History MA

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

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:

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

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

Captivity and Consequences: Race, Gender and the French Empire, 1940-45

When France was defeated in June 1940 after only six weeks of fighting, over 1.8 million French soldiers became prisoners of war. Among these soldiers were approximately 100,000 men from across the French empire in Africa, the Caribbean, Indochina and Madagascar. The new German occupiers took the white prisoners back to Germany and further east to be integrated into the German war effort, but left the colonial prisoners of war (POWs) in camps located across occupied France - in what amounts to a separation of POWS based on their perceived race.

In this module, you will learn about the everyday experiences of men and women in and around war captivity and the political and military decisions which shaped those experiences. Students will learn how responses to defeat, capture occupation, and resistance shifted over time and were impacted by race and gender. We will see how the colonial POWS lived, worked, worshipped, made friends and escaped German captivity - and learn why the captivity of colonial POWs was so significant to understanding race and gender and the future of the French empire. You will engage with the entanglement of collaboration, disobedience and resistance while examining how colonial prisoners of war and white civilians negotiated the defeat, German occupation, and divisions in the French Empire between the Vichy Regime and the Free French.  

You will be introduced to a range of primary sources including armistice and peace treaties, political speeches, propaganda, newspapers, captivity reports, and surveillance records; it also addresses a number of historiographical debates on the Vichy regime and French Empire during the Second World War.

15 credits

Debating Cultural Imperialism in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire

The Nineteenth-century British Empire was ruled through a complex colonial bureaucracy, violent conquest, and exploitative economic relationships. But, arguably the most controversial element of British colonialism was its cultural projects. Missionaries, humanitarians, educationalists and doctors all had their own aspirations for indigenous people and came bearing 'western' and ostensibly very different ways of understanding the mind and the body. This course will introduce you to debates around cultural imperialism in the nineteenth-century British Empire. The seminars will explore the texts and issues around specific areas of 'cultural' intervention: English-language education; religion; medicine; and what is discussed today as 'women's rights'.

15 credits

Work Placement in History

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

Imagining the Republic: Irish Republicanism, 1798-1998

Irish republican politics are associated with violence. There is a long lineage of organisations that have waged armed campaigns against the British state in Ireland, from the United Irishmen of the 1790s to the Provisional Irish Republican Army of the modern 'Troubles'. While the violent, anti-state activism is Irish republicanism's most obvious feature, this has obscured the nature of republican ideas in Ireland. What was distinctly 'Irish' or 'republican' about Irish republicanism? How was the 'Republic' imagined? Which political languages did Irish republicans deploy to articulate their worldview? This module offers an intellectual history of Irish republicanism to examine various republican thinkers and organisations in context, and question the extent to which we can speak of a singular and unbroken 'tradition' of Irish republicanism across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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

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

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

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

Sex and Power: The Politics of Women's Liberation in Modern Britain

This module examines the integration of women and the evolving themes and demands of the women's movement in the political sphere in Britain from the heyday of the suffrage movement up to the reign of Britain's first female PM, Margaret Thatcher. We will focus on both women's wide-ranging attempts and their more limited achievements to gain entry into the political establishment, at the local, national and international levels. Topics will include women's suffrage agitation; the aftermath of suffrage; inter-war feminism; feminist internationalism; studies of women politicians; Second Wave Feminism; and gendered readings of British political history.

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

The United States and the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945-63

This module explores the ways in which nuclear weapons shaped the United States and its interactions with the world during the early years of the atomic age, from the dropping of 'Little Boy' on Hiroshima in 1945 through to the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Historians describe this period as one of 'nuclear anarchy', in which few rules governed how states could employ nuclear science and technology and in which, as a result, fear of nuclear annihilation loomed large. While much of the early scholarship on this period focused on the foreign policy implications of the United States' acquisition of the bomb, in recent decades historians have also revealed the important imprints the bomb left on American society. This latter work has served to highlight the ways that the atomic age shaped the U.S. economy, popular culture, gender norms, the environment, and how Americans felt about their government. In examining social and cultural histories of the bomb, alongside work on the geopolitical importance of nuclear weapons, we will consider how nuclear energy shaped the opportunities, mentalities, status, and relationships of ordinary Americans in the middle years of the twentieth century. Moving beyond elite-centred narratives, we will see that the bomb's power went far beyond its utility as a military and diplomatic tool for waging the Cold War.

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. 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

Thinking Hemispherically: the Americas in the Twentieth Century

The term 'American' is often used to refer to the United States, but in a literal sense it refers to the Americas as a whole, stretching from Canada in the north to Chile and Argentina at the southern tip. This module asks what we, as historians, can gain from thinking about the history of the Americas in the twentieth century in this wider, hemispheric sense. 

Traditionally, histories of US-Latin American relations in the twentieth century have focused on the overwhelming influence of the United States, often reducing Latin America to a site of US interventionism and denying Latin Americans historical agency. Yet this module will draw on four recent books (published since 2019) to challenge this approach and offer an alternative history of the Americas in the twentieth century. Through discussions of inter-American feminism, military relations, anti-imperialist solidarity and the rise of neoliberalism, the module will prompt you to consider how in taking a hemispheric approach we can uncover the myriad ways Latin Americans influenced the United States, revealing the deeply entangled history of the Americas, North and South.

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

Voices of the Great War: Gender, Experience and Violence in Great Britain and Germany, 1914-1918

This module is focused on the gendered nature of the war experiences from 1914 to 1918. Both men and women were affected by the turmoil and the violence of the Great War, either through their front line service or through their roles as mothers, wives or carers of soldiers, as nurses in military hospitals or as victims of atrocities against civilians. The module will take a comparative approach, analysing German and British examples. Special attention will be paid to the analysis of primary sources (letters, diaries, images) which shed light on these experiences, and to the methodological consideration of their possibilities, advantages and pitfalls.

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

Bronze Age Worlds

The module introduces the prehistory of Britain and Ireland during 2500-750 BCE. This period witnessed dramatic and lasting changes in the constitution of society, the formation of the landscape, and the meanings of material culture. These changes included transformations in agriculture, the construction of major ceremonial monuments such as Stonehenge, the flourishing and decline of novel burial rites, the development of metallurgy, and the widespread enclosure of the countryside into field systems. Through seminars and field trips we will consider the major themes, sites and artefacts that have dominated archaeological narratives of the period. Along the way we will review many of the less well-known regions and assemblages, and debate new ways of interpreting social change. The module includes field trips to visit key later prehistoric landscapes in our region.

15 credits

Egypt in the Age of the Empire.

This module provides the student with a detailed knowledge of the archaeology of Dynastic Egypt during the New Kingdom, between 16th and 11th centuries BC (18th - 20th Dynasties).  The module embeds Egypt in its late prehistoric Mediterranean and Near Eastern context and traces the development of Egyptian society, dynastic rule, societal structures and the relationship of Egypt with its neighbours. The module will use archaeological, textual and scientific evidence to explore how society is shaped by ideology, belief, power and conflict alongside the natural world.

15 credits

Example English modules:

American Nightmares: Socio-political Discourses in American Gothic Literature

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 explore 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

Confession

'Western man has become a confessing animal,' or so Michel Foucault contended. This module interrogates confessional acts in literature and culture across a wide historical span. (In previous years, we have reached back to St. Augustine's Confessions from the 4th century CE, right up to Hannah Gadsby's 2020 Netflix special, Douglas.) We focus in particular on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring confession and related forms (including analysis, testimony and witness) across diverse contexts: sacred and secular law; medicine and addiction; enslavement and war; sex, scandal and sensation; neurodiversity. Writers studied in previous years have included: Thomas De Quincey, Mary Seacole, Oscar Wilde, Sigmund Freud, Vita Sackville-West and Black Elk.

30 credits

Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Literature

This module examines a variety of representations of memory and trauma in contemporary narrative. The texts range widely both generically (from memoir to fiction and the graphic novel) and thematically (to include both personal and collective histories, memories and traumas). Texts by Julian Barnes, Annie Ernaux, Kazuo Ishiguro, Herta Muller or Yoko Ogawa will be studied in relation to classic, contemporary and decolonial theories of memory and trauma, such as those of Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth, Stef Craps and Michael Rothberg. We will discuss how narrative form is affected by such factors as historical events, memory loss, delayed recovery and childhood recall. You will gain and develop skills in close analysis, the application of theory, contextual reading, and researching and writing on important, influential and challenging texts.

30 credits

Mid-Century Modernism

The module will engage with current research and scholarship relating to literature of the 'long modern' period (1930 to 1975), introducing you to the history and contemporary state of criticism and theory in relation to mid twentieth-century cultural production. You will receive a thorough grounding in research methods specific to the period. This is a period of unprecedented violence and transformation, from the momentous impact of totalitarian systems, the rise and impact of the Second World War on global culture, host to the worst events the world has ever experienced with the Holocaust and Bomb, the age of rapid and shifting groups and movements, existentialism through abstract expressionism to confessional, innovative and pop art styles. It is also an era of very deep reflection on the idea of the relations between systems of thought across disciplines. The module will chart that reflection as well as a forum for thinking about art's power in a world under new techno-political compulsions, be they nuclear-apocalyptic, Cold War-propagandized, or transnational, neo-imperial, superpowered or postcolonial.

30 credits

Murderers and Degenerates: Contextualising the fin de siècle Gothic

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish how the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man), newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886), The Great God Pan (1894) and Dracula (1897) as three of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

30 credits

Post-1945 British Drama, Film and Television

This module provides the opportunity for in-depth study of British theatre, film and television in the period after the end of World War II. This fascinating era saw the emergence of new subjects for plays, films and television. These influential art forms embraced new approaches such as social realism to portray key contemporary issues of race, gender equality, regional identity, economic change, and political conflict. You will study and discuss diverse texts drawn from theatre, cinema and television drama which illustrate the profound cultural changes taking place in Britain after 1945. Analysing examples drawn from trends and styles such as the social problem film, New Wave cinema, 'kitchen sink' drama, war film, Hammer horror, Ealing comedy and television docu-drama will acquaint you with the terminology and contextual knowledge for understanding theatre, film and television of the period, apply critical and theoretical models to interpret them, and equip you with intellectual and communication skills to develop, express and defend your views.

30 credits

Reimagining the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Reimagining the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the core module of the MA Literature, Culture and Society 1700-1900. The module will address the diverse thematic approaches which can be applied to the novel, poetry, and other media such as life-writing, published between 1700-1900. The module reflects the range of expertise of the teaching team in these areas and this research-led module will introduce students to current research approaches and methods.

30 credits

Shakespearean Transformations

This module approaches the literature of Shakespeare's era through the theme of transformation. This theme has multiple dimensions: first, you'll look at how Shakespeare and other 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 Shakespeare/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