  This module aims to provide students with an understanding of political institutions and their impact through institutional analysis and modern institutional theory and explores single case studies, cross-case and cross-temporal comparisons. The module is divided in three parts; part one covers the theoretical approaches in new institutionalism, part two covers specific institutions and part three covers the influence of institutions on policy.

• History of the Women’s Movement in the West, c. 1790-1930

  In this module students will explore the rise and progress of the ‘first wave’ women’s movement in Britain, America and Europe, from c.1790 – 1920 and develop an understanding of the ideological foundations of the women’s movement and campaign for suffrage. It will identify the relationship between the British, American and European campaigns for suffrage, and examine the campaigning strategies and networks developed by women activists.

• Issues in American Politics

  This module familiarises students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and demonstrates how politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in political debate. Students are encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.

• National Security Intelligence

  This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

• Plato’s Republic

  This module involves a close reading of the foundatonal text in political thought: Plato's Republic.

• Social Welfare: Politics and Policy

  This module examines the way our society provides safety nets for people in poverty, how these policies are changing, and how well they work. Using policy case studies from the UK, US and Europe, we look at a range of evidence to understand how well modern welfare states work, attitudes towards welfare programmes and recipients, and future policy challenges.

• The State and Revolution

  This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

• Unity and Cultural Diversity

  In this module students will gain an understanding of the texts of political theorists who focus on the issue of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity. Students will also gain an understanding of case studies that help to illuminate the difficulties of fostering unity among the culturally diverse citizens of a modern polity.

• The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, 1941-1992

  This module aims to examine the tactics and strategies employed by African Americans during the period 1941 to 1992, thereby helping students to gain a critical understanding of the roles of various groups within African American society in the pursuit of civil rights. 

• Gender, Sexuality and Feminism

  This module will introduce students to core ideas in feminism via the key concepts of gender and sexuality. It will develop students’ understandings of social structures, human cultures, and economic inequalities and political relationships. The course will offer theoretical tools and historical insights into gendered, feminised, and sexualised socio-cultural worlds.

Compulsory

• Politics and History Dissertation

  The final year dissertation provides undergraduates with the opportunity to provide evidence of abilities not usually measured by the written papers and assessments through their degree - notably the ability to work independently in a subject area of the student’s choice.

• Advanced Research Skills for Politics and International Politics
• Advanced Research Skills for History

Optional

• Advanced Applied Quantitative Methods

  This module will introduce methods suited to analysing complex political data as well as encouraging students to engage with and communicate the use of existing statistical data in the study of political science and in practical application in the political world.

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• Borders, Nations and Belonging in Modern Europe

  From Brexit to the wall between the USA and Mexico, borders are an important part of contemporary political debate. But where do our ideas about borders come from? Why do borders represent such powerful symbols? And who makes decisions about who can and cannot cross? This module explores these questions (and others) through the history of borders in modern Europe.

• Crisis and Critique

  The main aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of some of the major socio-political crises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the ways in which they have been understood by political theorists.

• European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects

  In this module students will discuss the development and functioning of the EU from its inception to the present day and be introduced to and learn to evaluate a range of theoretical perspectives on the EU’s creation, development and functioning. Students will examine a range of political problems in the European integration process, such as legitimacy, domestic and social impact, institutional and policy reform, enlargement, and future directions.

• Fascist Italy, 1919-1945: Revolution, Conflict and Collapse

  This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

• Marx and the Critique of Political Economy

  This module involves reading several key works by Marx, culminating in several weeks on Das Kapital

• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the modern world-system

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• Long Walk to Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid in South Africa

  Encouraging students to consider the extent to which the current situation in South Africa is a product of the colonial era, postcolonial circumstance, or Africa’s deeper past. It will familiarise students with the main developments in Africanist and South Africanist historiography and encourage students to study South African history from both an Afro-centric and European perspective.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• Media, Politics & Power in America

  This module seeks to familiarise students with the contemporary issues agenda in American politics. It seeks to demonstrate the ways in which politicians and institutions adapt policy stances and organisational strategies to accommodate changes in the nature, content and direction of political debate.

• Psychogeography

  In this module you will study the relationship between the individual and their environment, both in situ and in movement, to reconsider habitual understandings of how we live in and move through our environment. 

• Public Policy Analysis

  How do governments make public policy? Why do public policies vary across countries? How can public policy be analysed? These are the questions that will be explored in this module. The module will provide the participants with a strong theoretical foundation for analysing public policy and skills to communicate the analyses to non-academic stakeholders in public policy.

• Religion and Power in South Asian History

  What is the relationship between religious identity and social, political, military, or economic power? In this module, we examine the role that religious practice and belief has played in South Asian societies from the early modern through the contemporary era. We introduce the intersecting histories of major South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism, among others. 

• Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World
• Terrorism and Counterterrorism

  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. It provides students with an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.

• The Arab-Israeli Conflict

  We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

• The British Maritime World, 1660-1815

  The module focuses on the British Maritime World in a period that witnessed significant advances in oceanic exploration, trade and shipping and increased naval protection and supremacy. Students will cover both a broad overview of selected important topics and closer focus on varied types of primary source material.

• The Creation of the Western Alliance, 1945-1955

  Students will examine from an international history perspective the process by which the NATO alliance was formed in the years following the Second World War. They will analyse and evaluate the historical evidence underpinning competing theories concerning the growth of confrontation between Britain, Western Europe, and the United States on the one hand and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the other.

• The Second World War

  This module explores the military, political and socio-economic events and developments of the Second World War. Students will focus on the historiography and cultural significance of the war up to the present day and will adopt an “international history” approach by building its analysis around the interaction of states and peoples in this global conflict.

• Violence and Conflict in Eastern Africa

  In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.