Early Modern History

Early Modernities

This core module involves a critical analysis of the many ways in which assumptions about the characteristics of 'pre-modern' and 'modern' cultures and societies have shaped historians' approaches to the early modern period. A series of seminars will introduce students to themes and topics in early modern history, focusing on issues of 'individuality' and 'self-hood' in the early modern period. The sources for writing early modern history will be a complementary focus of the module, which will also introduce students to the technical and methodological problems associated with the effective use and interpretation of a range of pre-modern sources.

30 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

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

Example 15 credit option modules:

Presenting the Past: Making History Public

This module focuses on the creation and interpretation of 'public history'. You'll have the opportunity to develop critical skills in interrogating public history through reflecting on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia, so it may be of particular interest if you are planning to pursue a career in heritage, museums or education.

You'll analyse examples of public history, develop communication and presentation skills for audiences outside academic contexts, and gain experience working in a team to put these skills into practice. 

As part of your assessment, you will work in a group to create an example of public history. You might create a webpage, a podcast, a design for an exhibition, an historic house booklet, a script for a radio programme, or a proposal for a TV series. You will also reflect on the value of your historical knowledge and skills outside academic study through a short essay.

15 credits

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

Since the flowering of postcolonialism, and the rise of movements for Indigenous rights, 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

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

Palaeography

In this module students are introduced to the different forms of law hand and secretary hand current in the early modern period, noting transitional styles and the emergence of italic script. A range of transcription conventions are also explained. For each session, students will be required to prepare transcriptions of a representative selection of manuscript materials.

15 credits

Revolutionary England, 1640-1660: Politics, culture & society

This unit will introduce students to the study of English politics and society between 1640 and 1660. Students will use primary and secondary sources in seminars to analyse both contemporary writings and historiographical debates on the causes and significance of the civil war, defined broadly to include not just formal political debate but also popular movements (including witch hunts, clubman associations and forms of economic and social protest) and other forms of intellectual creativity (astrology and natural science for example). The aim is to understand both the conflict, and the social and cultural values through which it was experienced and resolutions were sought.

15 credits

The Dawn of Modernity in the Late Middle Ages

This module seeks to reassess the picture of the late Middle Ages as an age of crisis and decay to be replaced by the Renaissance and modernity. It aims to show how groups of innovative people invented a new world characterised by international capitalism, man-centred subjectivity and claims of communal participation, and why their new world(s) became the dominant framework of European history for the centuries to follow. The first modern European colonies in the near Atlantic Ocean were both a laboratory for, and a crucial step to, the successful establishment of a new world within and without Europe.

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

History Work Placement

This module gives you the opportunity to gain experience working on a history-related project in the local community. This might be at a museum, archive, gallery, heritage site or working on a community project and may include undertaking activities such as historical research, developing an exhibition or organising an event.

You will be supported to choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and will then work with the placement provider to finalise your role.

Wherever you go, you'll complete a placement of approximately 100 hours, gaining valuable insight into the day-to-day workings of these kinds of organisations. You'll develop history-specific vocational skills, the ability to interrogate public history, and you will also reflect on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia through a reflective essay.

These kinds of skills are valuable whether you're looking for employment after the MA programme or are planning to continue your studies with a PhD.

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

Example 30 credit option modules:

A History of Emotions, from the Medieval Age to the Modern

Though History of Emotions is a relatively recent subdiscipline, it has seen a huge rise in popularity in a relatively short period - to the extent that it is now easy to find journals devoted exclusively to the field, research centres specialising in it, and monograph series that publish numerous books every year. Nevertheless, it is not easy to define what History of Emotions means, or the conceptual tools that it must encompass or exclude. At its heart, though, is the notion that emotions - like other, more easily visible phenomena - are malleable and quite likely to change over time. Taking this as its starting point, the module will explore historical traces of a range of emotions from the medieval period to the modern (including  anger, loneliness, jealousy, love, amongst others) in a variety of European and non-European settings. It will also discuss concepts that allow us to exercise a firmer grasp over something that is as supposedly flimsy as emotions.

30 credits

Feminist Methods in Historical Practice

In this course, we examine a wide range of feminist approaches to studying the past. We trace the development of women's history, gender history, and queer history, asking how feminist politics have shaped the research questions and methods of historians. But we also consider feminist history in its most expansive forms: through the lens of psychoanalysis, of memoir and oral history, of auto-theory, and intersectional histories of gender, race, and social class. How has feminism reshaped historical methods and our institutions? How has it failed to do so? How can we balance our stories of women's agency and transformations in women's status, with accounts of continuity and long-term injustice? What is the future for feminist history, and what is the place of historical writing in feminist activism? 

Throughout, we encourage students to engage their learning with their own ongoing research and primary sources from contexts with which they are familiar. Our classroom discussions will be enriched by a creative and diverse application of feminist methodologies to a wide range of primary sources and student-led research interests.

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

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

Digital Mapping for the Humanities

This module will introduce students to digital mapping as sources, as methods and as outputs for humanities research. Digital mapping offers a wide variety of analytical and interpretive methods that are put to use in many humanities disciplines. Maps and mapping allow us to recognise social constructions of place, visualise patterns, gaps, and changes across time and space. By combining spatial and temporal dimensions into visual representation, digital mapping can provide innovative approaches, methods, techniques, interpretive practices, and solutions to different stages of research, from data collection to science communication. The module will be delivered through both discursive and 'hands-on' classes and will draw on case studies from across the arts and humanities. Students will critically engage and analyse multidisciplinary examples in which digital mapping is a core aspect of research. They will also make use of multiple methods and tools on digital mapping platforms to create, visualise, analyse, disseminate, and communicate spatial and temporal data and knowledge.

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:

Renaissance Transformations

This module approaches Renaissance literature through the theme of transformation. This theme has multiple dimensions: first, you'll look at how Renaissance writers transformed existing literary traditions such as the classical epic, religious scripture, and medieval romance within their own writing. Then, you'll look at examples of transformation in Renaissance writing, such as changing sex, changing religion, and changes between the human and the animal. The module also reflects self-consciously on Renaissance studies as a discipline and how it has been transformed - and might be transformed in future - in light of changing critical, ethical and social priorities. The module is diverse in its content, covering drama, poetry and prose, reflecting the different specialisms and expertise of staff members. The form of assessment, critical essay, helps you to hone your writing skills at graduate level and to carry out independent research into your chosen topic.

30 credits

Romantic Gothic

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

30 credits