American History

Approaches to the American Past.

This core module explores key themes in American history from the colonial through to the modern eras, introducing students to important debates in historical scholarship and giving them an awareness not only of the principal historiographical schools but also of the critical interrelationship between historical trends and events and scholarly interpretations of the past. Classes will be organised chronologically and thematically and will be taught through the examination of key historiographical approaches. Case studies covering topics such as Native American history, consumption, gender, class, slavery, immigration and ethnicity, the New Deal, revisionism and the Cold War, and the New Left will help students apply and critique the conceptual literature they are exploring.

30 credits

Dissertation in History

In this module, you will undertake an individual research project, based on an identifiable collection of primary sources and present your findings in a dissertation of 15,000 words. The dissertation represents an original piece of independent research and should be based on a substantial primary source base and demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the secondary literature. In certain cases, primary evidence may also consist of modern historiography. Through the dissertation you will demonstrate your practical understanding of how established techniques of research and enquiry are used to create and interpret historical knowledge. You will work under the supervision of an expert member of staff who will provide guidance and regular tutorial support.

60 credits

Research Presentation for Historians

This core module is designed to equip you with the skills and experience that you need to present and communicate a defined historical research project to an academic audience. The subject of the presentation will be your dissertation topic, so this module also contributes towards the successful completion of your dissertation.

In this module, you will identify the specific research questions driving your dissertation and learn how to discuss the sources and approaches you are using to answer them. You will develop your ability to present your research data and findings in an accessible form to an audience, and you will enhance your ability to use presentational aids such as slideshows, data projection, and visual aids.

The module also aims to improve your skill and confidence in speaking to an audience and responding to questions; this gives you the opportunity to develop the presentational skills demanded by employers as well as by a career in academic research. You will also learn how to make reasoned and critical judgements of others' presentations.

You'll give your final presentation at a 'postgraduate conference' style assessment day to an audience of academic staff and fellow postgraduates. Presentations are assessed equally on content and communication with audience review making up a third of your mark and the academic panel's review making up the other two thirds.

15 credits

Approaches and Methods in Media History

This module explores approaches and methods in media history. Students will examine how historians narrate media history, and what role the media has played in shaping political culture and mass communications from the Second World War onward. Class discussions will be predominantly based around the case study of modern Britain after 1945, but students will be encouraged to think more widely about the Anglophone world and examine extra-British examples where appropriate. Themes to be studied include: media theory and historiography, including debating the media's role in political disengagement; the media and mainstream politics, including parties and elections; the media, extra-parliamentary politics and social movements; foreign policy and political violence; and race, racism and migration in the media.

15 credits

Before Facebook: Social Networks in History

In a world of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, social networks seem a distinctly modern phenomenon, but are they only a product of our digital age? This module explores historians' efforts to reconstruct social networks in diverse contexts, from the ancient to the modern world. Drawing upon techniques first developed by social scientists, and increasingly digital methods too, they have found networks of trade and business; religious groups and political exiles; family, friends and much more. This innovative work is revealing how far lives and communities cut across boundaries of time and space - with important consequences for historical debates and issues.

15 credits

Black Power: Race, Gender, and Liberation in the United States and Beyond

During its time in the 1960s and 1970s and in its immediate aftermath, the Black Power movement was often caricatured and castigated as a violent, misogynistic, incoherent and self-destructive betrayal of the Civil Rights movement. But in recent years, scholarship which Peniel Joseph has termed 'Black Power Studies' has situated the movement within the longer history of the Black freedom struggle. These works suggest that Black Power was not a break from the recent past, but part of the long history of Black armed self-defence and transnational activism, and an important contribution to Black American identity making, political thought, and political power. The movement called for racial solidarity, cultural pride, and self-determination, and connected its work at the local and national level to the global struggle against racial oppression and exploitation. In this module, we will explore the historiography of the Black Power movement, as well as key primary sources. We will seek to understand the development of the movement's political power at the local level; the emergence of the Black Panther Party in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the Black Power movement in the Caribbean; the relationship between Black nationalism and internationalism; the Black Arts Movement and Black identity in the 1960s and 1970s; Black women's role in the development of the movement's political power and contribution to Black feminist thought in the 1970s and beyond; and the legacies of these events in the era of the Movement for Black Lives.

15 credits

Burying the White Gods: Indigenous peoples in the early modern colonial world

Since the flowering of postcolonialism, scholars have fought to reconstruct the complexity and significance of Indigenous peoples and to remove them from an imperial framework that casts them as passive victims of historical events. In the early American world, this greater sensitivity to Indigenous agendas and actions has led increasingly to meetings between Native peoples and Europeans being explained in terms of encounter, negotiation and accommodation, rather than simple conquest.

This module will consider the diverse historiographical, methodological and political issues which impact on Indigenous histories in colonial contexts, from postcolonialism to the New Philology and the New Indian History, the rise of activist histories, and the politicisation of the Indigenous past. We will centre Native perspectives and voices, and consider the challenges and opportunities of the complex alphabetic, material and oral records available for the study of Indigenous histories. Taking the invasion of Mexico as a case study -  but also drawing on other imperial contexts - this module recognises Indigenous histories as the product of diverse, vibrant, often still-living cultures, and seeks to illuminate the places and perspectives of Native peoples in colonial history and historiography.

15 credits

Cold War Histories

What is the Cold War? How many of the post-war conflicts and tensions did it encompass? Should we approach it as a global conflict, a bipolar rivalry, a struggle for Europe and the Third World? Conceptualizations of the Cold War and historical investigations of its dynamics have substantially changed over time. How is the Cold War understood in an expanding and diversifying historiographical field? New critical approaches question its nature, scope, reach and implications. Conceptual precision and specificity seem to be giving way to a wider understanding of the Cold War as an era that encompassed different and at the same time interconnected conflicts and transformations. Today we study it not so much as an ideological and security issue but rather as a crossroad of cultural, transnational, local and global perspectives. As a result, its definition has grown more elusive and contested while historical research has become increasingly multifaceted. The module will explore the key approaches and debates that are redefining our understanding of the Cold War today, with a particular focus on themes for which the historiography is especially rich and highly developed: technology, weapons and the arms race; human rights revolution; propaganda and culture; debates on the endings of the legacy of the Cold War.

15 credits

History in Fiction

Historical fiction is one of the most popular forms of writing. Across varied genres of political intrigue, romance, epic sagas and crime, historical novels have excited public interest in history, whilst postmodern experiments with the form have used it to demonstrate the essential elusiveness of the 'truth' about the past. This module introduces key themes in the development of historical fiction during the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students have the opportunity to study some prominent examples of this type of literature, engaging with the historiographical and literary criticism surrounding these works.

15 credits

History on Screen

Academic historians are increasingly interested in the ways in which history is used and delivered in popular media. Within this area of research, filmic representations are attracting considerable attention. This module investigates the methodological issues at stake in such representations of the past, engaging with the now extensive research literature on the topic.

15 credits

International Order in the Twentieth Century

How should international relations be organised? This was a central question in the international history of the twentieth century. This module explores the ideas of international organisation that emerged, and how they were realised in practice in bodies like the League of Nations and the United Nations, as well as subaltern internationalist projects like the Afro-Asian and Non-Aligned movements. Why did governments and non-governmental actors create and participate in international organisations? What was the significance and impact of those organisations? And why should historians study these past internationalist projects today? Much of the most exciting recent work by international and global historians has grappled with these questions.

15 credits

Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life

The choice of scale is of fundamental importance in determining the kind of history that is produced. It influences the choice of source materials, the way these are handled, and the sorts of conclusions that can be reached. In this module we critically examine the theory, method and practice of two related historiographical approaches: microhistory and the history of everyday life, both of which emphasized the intensive study of the small scale and were influenced by anthropology. Students will develop an appreciation of the theoretical issues and practical experience in applying this to their own research.

15 credits

Oral History

Oral testimony has established itself as a vital source for historians of the modern world, but its value is still widely contested. This module introduces students to the practice of oral history and the debates surrounding it. We will examine the different ways in which historians have used oral testimony and how this evidence has shaped our understanding of the past; explore the relationships between memory, narrative and meaning; and introduce students to the ethics and practicalities of interviewing. The module will equip you with the tools to conduct your interviews, and to use oral history testimony critically and sensitively.

15 credits

Presenting the Past: Making History Public

The primary focus of this module is the interpretation and creation of 'public history'. The module will enable students to reflect on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia and develop communication and presentation skills for audiences outside higher education. Students will be required to (1) analyse examples of public history and (2) create an example of public history.The module may be of particular interest to students planning to pursue careers in heritage, museums or education. Seminars will include discussion of: issues in public history; displaying objects and presenting interiors; the role of public history in post-conflict societies; writing for the 'public'; sound and vision; digital history.

15 credits

Research Skills for Historians

This module is designed to equip students with the research skills necessary for independent investigation and further study in History. Students will discuss the changing nature of the historical discipline as it has adapted to interdisciplinary impulses, and the skills needed for a more refined analysis of both textual and visual primary sources. In Masterclasses taught by specialists, students will familiarise themselves with the possibilities associated with different types of primary sources (e.g. legal documents, press, oral history). Additional classes will help them work more effectively with library collections and develop subject-specific as well as generic IT skills (locating information in databases, using web-based resources, advanced bibliographical management).

15 credits

The Animal Turn: human and non-human animals in history

This module engages with the new 'Animal turn' in the Humanities. No longer does the mention of non-human history lead to amusement and surprise, as was the case until fairly recently, and the field has attracted huge attention from a range of disciplines. This module acknowledges this change, and engages with some of the most influential works on related issues. At the same time, it also engages with a wide range of controversies and debates, starting from the issue of whether it is right to use terms such as ‘animals’ and ‘non-humans,’ as they reduce the wide diversity of life-forms into one or more anthropocentric categories.

In examining these debates, the module will deal with questions such as the following: Is it right to talk about the agency of non-humans in the same way as we talk of human agency? In what ways has the relationship between humans and non-humans changed over time? How have humans represented non-humans, and is it possible to re-read these representations in non-anthropocentric ways? What are the ways in which non-humans have been exhibited and studied since early-modern times? What will a history, which is inclusive of non-humans, look like? In discussing these questions, we will go through a range of writings from colonial and non-colonial contexts.

15 credits

The United States in Vietnam, 1945-1975

The Vietnam War remains one of the most divisive episodes in modern history. It was a war fought without censorship. It was a war that pushed the American Imperial project to its very limits. It was a war in which thousands of students took to the streets to burn their draft cards in acts of defiance. It was a war that exposed the socio-economic division at home with the vast majority of those drafted to fight and die overseas coming from working class and African American backgrounds. And it was a war that the U.S. ultimately lost.

America's longest war, the Vietnam conflict, continues to evoke conflicting interpretations, meanings and memories. It is the aim of this module to chart the contentious history of the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1975.

The course examines the role of the United States in Vietnam from 1945 to 1975, focusing on the foreign policy objectives and domestic political considerations which led to direct military engagement and which sustained the US war. You will consider the modernisation and limited war theories which fuelled US intervention in Southeast Asia, and will seek to understand the character of the Vietnamese revolution. You will assess relevant, often highly contentious, historiographical debates, and will analyse the role of the Vietnam experience in informing US foreign policy in the years following disengagement. You will also examine the protest culture that emerged in the wake of Vietnam, looking at the birth of the anti-war movement, draft resistance and popular cultural responses to the war. By analysing how public opinion and domestic political issues affected US policy in Vietnam, you will gain a greater understanding of the process of American foreign policy-making and how American longest war fundamentally altered society.

15 credits

The U.S. Civil War in Global Context

The U.S. Civil War of 1861-65, which culminated in the victory of the 'free labor' and the emancipation of four million enslaved people, has often been read as a purely North American story. Yet as historians have shown, the effects of the conflict reverberated around the world, silencing the Manchester mills that ran on the fruits of uncompensated toil, remaking the rural economies of countries as far flung as Japan and Egypt, and inspiring European nationalists, liberals and socialists in their own revolutionary struggles for unification and liberty. Abraham Lincoln understood as much at the time. His Gettysburg Address moved gracefully between the particular circumstances of the United States and the universal propositions that the Civil War had put to the test. At the outset of the conflict he had offered Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the struggle to make an Italian nation state, a command in the Union army. Pro- slavery Confederates too sought Old World allies: rumours even abounded after 1861 that they were ready to replace their president with a foreign prince. Probing such connections between developments in the U.S., Europe, and beyond, we will explore where the Civil War sits alongside contemporary struggles for national unification, how it reshaped a global economy that rested heavily on the production of slave-grown cotton, and whether its revolutionary outcome - the annihilation of slavery and extension of voting rights to black men - imprinted society and politics beyond the Union's borders. The module will introduce you to two methods - one transnational, the other comparative - for studying global history.

15 credits

Under Attack: The Home Front during the Cold War

Competition and conflict between two superpowers, the US and the USSR, not only defined the course of international relations across the globe, but also shaped key aspects of domestic life and popular culture. For the USA, USSR, and their near neighbours in Europe, it was a deferred conflict: direct military confrontation gave way to surrogate and covert warfare often far from home. With the long- awaited peace now seemingly secured, the rival political doctrines of the two blocs promised the world could be transformed, be that through the triumph of the 'free world' or of socialism. And yet with the escalation of the arms race and the proliferation of ever more deadly nuclear weapons, terrifying images of global and environmental devastation also shaped visions of the future. Excitement about the possibility of social and political transformation, and the export of these new visions to the rest of the world, co-existed with angst about the humankind's new capacity for self-destruction.Yet there is a danger in attributing all historical developments from the 1940s to the 1980s to the Cold War. This module thinks critically about the following questions: what was the Cold War, and how did it impact on the 'home front'? Are there common patterns which cut across the ideological 'iron curtain' dividing east and west? How did the Cold War impact on societies elsewhere in the world?To some extent the module will focus on the key protagonists in the Cold War, the USSR and the USA, but you will be encouraged to develop your own research interests and to reflect on the issues under examination with regard to other countries.

15 credits

Wikipedia and History

Wikipedia is today probably the world's chief source of historical knowledge. Every day, its pages on history are read by many thousands of people. Yet professional historians tend to avoid engaging with it. This course seeks to change that. As well as discussing critical perspectives on Wikipedia, students will receive practical training in creating or editing a page on a historical topic. They will then apply their studies in a hands-on way to improving the encyclopedia's historical coverage, and reflect on the kind of historical knowledge of the period it promotes and disseminates.

15 credits

Women and Slavery in the Antebellum American South

The intersections of race, gender, and class rendered black women¿s enslavement distinct, shaping their identities, their roles, and their relationships with other enslaved people and their enslavers, as well as the forms of exploitation they experienced as women, workers, and mothers. This module explores how historians have located, detailed, and conceptualised the lives of enslaved women; the methods and sources they have used; and the influences of black feminist theory on the history of enslaved women.

15 credits

Work Placement

This module aims to give students an insight into the day to day workings of a museum, school or research institute, in order to develop history-specific vocational skills and promote reflection on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia. The module provides a vocational component to the Department of History postgraduate portfolio, and may be of particular interest to those MA students not planning to pursue a PhD after their studies. Students will choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and then negotiate a role within that placement relevant to their area of study. Following a placement of approximately 100 hours with an employer an essay will then be completed by the student reflecting on the work they undertook. Seminars and tutorials before and after the placement will allow students to compare and contrast their experiences.

15 credits

Example 30 credit option modules:

Biopolitics: Medicine, Meaning and Power

‘Biopolitics’ has been one of the most influential concepts in academic scholarship over the last 40 years. In its broadest form ‘biopolitics’ refers to collective approaches to promote, regulate, understand and end life. This involves interventions around sexuality and fertility, promoting population growth or limitation, and counting, categorising, or otherwise defining human beings and human nature. It is often thought to be a modern invention, but this is contested.

This course will introduce you to a wide variety of efforts to survey and control human populations, across more than a thousand years. You will learn about how states and other groups have tried to control and manage sexuality and reproduction, as well as infectious diseases and other perceived threats. You will learn about how human beings have been cast outside of ‘the normal’ including those labelled as ‘mad’ or ‘disabled’. You will become adept at thinking across a wide variety of contexts, and comparing different approaches to defining and classifying humans - including according to raced and sexed identities.

You will learn to use ideas of ‘biopolitics’ to understand human societies and human identities. You will be able, by the end of the course, to think carefully and critically about the place of human bodies in various political systems - how bodies and life itself are controlled, restricted, promoted, marginalised and how humans’ capacities are understood.

30 credits

Food and Drink

Food and drink are not just fundamental to human survival; they are interwoven into every aspect of life, from economic exchange, politics and governance, to culture, identities and habits. Moreover - since the ways in which food and drink are produced, distributed and consumed have varied with time, place, culture and climate - they offer important insights into historical societies and cultures around the globe and across time. This module engages with the big themes in food and drink history and explores them through case studies taken from different geographical, chronological and cultural contexts. We will study issues such as famine and food management; trade and the global diffusion of foodstuffs; diet, health and medicine; national, regional and social identities; industrialisation, technologies and commercialisation; recipes, preparation and cuisine; consumption practices and manners; and literary representations and material cultures. Through this, the module will introduce you to the possibilities of historical research into diverse foodstuffs - from caffeinated drinks and alcohols to pulses and grains - for understanding the historical societies that they sustained.

30 credits

Public History and Policy: Theory and Practice

This module explores ways that the best findings of specialist, academic history can be used to engage a wide audience to influence its understanding of and views on policy. Seminars and readings employ case studies (from ancient to modern history and around the globe) and engagements with practitioners in order to glean insights about how and why historians have (more or less) successfully engaged with policy and policy makers. The assessment invites students to write a policy paper (or similar piece aimed at non-specialists) on a topic selected in collaboration with the module leader.

30 credits

Race and Racism in Historical Perspective

What is race and how has it operated historically? Through a series of case studies, this module will seek to historicize ideologies, ideas and the experiences of race and racism across the early modern and modern historical periods. The module takes as its starting point the understanding that race is not a biological fact but always and everywhere the product of struggles for power in specific political, cultural and geographical settings. How have racial categories been made and re-made, imposed and resisted? How has this affected material outcomes and distributions of wealth and power? What are the ongoing legacies of these histories?

We will examine a number of case studies, including slavery, abolition campaigns and immigration in various spacial and temporal contexts. We will explore key concepts in historiography including settler colonialism, whiteness and white supremacy, racial liberalism, and anti-racism. Throughout, we will be attentive to the intersections of race with other categories of social difference such as gender, class, and sexuality, and appreciate the importance of historical context in understanding conceptions of race and racism. 

30 credits

The Global Cold War

This module explores the Cold War as a global phenomenon. While Europe played a central role in the origins and denouement of the ideological contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, for the past twenty years or so historians have explored in greater depth the impact of the Cold War in the global South. This latter group of scholars have examined the Cold War as a Superpower competition over the political and economic future of the so-called “Third World” and explored the agency of actors in the global South. Studies have expanded beyond an initial focus on ideology, diplomacy and security to a wider set of issues including economic development, culture, and human rights, and beyond international histories to include transnational and domestic ones. We now have a Cold War historiography which stresses pluralism and diversity of conception, method, and interpretation.

Through a series of case studies ranging from Europe to Asia, Africa and Latin America and including the home front in the United States and the Soviet Union, we will examine these new historiographical developments. While remaining attentive to the local dynamics that drove political, economic, and social developments in Europe and the global South, we will explore the extent to which the Cold War structured the international system and constrained choices available to countries around the world. What was the Global Cold War? How did it play out and interact with local dynamics in specific locales? Is it possible to study the Cold War as a series of conflicts and transformations around the world without losing conceptual clarity? What are the methodological implications of studying the Cold War in a global perspective? 

30 credits

Women and Power

This module explores the roles women have played within and through structures and discourses of power: as wielders of office, as victims of persecution, and as agents of cultural change.

The module uses case studies from particular historical contexts - potentially ranging from the medieval to the modern - to engage with the methodological challenge of identifying female agency in the historical record.

It draws on a range of theoretical approaches and on written and material forms of evidence to enable you to reach your own insights.

30 credits

Example Archaeology modules:

Digital Cultural Heritage: Theory and Practice

This module examines the theoretical and methodological advances in Digital Cultural Heritage and their
broader implications in fields concerned with the interpretation and presentation of the past. We will draw on
theoretical readings as well as analyse the potential benefits and drawbacks of certain digital and online
approaches. Topics include: principles and theories underlying Digital Cultural Heritage, understanding
processes of creating digital surrogates, establishing principles for user experience, and exploring digital
narratives for public dissemination. A major component of this module will be a semester-long project that will
require the development of a proposal for a digital cultural heritage project.

15 credits

Heritage, Place and Community

The aim of this module is to introduce the theory and practice of heritage, conservation and public archaeology. The module will encourage debate on issues that affect how we define and apply the term 'heritage'. It also offers an opportunity to focus on the historic 'value' of a site or landscape, with an evaluation of how it is currently managed, and strategies for its future conservation and presentation.

15 credits

Heritage, History and Identity

This module highlights the diversity of cultural heritage, ranging from cultural and 'natural' landscapes, through monuments to music, dress, cuisine, 'traditional' crafts, and language and dialect. It explores the role of these various forms of heritage in shaping local, regional and national identity; the extent to which they reflect or misrepresent local, regional and national history; the legal and ethical issues surrounding conservation and preservation of heritage; and how study of 'traditional' lifeways may contribute to understanding of history.

15 credits

Example English modules:

American Nightmares: Socio-political Discourses in American Gothic Literature

Have you ever wondered why there are so many haunted 'Indian' burial grounds in Stephen King's stories or why none of Poe's heroines ever survive? Have you been struck by how often American socio-political discourse sound like Gothic fictions? The Gothic is a pervasive mode in America, one which expresses and negotiates a variety of social anxieties such as racial identity, patriarchy and the rise of feminism, and class antagonism. This course will examine a variety of Gothic texts from the 1800s onward to consider how they express and negotiate various socio-political anxieties and shifts. We will also contextualize the narratives by reviewing the relevant socio-political ideologies and debates contemporary to the texts. In doing so, the course will clarify the numerous chasms between the American ideal and the brutal American reality.

30 credits

'Tales of the City' - The Living Space in Contemporary American Fiction

San Francisco and New Orleans are perhaps the most atypical cities in the United States. San Francisco ephasises youth culture, choice of sexuality, and freedom, and New Orleans stresses multi-ethnicity, music, history, language, vice, and vampires. What is especially striking in the context of a celebration of the American Metropolis is the interrelation between the images of the city and the literature produced about that city. The features of fragmentation, rootlessness, and lack of structure put forward in much postmodern fiction as a simulacrum of postmodern life (cf. Baudrillard's description of Los Angeles in America (1985) are glorified in the fictions of San Francisco and New Orleans. Do these cities and these fictions contrast with recent immigrant fiction, African-American fiction, and/or Chicano fictions located in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia? In this course, I would like to explore the literary spaces of these metropolises and investigate the effects of living in this space on its literary inhabitants. In these cities, the apartment building, the mall, downtown, the sports arena, the bar replace the structires of family, gender, and race, predominant in so much other American fiction. Whether these new architectures offer truly liberated conditions will be further examined.

30 credits