History and Sociology BA

History core modules

History Workshop

What does it take to be a historian? In this module, you will study the process of historical research, learning discipline-specific methods and essential study and writing skills through close engagement with a historical text (usually a work of narrative non-fiction) linked to your tutor's research interests. You will develop skills in critical reading, historiography, essay writing, bibliographic techniques, and reflection.

The assessment for this module is aimed at giving you a strong foundation in the skills you will need throughout your degree and beyond: critical reading and writing, bibliographic techniques, and the ability to reflect on and articulate your skills as a historian.

20 credits

Thinking Historically

Building upon the foundational skills acquired in the introductory 'History Workshop,' this module will cultivate your ability to critically engage with the past, develop disciplinary awareness, and apply historical thinking. To do so it provides an introduction to the breadth of interests in the school and the way historians have made sense of patterns in historical developments. Moving from the Ancient and Medieval past to the contemporary world, the module shows how Sheffield historians approach the periods and places that interest us, whilst provoking you to ponder the issues involved in framing historical questions of your own. In this module, you will explore a recurring set of questions which inform history as a discipline: how and why have historians divided up the past into discrete periods, and with what consequences? How have historians constructed narratives that give shape and meaning to the events of the past? How can we evaluate the truth of historical representations and interpretations? How are they shaped by the availability of sources about past societies, and what determines which sources have survived to the present day? How have relationships of power influenced the sorts of stories that we tell and the voices that we hear from the past, and how do they continue to do so?By the end of the module, you will not only have a strong sense of what it means to see problems through a historical lens, but also a better understanding of the chronological and geographical range of work undertaken by Sheffield historians.

20 credits

History option module examples:

Empire: From the Ancient World to the Middle Ages

Covering the period from the 4th century BC to the 15th century AD, this module invites students to explore the ancient and medieval worlds through the lens of 'empire'. It provides an introduction to ancient and medieval types of empire, their contacts with and legacies to each other, and the connectedness between East and West in this period. Using a wealth of primary evidence and drawing on corresponding historiographical debates, students explore what it meant to live in ancient and medieval empires, what kind of social, cultural and religious encounters they engendered, and whether there was any space for resistance.

20 credits

Land of Liberty? Rights in the USA, 1776-2016

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that men were created with 'certain unalienable rights'. Yet the new United States denied those rights to large swathes of its people. Examining themes which resonate powerfully today, this module explores American history as a struggle over how rights have been defined and debated, expanded and contracted, and secured and denied. Linking the history of ideas to the efforts of ordinary people, we will look at debates over liberty and slavery, democracy and disenfranchisement, capital and labour, integration and
segregation, gender and sexuality, nationalism and internationalism, and conservatism and liberalism.

20 credits

The 'Disenchantment' of Early Modern Europe, c. 1570-1770

This module explores the fundamental shifts in mental attitudes and public behaviour that occurred in Europe between the age of the Reformation and the age of the Enlightenment. The central focus of the course will be the examination of the supernatural - religious beliefs, but also witchcraft and magic. You will explore the changing ways in which beliefs impinged on people's lives at various social levels. You will also have an opportunity to study the impact on people's world views of such changes as rising literacy, urbanisation, state formation and new discoveries about the natural world. All these will be investigated in the institutional contexts of state and church and the ways in which they sought to channel and mould beliefs and behaviour. This module enables you to understand how the early modern period is distinctive from and links medieval and later modern historical studies.

20 credits

The Making of the Twentieth Century

This module considers the twentieth century as a time that transformed the social and political order in the world, calling into question the role of the European powers in global contexts, and dramatically reorienting the relationship between states and societies. You will engage with case studies representing key themes in twentieth-century global history: imperialism and the processes of decolonisation; the challenges of building the postcolonial nation; revolutions and the emergence of new states; war, genocide and conflict; and the institutions of international order.

In addressing these themes, The Making of the Twentieth Century has a particular aim of counteracting prevailing tendencies towards Eurocentrism.  You will gain a considerable body of knowledge on the histories of Asia, Africa and Latin America especially.  At the same time, emphasis is placed on the empirical and theoretical grounds upon which competing interpretations rest in order to encourage you to develop critical awareness of the character of historical analysis.  More generally, this module aims to develop analytical, conceptual and literary skills through class discussion and written assignments.  Communication skills will also be emphasised in weekly seminars that will allow specific issues to be discussed in more depth, often with reference to primary source material.  Above all, the module seeks to stimulate an interest in history and an appreciation of cultural diversity.

20 credits

The Transformation of the United Kingdom, 1800 - 2000

This module explores the central political, social, economic, cultural and diplomatic developments that have transformed Britain since 1800. Unlike most of its European neighbours, Britain did not experience dramatic moments of revolution, constitution-building, invasion or military defeat; indeed the belief that the nation was set on a course of gradual evolutionary progress was central to many versions of British identity. This course examines how, when and why change occurred in Britain. Key themes include the transition to mass democracy; the impact of industrialisation; shifts in social relationships based on class, gender and ethnicity; and the rise and fall of Britain as an imperial power.

20 credits

Sociology core modules:

Introduction to Social Theory

This module aims to introduce you to major interventions and advances in social theory in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. It focuses on a variety of crucial theories of social relations, conditions, and processes, such as social conflict, exchange, power, and resistance, among many others

The module seeks to guide you in becoming familiar with, and in understanding the meanings of, the concepts, ideas, and arguments central to those social theories. 

Moreover, you will acquire and develop the skills necessary for researching, grasping, and communicating different theoretical conceptions of the social world. For this purpose, you will be supported in studying a selection of primary texts in social theory.

The module places emphasis on socio-theoretical innovations in explaining the problems and challenges posed by social reality as well as in imagining social change.

A series of lectures will provide expositions of the concepts, ideas, and arguments in the theoretical works at issue on the module. The corresponding series of seminars will support you and your fellow students in collaboratively deepening your knowledge and investigations of the theoretical substance and in sharpening your study and research skills.

20 credits

Doing Social Research

This module introduces students to doing social research. Students will explore this through close engagement with the ways other academic projects (including those conducted by staff in the school) have been done as well as through trying out various approaches to doing social research themselves such as designing surveys, conducting observations and carrying out interviews. Students will gain familiarity with the process of doing social research, from designing research questions, and consideration of the approach taken, to the selection of methods, the implementation of ethical research in the field and the analysis and writing up of data.

20 credits

Theories of Society

This module aims for in-depth investigations of decisive advances in sociology's theoretical inquiry into social relations, conditions, and processes. You will receive guidance in interpreting key concepts and ideas in a range of different contributions to social theory and in analysing the configurations of those concepts and ideas.

 

The module will support you in developing the skills to engage closely with complex primary socio-theoretical writings in order to understand, reconstruct, and articulate their essential logical steps and arguments. Moreover, the module seeks to encourage and facilitate critical assessments and discussions of the successes and limitations of different socio-theoretical works. It aims to foster a comparative perspective on the similarities and differences between the theories of society under inspection.

 

The module will enable you to recognise social theory's potential to help make sense of persistent problems and challenges posed by social relations and conditions as well as to help envisage ways of addressing those problems and transforming the social world.

 

A series of lectures will set out and scrutinises the conceptual configurations, inferences, and arguments presented in socio-theoretical writings. The corresponding series of seminars will provide an environment for you and your fellow students to collaborate in in-depth interpretations, analyses, and critical discussions of the course content and in honing your skills to reconstruct and compare a variety of socio-theoretical arguments

20 credits

Sociology option module examples:

Social divisions and inequalities: causes, patterns and change

Sociologists are driven to understand how and why material and symbolic rewards are distributed unequally within and between social groups. In this module, you will explore how these inequalities arise from social divisions such as class, gender, and 'race' and ethnicity, and how they also interact to produce unequal outcomes. 

Throughout your learning, you will critically evaluate sociological research that provides evidence of structured inequality in society, as well as contemporary representations of inequalities. In doing so, you will gain an understanding of the difference between common-sense and sociological perspectives of social divisions.  This will support you in developing a sociological framework to critically assess how social divisions operate in the everyday, including in your own lives, and the constraints and opportunities that you and others encounter.

A series of lectures will provide scholarly evidence of and arguments relating to the causes of social divisions, the ways in which patterns of inequality manifest, and how these have changed and/or been challenged over time. Corresponding seminars will enable you to further develop your understanding of the ways in which social inequalities operate and manifest in social life, and how a different future can be imagined. This will deepen your  knowledge, develop your sociological imagination, and sharpen your study, research and communication skills

20 credits

Understanding and challenging inequality: Sociological and policy debate

Social inequalities and social divisions are fundamental challenges and complex problems in modern societies. This module aims to develop your understanding of societal inequalities and divisions, and of societal debates and actions to challenge and transform societal discourses, relations and structures that underpin social inequalities and divisions. Drawing on multidisciplinary sociological and social policy perspectives and debates, the module will develop your understanding of the complexity of contemporary inequalities and divisions, and the range of political and collective actions required and pursued to address these. You will engage with theoretical, research and policy perspectives about the ways in which the distribution of resources, status, opportunities and life chances in society is associated with economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of inequality and division. You will learn about the ways in which collective actions, transformative social policies and societal activism seek to challenge these dimensions of inequality and division. 

Three key themes will guide your module learning: inequality, justice and injustice; inclusion and exclusion; and local and global relationships. Engaging with these themes, the module will explore a range of sociological, political and social policy issues with module delivery tailored each year to the School's/Department's research expertise providing students with cutting edge learning based on the module team's specialist and current research and policy fields. Each year the module will explore several substantive topics and issues including, for instance, social welfare and social justice; childhood, family life, care and intergenerational relations; migration and transnational relations; crime and criminalisation; the digital world and risks; and decolonisation and neo-colonialism. The module builds on the Semester 1 Part 1 Social Inequalities and Division module to develop students' understandings of the causes, nature and extent of inequalities and divisions in contemporary society; and debates and actions concerned to promote equality, justice and inclusion.

20 credits

Introduction to Media and Communication in Society

This module examines the relationship between media and society. It examines the nature of influence and persuasion, representation, ownership, and identity in contemporary media environments.

10 credits

History core modules:

20 credits each. Dual students will choose one of two core modules.

History and Historians

How has History developed as a subject of inquiry? Why do historians view the same issues and sources in different ways? What forces internal and external to our profession have shaped the way the past has been written? And who has had the power to write history and for what ends? This module, building on the foundational work students have done at Level 1, poses these questions. It is designed to encourage greater methodological reflection on the part of students. What kind of historian are they? And why? It also sets them up for more advanced interrogation of 'historiography' elsewhere in the programme.

20 credits

History and the Public

This module explores the theory and practice of public history by providing students with the opportunity to communicate their scholarly work to an audience beyond the boundaries of our discipline. Students will work collaboratively in writing a critique of a piece of public history as part of a broader evaluation of the use of history outside academic settings. The course will engage in debate about important questions facing historians in the present, and consider ideas about the role and purposes of History as an academic subject.

20 credits

History optional module examples:

Option modules are 20 credits each. Dual honours students will normally take between one and three modules from across our options and document options, depending on if you choose to major or minor in history.

A Protestant Nation? Religion, Politics and Culture in England 1560-1640

On the accession of Elizabeth I, England became an officially Protestant country but the Church, State and laypeople did not necessarily agree about the nature of changes needed to accommodate the new religion. On the level of national government policy, we shall explore what governments expected from their subjects and how they attempted to secure religious conformity during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. How far did anti-Catholicism define English identity in this period? Did authorities at the national and local levels disagree about how severely religious minorities should be treated?

20 credits

Asian Britain: Travel, Migration, Diaspora

It has been estimated that, by the early twenty-first century, more than 25 million peoples of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent were living in Europe, North America, Africa and Southeast Asia. This module aims to historicise this diaspora by examining how and why South Asians have criss-crossed the globe in increasing numbers from the nineteenth century: for pilgrimage, trade, service, indenture, learning, diplomacy, politics, performance, mission and employment. The focus will be on different experiences of travel, migration and settlement in Britain in the high and late colonial period (1858-1947) that anticipated mass migration in the post-war era.

20 credits

Byzantine Intersectionality: Gender, Race and Power in the Medieval Mediterranean, c.500-1300

How did race and gender appear before modernity? How similar were they to how race and gender appear to us today? And can the tools of intersectionality, an approach developed by the critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw that thinks of different kinds of identities as deeply intertwined in structuring our lives, help us understand the medieval world? These questions sit at the heart of this module, which will guide you through the Byzantine world, the survivor of the Roman empire in the East, stretching from the Balkans to Syria, but with a particular focus on the manifold ways in which this world and its power hierarchies were structured by complex ideas about gender and race. From castrated men, or eunichs, sleeping at the foot of the emperor's bed, to saints assigned female at birth who decided to spend their lives as men in male monasteries, this course will ask us to reconsider the assumptions we make about gender and race today, by tracing both how far they have come from the medieval period, and how far they have deviated from it. It will both start and conclude with some bigger historiographical questions: does the existence of race and gender in the past, the realities of racial and sexual hierarchy, offer us an origins story or an opportunity for liberation today?

20 credits

Culture in Early Modern Europe

Culture is the key to understanding how societies thought and behaved in the past. Early modern Europe - a period of immense cultural change and conflict - is no different. This wide ranging module introduces students to ideas about culture and examines how cultural history has revolutionised what we know about the lives of men, women and children in Europe between 1500 and 1800. Building on a rich historiography and through a series of intriguing case studies, the module draws on wide range of sources - such as diaries, letters, and legal records, to printed works, art and archaeology - to enter into the many cultures of early modern Europe. The module explores issues like material culture, youth culture, cultures of protest, intellectual culture, and religious culture. It asks whether we can talk about different cultures of men and women and how cultures were affected by social and economic inequalities. It thinks about forces of cultural integration and pressures of cultural conflict. And it explores ideas of cultural change, and how these changes helped create the modern world.

20 credits

Decolonisation: The End of Empire & the Future of the World

The world was transformed in the twentieth century. A world of empires and colonies became a world of independent states. In this module we analyse this global transformation. Why did it happen - and how? How much really changed? For people around the globe - from imperial rulers in Europe to anti-colonial nationalists in the 'third world' - the crumbling of European empires was an opportunity to shape the future of their own communities and of the world. Sometimes negotiated, often violent, these hard-fought struggles over the future created the world we live in today.

20 credits

Empire, Sexuality and the Family in Modern Europe

The last two centuries have witnessed the dramatic transformation of family life and sexuality across Europe. The experience of empire, both at home and in overseas colonies, played an essential role in that transformation. This module considers how empire shaped European debates about and experiences with sexuality and the family, including questions about race, religion, gender, marriage, childhood and family structures. We will examine developments on the ground both in the metropole and in colonies. Not least, we shall explore the shadow of empire in twentieth-century policies on and debates about sexuality and family life, from National Socialist eugenics laws to international human rights debates about protecting families and children of refugees. In doing so, we will connect a rich body of historical writing about the family, sexuality, gender, law and empire.

20 credits

From the Pharaohs to Alexander the Great: The Battle for the Ancient World

This module examines the ongoing battle for dominance in the ancient Near East between the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks. From the outset of the Iron Age (around 1000 BCE) until Alexander the Great swept in from Macedonia to conquer the whole of the known world in 330 BCE, four empires rose and fell in the area now known as the Middle East. In the midst of all these powers lived ancient Israel—the small yet strategically located society that produced the texts known as the Old Testament. The module explores the key political, military, religious, economic, and social events that shaped these empires, shifted the balance of power between them, shaped their sacred texts, and made parts of these societies iconic symbols of the ancient world.

20 credits

From World War to Cold War: Europe 1945-1968

This module examines the social and cultural character of Europe after the personal and political traumas of the 1930s and 1940s, focusing on developments in France, Italy and West Germany. Its purpose is to provide a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to a key aspect of post-1945 European history, encouraging students to consider the history of post-war Western Europe as a unity, and highlighting the similarities between states. Similarly, it deliberately transgresses the boundaries between political, economic, social and cultural history. Topics will include the end of World War II, consumption and affluence, debates about Americanisation, and the changing nature of politics and society during the 1960s.

20 credits

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Britain, 1850 to the Present

Through lectures and seminars, this course offers an overview of the history of gender and sexuality in Modern Britain. We will examine political, social, cultural and economic change from the perspective of gender relations and constructions of gender, as well as shifting understandings of sex and sexual politics from the Victorian period of alleged sexual repression to moments of liberation resulting from two (or more) so-called 'sexual revolutions' in the 20th century. We are interested, in equal measure, how women and men experienced, negotiated, and reacted to these changes in gender norms and sexual mores.

20 credits

Gender and the Georgians: Sex and Society in Britain 1714-1837

Eighteenth-century Britain witnessed great change: historians have argued for a 'revolution' in industry, the 'birth of a consumer society' and the emergence of a 'public sphere' of political debate; global trade expanded, towns grew, and new Enlightenment ideas flourished. In this context, gender identities and roles were redefined, understandings of the body debated, and notions of masculinity and femininity contested. This module explores these ideas about gender, and how they informed people's experiences, from polite fashions to the criminal underworld, bluestocking sobriety to drunkenness in gentlemen's clubs, and from 'subcultures' of homosexuality to the first 'feminists'

20 credits

Gender, Race and Class in Nazi Germany 1933-1945

This module analyses German society from 1933 to 1945 from the perspective of gender, race and class. We will examine the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion under the Nazi dictatorship through the lens of the agency of ‘Aryan’ women and men, the persecution of ‘racially’ defined minorities and by probing into the connections between social class and both consent and popular dissent. While racial categories were pivotal for Nazi policy, their application and their outcomes intersected with issues of gender and class, whether in the forced sterilization of (mostly) women, or in labour market policies that limited gainful employment of women. Through the focus on gender, race and class as dimensions of policy, collective agency and experiences in Germany from 1933 to 1945, the module will offer an introduction into key aspects of the Nazi dictatorship and its dynamics.

20 credits

Holy Russia, Soviet Empire: Nation, Religion, and Identity in the 20th Century

This module explores the twentieth-century history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and its successor states. Rather than approaching this turbulent period in history by focusing on the rise and fall of different political leaders (as is often the case in survey courses), we instead approach this subject through the prism of nation, religion and identity. The course probes the following questions: What did the 'Russian revolution mean for the multi-national empire created by the Romanovs? How far did the communist party manage to create a 'Soviet' identity, and on what was this based? Did the Bolsheviks attempt to create an atheist society succeed? And what happened to 'Soviet' identity when communist leaders began to lose their grip on power in the final decades of the twentieth century?

20 credits

Imperial Germany, 1871-1918

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the study of Imperial Germany and its position in the controversial interpretations of the 'peculiarities' of Modern German History, ie the structural continuities leading the the rise of National Socialism and its seizure of power in 1933. The module will cover topis crucial for an understanding of these debates, such as the party system and electoral culture, the structure and sociability of the middle class, the forms and impact of social militarization, and the emergence of radical nationalism. Particular attention will be paid to the confessional conflicts and identities and to the First World War

20 credits

Intoxicants in Early Modern England

The module looks at the uses and abuses of intoxicants in England during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This includes `old world' intoxicants, such as wine, beer, and ale, as well as `new world' commodities like tobacco, chocolate, coffee, and tea. The module introduces students to the economy of intoxication, and the importance of intoxicants to domestic trade and global expansion; to the role of intoxicants in medical practices; to the places, spaces, rituals, and conventions of consumption; and to importance of intoxicants to the early modern state and political culture.

20 credits

Life Worth Living

What does it mean for a life to go well? How does one live life well? What is a flourishing life? These questions have shaped intellectual endeavour for millennia. Life Worth Living explores approaches to these questions through engagement with diverse traditions/thinkers including classical Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Existentialism, Marx, and Nietzsche. The module includes historical analysis of these traditions, visits from individuals whose lives are shaped by them, fieldwork to discuss the ideas beyond the classroom, and assessments to help students develop their own vision of a life worth living.

20 credits

Looking East: British Perceptions of the Soviet Union from the Holodomor to the Early Cold War

In this module you will learn about how Britons perceived the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. You will examine the reasons why some Britons responded in adulatory fashion to the Soviet experiment, and why others saw a malignant force out to undermine Britain's institutions and way of life. You will understand how the Soviet Union was represented across the media and in different cultural forms, and discover what this reveals about how Britons thought about themselves between the 1930s and 1950s; their hopes, fears, and introspection about their place in the world.The module covers key topics that act as landmarks in the chronology of British attitudes to the Soviet experiment, including the Holodomor (Ukrainian Terror-Famine), Stalin's purges, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the wartime alliance, and the start of the Cold War. The module also considers other less well-known episodes that influenced British perceptions: the Metropolitan-Vickers affair in 1933; the Russophobia of press outlets such as the Saturday Review (1933-1936); and Moscow Dynamo's football tour in November 1945. These incidents will also be set against wider themes that influenced the reactions of Britons, notably the role of 'fellow travellers' and itinerant sceptics, international political dynamics (such as affinity for fascist alternatives), and cultural representations in literature and other media forms.

20 credits

Media and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century Britain

This module will explore ways in which the press, the cinema, and radio and television broadcasting shaped politics, society and culture in twentieth century Britain. The first half of the module will examine the historical development of each of the major media forms and discuss the different types of content that they provided. The second half will explore a number of key issues, such as the impact of the media on the evolution of modern democracy, the media's role in reflecting and shaping identities such as class, gender and ethnicity, and the media's contribution to the emergence of a consumer society.

20 credits

Postcolonial France and Britain: Empire and its legacies since 1945

In 1942, Winston Churchill declared, 'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire'. However, between 1945-1960 a quarter of the world's inhabitants revolted against colonialism and colonial rule. So how did we get from Churchill's certainty that the Empire will endure to the emergence of 65 new sovereign states - and what were the consequences in Europe of that massive shift? 

This module looks at postwar Western Europe through an imperial lens, applying new perspectives from the field of postcolonial studies which argue that empire and metropole should not be examined separately. The module covers three main themes: the question of what empire and its loss meant to the colonisers; migration from former colonies to Europe and its consequences; and the memory, representation and historiography of empire. Focusing on Britain and France the module uses a wide range of sources and approaches to explore cultural, social and political aspects of post-colonial Europe.

You will learn what empire meant to Europeans in the twentieth century, and in what ways colonialism and its legacies have shaped the history of Europe since the end of formal imperial rule between 1945 and 1980.  Over the course of the semester we'll examine a variety of topics, beginning with an introduction to postcolonialism as a theory and a means of examining and understanding the world. We'll then start exploring how the colonial empires were perceived at the end of the Second World War. We'll look at the late-colonial state and new forms of colonial rule, including changing ideas about colonial governance, race and equality. Then we'll move to the failure of the late-colonial project: was the decision to withdraw from empire an orderly retreat? In particular, we'll focus on reactions to and debates about decolonisation in Algeria and Kenya in metropolitan societies. We'll examine the experiences of the Windrush generation, and questions of race relations, policing, and the emergence of racial discourses in politics and society.The focus here will be on the 1958-70s for the British case (Enoch Powell) and the 1960s in France with the emergence of the Front Nationale and the emergence of anti-racism campaigns and movements since 1968. We will finish our semester examining the 'second generation' with questions on ethnicity, difference and belonging through the concepts of 'post-colonial fracturing'. Through sport, culture and music we'll look at national identity - was the 1998 French world cup team a representation of multicultural France? We'll end the semester on the question of colonial nostalgia, former settler's repatriation to Europe, and the problems of commemoration in the French case.

20 credits

Religion in an Age of Terror: Ancient Texts and the Making of Modern Israel.

This module will look at the origins, growth and development of conflict and violence in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), in order to provide a historical perspective on the roots of contemporary religious violence. The focus of the module will be a case-study on the conflict in Israel/Palestine (especially between 1947-67). Primary source analysis will be of the Bible/Quran (and related material), and the documents relating to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Related topics will include: theories of religious violence; religious terrorism; politics and religion; and the roots of religious 'fundamentalism.'

20 credits

Shell-Shock to Prozac: Mental Health in Britain

This course charts the history of psychiatry and mental health in Britain. We start at the First World War, with the large-scale management of psychiatric casualties (shell-shock). We will look at the uptake of psychoanalysis in interwar Britain, contrasted with 'extreme' asylum treatments such as lobotomy and insulin coma therapy. We shall then gauge the impact of the National Health Service from 1948, the closure of the asylums, and the impact of new drug therapies (including the iconic Prozac). Finally we shall analyse the rise of patient activism, and the emergence of new 'epidemic' illnesses such as depression and self-harm.

20 credits

Slavery and Abolition in the United States

This module explores slavery and its critics in the United States. Focusing mostly on antebellum America - the three decades before the Civil War - we will move from the daily struggles over life and labour on the plantation to the place of slavery in national politics and international trade. Students will explore the character of the slave community, the relationship between master and slave, and debates over the rights and wrongs of the `Peculiar Institution'.

20 credits

The Archaeology of the Later Medieval Church in England

This module will provide an overview of the archaeology of the later medieval church in England between 1066 and c.1540. Drawing on a wide range of archaeological, architectural and textual sources it will explore the nature of the church through a series of thematically organised lectures and seminars. Themes covered include the development of the parish church and its architecture, the place of the church in the rural landscape, churchyard archaeology, the impact of the Black Death, the fabric of monastic life, monastic economies and the effects of the Reformation. You will learn to critically evaluate and debate established approaches, and to develop fresh, evidence-based arguments that are relevant to current research.

This unit aims to offer students an advanced introduction to the diverse range of evidence and the chronological frameworks relevant to the study of the later medieval church. It will provide a critical overview of the key debates and theoretical approaches concerning the archaeology of the church, and place them within the broader context of changing perspectives in archaeology. Students will develop their abilities to judge between relevant academic arguments and it will be encouraged to contribute to current research debates, and to develop innovative critical perspectives and evidence-based arguments. The module will foster students' skills in presenting complex ideas, arguments and critical analysis during seminars and presentations and in written contributions.

20 credits

The Battle for China's Future, 1839-1949

This module explores a century in which nationalists and imperialists fought over China. We will begin by looking at how the Qing empire, having expanded China's frontiers, confronted the 'semi-colonialism' of foreign powers and bloody domestic rebellions. After covering the Qing's fall in the 1911 Revolution, we will examine different designs for national integration on the part of warlords, reformers, and radicals, and consider the civil wars that followed. China's history in this period is sometimes told as a straightforward story of Eastern response to Western impact. But in introducing you to China before Communist rule, we will consider a more complex story of innovation, exchange, accommodation, and resistance, as the Middle Kingdom's dynastic rulers and their republican successors tried to meet foreign and domestic challenges, balance conservatism and modernization, and redraw their country's social, political, and geographic boundaries.

20 credits

The Export of England: Seventeenth Century Trade and Empire

This module considers the commercial and territorial expansion of seventeenth-century England. It examines how England's commerce was transformed from the largely bilateral cloth trade with Europe conducted by mercantile corporations, to a multilateral commerce conducted under several conditions (the 'navigation system, 'free trade', joint-stock companies). These changes coincided with the foundation of North American and West Indian colonies, building on earlier experiences in Ireland, and the course will consider their developing relations with the metropolis. Throughout, the focus will be on whether these changes were a consequence of deliberate 'mercantilist' state policies, or of the initiative of thousands of individuals.

20 credits

The Heretic, the Witch and the Inquisitor: The Medieval Inquisition from the Cathars to Joan of Arc

The Inquisition - an extraordinary court instituted by bishops from the 13th century to judge heretics and encourage their return to the Roman Church - marks an important development in medieval history and has played an essential role in modern perceptions of the Middle Ages. By focusing on some of the best known sources of the Inquisition, which have been important in recent historiography as well as contemporary fiction (The Name of the Rose), this module allows you to reflect on how a better understanding of the Middle Ages and a critical questioning of modern prejudices can benefit from each other.

The module focuses on two main source collections (which are available online in English translation): the inquisition record of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers in South France in the early 14th century, who became Pope Benedict XII, and the two trials of Joan of Arc, i.e., the accusation trial of 1431, at the end of which she was burned at the stake, and the rehabilitation trial of the 1450s that overturned the verdict of the first trial. It examines other forms and continuations of inquisition, such as the Spanish Inquisition (starting in 1478), the Roman Inquisition (which famously condemned Galileo in 1633), and the beginning of the witch-craze of the early modern period in late medieval Europe.

20 credits

The History of American Foreign Relations

George Washington famously warned against 'the insidious wiles of foreign influence' in his farewell address in 1796. But history has challenged any idea of the United States as a self-contained, bounded nation. Rather, the U.S. has played an active role in world affairs and has been profoundly shaped by events and people outside its borders. This course surveys the history of the U.S. in global context, beginning with America's first forays into overseas expansion in the late nineteenth century. We will cover both the major foreign policy moments and trends in U.S. history ;wars, government initiatives and interventions abroad, interstate diplomacy 'as well as the less formal encounters, migrations, and transnational exchanges that constitute American foreign relations. Primary and secondary source readings, lectures, and discussions will pay particular attention to the intersections between changes at home and developments abroad.

20 credits

The History of Terrorism

In the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the rhetoric of the war on terror has been one of the most significant political vocabularies of the twenty-first century. Yet, terrorism is not a new phenomenon: the history of the modern world, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has been marked by violent challenges to political authority by non-state actors. This module will consider in detail the phenomenon of terrorism in a historical setting, considering various manifestations (geographically, chronologically and ideologically) as well as the related areas of state terror and counter-terrorist strategies.

20 credits

The Making of Modern India, 1780-1965

Modern South Asian history has been an exceptionally fertile field of scholarly exploration, with many new insights and theoretical developments emerging from this field. This module will study the recent historiographical trends while looking closely at several historical developments during the period of British rule and the immediate post-colonial period. The module will be divided into four parts: the early colonial period, the late colonial period, the period of anti-colonial resistance or the national movement, and the post-colonial/Nehruvian era. The themes to be studied include: land/agrarian settlements, British expansionist policies, the revolt of 1857, the formation of caste identities, British famine policies, socio-religious reforms, Gandhian mass-mobilization, Islamic assertions, the national movement, Nehruvian socialism, partition of the subcontinent, and post-colonial legacies.

20 credits

The Northern Ireland 'Troubles' and Peace Process

This module introduces students to one of Europe's most recent - and deadly - intra-state conflicts. The 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, c.1968-98, were marked by the persistence and seeming intractability of a conflict that contained national, ethnic and religious dimensions. With the paramilitary ceasefires in the 1990s, a new era opened; but difficulties remain in moving from an absence of violence to a genuine peace. Students will consider the conflict as a low-level civil war within the United Kingdom, as well as a dispute over sovereignty. The module covers the competing political and paramilitary groupings and various initiatives to enhance peace.

20 credits

Trumpism: An American Biography

Donald Trump's election, commentators claim, was unprecedented as well as unexpected: a break with more than two centuries of custom. Yet closer scrutiny of American history suggests Trump is no aberration. The module will interrogate the U.S. past to better understand the present, looking at the likes of populism as a political language, whiteness as a psychological wage, masculinity as a path to high office, protectionism as an economic policy, and deindustrialization as a political spur. By asking historical questions about the roots of Trump's rise, we will situate the American present in a complex and often painful past.

20 credits

Understanding the Aztecs: Life and death in early sixteenth-century Mexico

Since the devastating arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in 1519, the history of the Aztecs has been haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice. As bloody priests and brutal warriors, the Aztecs have peopled the pages of history, myth and fiction, their spectacular violence dominating perceptions of their culture and casting a veil over their unique way of life. But the Aztecs' island-capital of Tenochtitlan was not only a centre for ritual sacrifice, but also a sophisticated metropolis, home to a civilised society of highly educated individuals and close loving families. This module attempts to recover the complex and sometimes contradictory reality of the Aztec world by studying life in Tenochtitlan on the eve of the Spanish conquest. Central to the course will be the attempt to contextualize the role of human sacrifice and understand how the Aztecs were able to remain a very human and recognizable society, whilst living amongst so much violent bloodshed.

20 credits

Warriors, Saints and Heroes in early medieval Britain

This module explores patterns of power in early medieval Britain from the withdrawal of Roman authority in the fifth century through to the incursions of the Vikings in the ninth. We will focus on what would become England, though Wales and Scotland will also come into consideration. Central themes include the problem of where the Angles and Saxons came from, the relations between independent kingdoms, the role of the Church in reshaping ideas of royal power, the nature of heroic warrior culture, people's sense of their place in the wider world, and the changing distributions of power in their own society. We will explore a range of sources, ranging from archaeological excavations and coins to poetry, travel-writing and historical chronicles.

20 credits

Research Project

In this module, you will learn how to develop and execute a historical research project. Providing a stepping stone from the critical source work of document options to the dissertation at Level 3, you will develop essential skills in locating and evaluating sources  while gaining a first hand experience of how to design, develop, and present a short research project of 3,500 words. Through practical, lab-style teaching, you will undertake hands-on source work and consider the issues involved in posing questions and finding answers in evidence. 

The module will be taught through 11 two-hour workshops developed and delivered by academic staff around their areas of research specialism. Sessions will provide context on the area in question delivered both through short informal lectures and discussion of secondary reading. As the module progresses, focus will turn towards the process of developing an independent research project, deploying primary source material selected from electronically available resources (for instance digital databases or online source compendiums). Workshop tasks will help you to develop the skills necessary to identify, evaluate, and employ primary and secondary sources in research. These lab-style workshops with your tutor will be complemented by five research skills workshops for the whole module cohort led by the module convenor on subjects such as research data management and project planning. You will have the opportunity for written feedback on work submitted as a portfolio that will feed into the final 3,500 word research essay.

20 credits

History document option module examples:

Document option modules are 20 credits each. Dual honours students have the option to take one document option module.

History document modules have a narrower focus than our standard option modules and usually cover a specific event, a movement, or a moment in time. They help you develop your skills in the use and analysis of primary sources which will be invaluable as you progress through your degree. Dual honours students have the option to take one document option module.

Appeasement, the Munich Crisis and the British People

The conduct of foreign policy in Britain in the late 1930s and the policy of appeasement in particular have been matters of sustained historiographical debate since 1945. This unit introduces students to some of the key sources pertinent to the discussion through a series of linked lecture workshops and seminars. These highlight the shifting debates between the 'Guilty Men' and the anti-appeasers, and the diplomatic perspective, but we also consider how the Press, the British public, men and women, and various political parties responded to the Crisis and understood their position as the Second World War loomed.

20 credits

From Democracy to Dictatorship: the 1973 coup in Chile

This document option explores the coup of 11 September 1973 as a turning point in Chilean, Latin American and global history. It will use primary sources to explore events on both sides of this critical date, casting light on life in Chile under both democracy and dictatorship. This module will also situate the Chilean coup in international and global history, asking why events in a small Latin American country held such global importance. We'll use government documents to explore why  the United States found it necessary to intervene against the Allende government and assist the reactionary forces who supported the military coup and transcripts of interviews to grasp how everyday life changed for Chileans in 1973. We'll also explore the significance of events in Chile for the wider global Cold War, using music, art and documents left by activists to ask why everyday people in countries across the world - including the United Kingdom - mobilised in solidarity with the Chilean people and in the name of human rights, and we'll also assess the impact this activism had.

20 credits

Global Lives: South Asian Travel and Migration in the Age of Empire

By the early twenty-first century, more than 25 million peoples of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent were living in Europe, North America, Africa and Southeast Asia. This module aims to historicise this diaspora by analysing letters, diaries, and travelogues. These sources reveal how and why South Asians have criss-crossed the globe in increasing numbers from the nineteenth century: for pilgrimage, trade, service, indenture, learning, diplomacy, politics, performance, mission and employment. The focus will be on different experiences of travel, migration and settlement in the high and late colonial period (1858-1947) that anticipated mass migration in the post-war era.

20 credits

Jane Groom's 'Extraordinary Scheme': Disability and the body in the Transatlantic World c. 1800-1900

This document option takes as a starting point Jane Groom's emigration scheme to send white, working-class, deaf people from London to Canada and establish a deaf colony in North America. The scheme is used as a springboard to think about issues of disability and the body in the nineteenth-century Transatlantic world. Topics covered include: institutionalisation, immigration restrictions, deaf separatist demands for a `Deaf State' in the USA, eugenics, and medical and social attitudes towards disability and the body. The course draws on a range of primary sources including: newspapers, memoirs, propaganda pamphlets, immigration legislation and medical and scientific treatises.

20 credits

Murder in the cathedral: the Becket Affair

On 29 December 1170, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was brutally murdered in his cathedral by four knights of his King and one-time friend, Henry II. In the space of ten years, a close friendship had been ruined, and Thomas' stubbornness, flight to France, and untimely death created additional tensions for the English king. This document option investigates events surrounding Thomas' death and the emergence of his cult. It asks how a minor squabble became a continent-wide cause célèbre, forcing Henry into an act of ritual humiliation to clear his name while ensuring that Thomas' memory lived on.

20 credits

Russian Revolution 1917-18

This course will allow students to explore the Russian revolution, through a close study of sources from 1917-18. A tight focus on these years will enable students to grasp some of the complexity not only of political events in St Petersburg, but also of the social tensions and rifts across the whole of Russia. Through a close reading of primary sources, students will be able to reflect independently on how Soviet and Cold War narratives of the revolution can now be challenged. Sources will include propaganda posters and films, works of art, popular songs, graffiti, peasant petitions, and workers' letters.

20 credits

Tenochtitlan, City of Blood and Flowers: Aztec society in the early sixteenth century

This course will introduce students to the most influential 'schools' of historical practice in operation in the second half of the twentieth century and which remain influential today. These include Marxism, the Annales school, quantitative history, history from below, feminist and gender history, and postmodernism, as well as English empiricism. Lectures will provide an overview of each approach, and discuss the historical context in which it emerged. In seminars, students will be taught to assess critically the opportunities and limitations of each approach.

20 credits

The Easter Rising: Living, Fighting and Dying in 1916

The rebellion in Dublin at Easter 1916 was a moment of profound crisis. For a week, rebels occupied key buildings in central Dublin, having proclaimed an Irish republic. After their surrender, sixteen leaders of the rebellion were executed, inaugurating a new martyrology and prompting a wave of public sympathy. This document option will explore the broad range of perspectives on the Rising, including those of civilians, rebels, and those tasked with its suppression. Drawing on plentiful digital resources (memoirs, diaries, official inquiries, and witness statements), this document option will uncover what it was like to live through that landmark event.

20 credits

The Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot provoked endless debate at the time and in following centuries over the precise nature of the plot, its objectives and the degree of government complicity. The answers to these questions lie in a rich but ambiguous body of primary sources written by the government and its apologists, by Catholics, and by other observers. This course will enable students to analyse all these types of source, and to address systematically the problems of source analysis and interpretation that they present, while building up a detailed understanding of the problematic position of Catholics in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

20 credits

The Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1858-85

Britain's 'Irish problem' has long roots. This document module examines one of the most important violent Irish organisations that challenged British sovereignty in Ireland. Founded in 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) (or the Fenian movement, as it was also known) was a transatlantic movement dedicated to the overthrow of the British state in Ireland. Fuelled by hatred for the British after the dreadful Famine in Ireland of the 1840s, the Fenians constructed a sophisticated organisation that was part secret society, terrorist cell structure and propaganda machine. It was the early forerunner of the Irish Republican Army. This document option investigates aspects of Fenianism from a range of angles. Using sources written and produced by contemporaries, we will consider the dynamics of the IRB and its place within nineteenth-century Ireland.

20 credits

The Medieval Inquisition

The Inquisition - an extraordinary court instituted by bishops from the 13th century to judge heretics and encourage their return to the Roman Church - marks an important development in medieval history and has played an essential role in modern perceptions of the Middle Ages. By focusing on some of the best known sources of the Inquisition, which have been important in recent historiography as well as contemporary fiction (The Name of the Rose), this document option will help students reflect on how a better understanding of the Middle Ages and a critical questioning of modern prejudices can benefit from each other.

20 credits

The Putney Debates, October 1647

Following the first English civil war there was political stalemate over the post-war settlement. By late 1647 there were calls for revolutionary political change, not least at the famous Putney debates. They came at a crucial moment in the development of the revolution, and successive editors between 1891 and 2007 presented the records of the debates in varying contexts in order to reveal the fundamental significance of the revolution. This module explores the background to the debates at Putney, what was said, and also considers how different editions of the debates reflect the shifting significance attached to the English revolution.

20 credits

The Myth of Venice

Historians typically debunk fabrications, but myths can themselves be the focus of historical study. During this module you will explore the Myth of Venice, its production, diffusion, and reception. On the one hand, Venice was celebrated as the ideal republican government, a bulwark in defence of Christendom, but it was also the city of state terror, secret police, and seductive 'oriental' luxury, famous for its libertine pleasures. The course also considers how these myths have endured and influenced the academic writing of Venetian history, as a city that was somehow unique and 'outside time'.

Across the module you will examine a wide variety of sources relating to the myth, and develop the skills required for their interpretation, including descriptions of the city by Venetians and foreigners; political tracts, histories and satire; paintings, sculpture and architecture; theatre and literature. (All sources are provided in English translation.) The close focus on a single city allows us to cover a broad period of time, from the leading centre of Mediterranean trade in the fifteenth century, to a growing sense of the city as a centre of tourism and idle pleasure in the eighteenth century, to the city as a symbol of a romantic past in the revolutionary era of the nineteenth century.

Throughout the module a lot of emphasis will be placed on interactive learning activities. During the lecture workshops, you will engage with materials through interactive exercises. In the seminars, you will be asked to take responsibility as part of a small team for leading the learning activities. As well as having the potential for being a lot of fun, this is also important for developing key transferable skills - my past students have commented how useful they found this for their development and how much they enjoyed doing it.

20 credits

The Putney Debates, October 1647

Following the first English civil war there was political stalemate over the post-war settlement. By late 1647 there were calls for revolutionary political change, not least at the famous Putney debates. They came at a crucial moment in the development of the revolution, and successive editors between 1891 and 2007 presented the records of the debates in varying contexts in order to reveal the fundamental significance of the revolution. This module explores the background to the debates at Putney, what was said, and also considers how different editions of the debates reflect the shifting significance attached to the English revolution.

20 credits

The Ten Commandments

This document option examines the Ten Commandments, perhaps the most well known 'legal' code in the world. Through the close study of key primary sources from the Hebrew Bible and the cultures that informed its writing, all readily available in modern English translation, the module explores the ancient Near Eastern context for these commands, the four texts in the Hebrew Bible that contend for the name Ten Commandments, and the role this text played in the political, social, economic, and ethical aspects of ancient life.

20 credits

Welfare children: the state, the family, and society in modern Britain

This module charts the rise and decline of the welfare state through its influence of modern British childhood and on the family. With a particular focus on primary sources, it traces the ideological origins of welfare in British imperialism and eugenics, and is attentive to those who have been excluded from so-called universal entitlements. It engages with the scholarship of Black feminists who have termed the 'welfare state' a 'malfare state'. We will examine the everyday lives reshaped by the state - through healthcare, work, education, housing, and maternity services - in the second half of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the way that the city of Sheffield shaped and was shaped by the welfare state. We are also interested in the way that the political economy, specifically the shift from Keynesianism to Neoliberalism - changed society and the state. How did ordinary men, women, and children experience major economic change, and how did they challenge - or promote - these changes? In Sheffield, a city shaped by steel and then mass unemployment, this is a particularly fraught history. We draw on a number of different historiographical and political traditions in this course, including socialism, feminism, and liberalism. Primary sources are central to our analysis.  We nuance our understanding through sources ranging from private diaries, family photographs, and archival ephemera through to political speeches and to public buildings, including those we see around us every day in the city of Sheffield. 

20 credits

Sociology core module:

Sociological Theory and Analysis

The content of this module will build upon your understanding of sociological theory by encouraging you to explore its relevance to key themes and issues in contemporary society.

The course will explore major theoretical works in critical social theory, feminist social thought, the critique of colonialism, and cultural theory. In order to foster your understanding of social theory, you will study the application of core ideas and concepts to substantive issues in modern contemporary society, including the problem of class, gender relations, race, and order and conflict. 

Overall, you will gain a critical understanding of the importance and use of modern and contemporary social theory.

20 credits

Sociology option module examples:

Digital Media and Social Change

This module will introduce you to a range of core theoretical frameworks in order to understand, analyse and evaluate the complex relationship between digital media and social change. You will focus on two key aspects of the relationship between digital media and social change. 

Firstly, you will examine purposeful activist use of digital media to create social change, investigating how new possibilities for participatory communication have been exploited by activists to contest inequalities. Topics you might cover include influential social movements, such as #BlackLivesMatter, to environmental influencers on Youtube and Instagram.

During the second half, you will analyse the large-scale social, economic and political changes created by the internet. This will include assessing the new forms of participation that have been created as audiences become producers, as well as the new forms of surveillance and inequalities that are entangled with these developments. 

This module will support you in developing the critical skills needed to discuss and unpack contemporary scholarship, providing vital scaffolding for your final year dissertations.

20 credits

Sociology of Family: Continuity and Change

Using a sociological and anthropological perspective, this module seeks to problematise the concept of 'family' as a natural and universal phenomenon. The content covered will underscore the need to explore the notion of the family as a social and historical construction by examining the diversity of family life in countries around the world. 

While acknowledging the impact of social change on different family constructions, you will seek to understand how some family structures remain the same, creating a situation where one society can have multiple family structures. In particular, this module will encourage you to focus on the role of the state in constructing the family and the impact these different constructions of family life have on particular individuals, such as women, children and the elderly.

You expand your skills in applying sociological thinking to everyday life and this will increase your awareness of the ways in which some family constructs are privileged whilst others are marginalised in society. In addition to this, you will gain employability skills by enhancing your practices in critical reflection, and by developing your ability to write in ways that have utility beyond the University.

20 credits

Sociology of Media and Consumer Culture

You will examine the relationship between media and consumer culture.

Some of the key debates you will explore during this module include engaging with various conceptual and theoretical understandings of consumer culture, discussing the relationship between media and marketing, and the impact of media on consumer culture.

By the end, you will have developed a deeper understanding of media, consumer culture, and their wider impacts on society.

20 credits

The Sociology of Crime

Crime, and the process of criminalisation, are major features of all societies. Since the nineteenth century, sociologists have developed a range of criminological theories to explain 'criminality'.

During this module, you will review the historical development of a range of theoretical approaches to the study of crime and consider how sociologists have studied the primary institutions of social control. You will also investigate and discuss the contribution of the sociology of crime to issues of contemporary significance using a case study model of learning.

By the end of the module, you will appreciate the importance of a sociological approach to crime and criminalisation, and be able to apply criminological theories in order to understand some of the most pressing and topical crime problems of today.

20 credits

Dynamics of Social Change and Policy

This module will present you with a 'sociological perspective on social policy' to provide a macro perspective on contemporary social and economic transformations in the UK and globally. Particular emphasis will be placed on the challenges posed for social policy theory and practice, as well as the potential to imagine alternative social policy scenarios.

Some of the issues you will consider include: globalisation, neoliberalism, falling fertility and ageing societies, precarious labour markets and migration, and mobility. You will be encouraged to take a comparative and international/global perspective, emphasising not only the perspectives of International Organisations, but also the challenges faced by other types of welfare regimes. 

The module will equip you with a deep understanding of key socio economic challenges faced by postindustrial societies while also reflecting on how these challenges are received and responded to by Global South countries. You will also develop your skills in policy report writing, an essential tool most will use in their professional careers.

20 credits

Social Problems: Policy and Practice

Drawing on current examples and comparative references, you will explore social and ideological constructions of social problems and the role of the state and other agencies in responses to them. This module is team taught which means sessions are delivered by a range of leading experts on different social problems.

Some of the key concepts and themes in social policy and practice that you will cover include inequality, justice and fairness, individual versus collective responsibility, and welfare versus social control. The content of this module mainly focuses on major contemporary issues, including welfare and work, housing and homelessness, and community participation.

By the end, you will be equipped with the necessary critical perspective and skills to understand and explore social problems.

20 credits

Crime, Justice and Social Policy

During this module, you will examine the variety of responses to crime that encompass the use of both crime policy and social policy. Crime policy responses encompass the use of the role of the policy, courts and prisons. Alongside this is the social policy approach which includes health, housing, education, employment, youth and family as a means of crime reduction. 

The content you will cover seeks to demonstrate the criticism of 'traditional' crime policy-based responses to crime and the way in which social policy has emerged as an alternative way to tackle the so-called 'crime problem'. You will consider multiple theories of crime which make competing arguments for the use of crime or social policy as a response, the role of criminologists in policy making, and the criminalisation of social policy as an unintended outcome.

This module speaks more broadly to the challenges and dynamics of the policy-making process when seeking to tackle complex societal issues. You will therefore benefit from situating these challenges within specific examples of governmental attempts to tackle crime with direct and indirect policy initiatives.

20 credits

Understanding 'Race' and Migration

This module explores the meaning of 'race' and migration in various social and political contexts. It aims to develop an in-depth understanding of sociological theories of 'race', racism and migration through an exploration of the development of 'race' as an ideology, as a concept influenced by history and politics, and through its relevance in the contemporary context. The module examines how ideas about race and migration help to shape and determine social and political relations. It also explores the role of race and migration as major sources of social divisions and how racism operates in the reproduction of structural inequalities. These issues are explored through sociological theory, as well as policy and practice areas such as theories of racialised identities, immigration regimes, education and criminal justice.

20 credits

Men, Feminism and Gender relations

During this module, you will critically examine the growing body of sociological and other literature concerned with men and masculinities. The content you will cover will locate this growth of interest within the context of the feminist movement and subsequent writings/critiques of masculinities and patriarchy.

You will be supported and encouraged to connect the covered topics to wider scholarship on gender relations. Some of the key case studies that you will explore include men in sport, men and media, men and health/well-being, men and feminism, as well as men and sexualities. Methodological and epistemological issues involved in the study of men and masculinities will also form part of this module.

This module will also introduce students to the new skill of vlogging, which they will be supported to develop for their assessment.

20 credits

Solidarity: Politics, Law, and Society across the Globe

In this interdisciplinary module, we explore how solidarity has been understood, practised, and contested across the globe. From Cuban solidarity for African liberation struggles to cross-species solidarity in climate activism today, we explore the possibilities of solidarity in action. In doing so, we will look at the wide-ranging impact that solidarity has had from individual survival to regime change. Taking a critical approach to the topic, we will also explore situations in which acts of solidarity can amplify forms of exclusion and injustice.

20 credits

Sociology of the Body

In the social world, we are understood first through our bodies. This can have an impact on everything from our opportunities for employment to our access to medical care. During this module, you will examine the cultural and societal impact we have on bodies and they have on us by exploring the social contribution of the body and the ways it is controlled and experienced in contemporary society.

Throughout, you will be introduced to key theoretical approaches to the sociology of the body and develop understanding of the social construction of the body. You will have the opportunity to critically explore the range of social factors that can impact the body and identity and discuss how our bodies intersect with our multiple social identities. 

Overall, you will develop an understanding of some of the social factors that can shape bodily experience and identity, such as racialisation, gender, ageing, weight, medicalisation, and representation. You will also be encouraged to develop a social justice focused framework for understanding the marginalised body in contemporary society.

20 credits

In Sickness and in Health: The Sociology of Medicine

Covid conspiracies and care home crises. AIDS activism and autism advocacy. Questions relating to health and illness are amongst the most crucial facing society today. From before people are born until the moment they die, everyone is profoundly shaped by their engagements with medicine. 

In this module, you will examine the ways in which bodies, minds and societies are formed through engagements with and understandings of health, illness and medicine. You will explore topics such as: intersecting inequalities in healthcare provisions, patient experiences of ill health, activism and the fight for recognition, contemporary health crises, and the COVID pandemic. 

By critically examining these examples, you will develop a nuanced understanding of the role of health, illness and medicine within contemporary society.

20 credits

History option module examples:

There are two dissertation options available. All students can choose to take the 20 credit short dissertation. Students who wish to major in History can choose to take the 40 credit dissertation; in this case the dissertation must be taken in combination with a Special Subject.

In addition to the modules listed below, we expect you to have the opportunity to take a new module that will give you the chance to build on your core work in your second year and learn how to navigate conflicting and controversial disputes in history and historiography by focusing on a single interpretive issue.

Dissertation

The Dissertation in History is an exercise of 9-11,000 words in which students explore an individually chosen topic involving problems and issues derived from a module taken at level two or level three. It is expected to consist of research at a high level where interpretation and analysis will be of importance. The balance between primary and secondary materials will depend on the topic and the availability of sources. In each case students work independently under the guidance of a supervisor.

40 credits

Short Dissertation

The dissertation in History is an exercise of 7,500-8,500 words in which students explore an individually chosen topic involving problems and issues derived from a module taken at level two or level three. It is expected to consist of research at a high level where interpretation and analysis will be of importance. The balance between primary and secondary materials will depend on the topic and an availability of sources. In each case students work independently under the guidance of a supervisor.

20 credits

Making History Public

This core module is designed to allow students the opportunity to produce a piece of public history. It will equip students with the skills required to effectively communicate their scholarly research to a non-academic audience, and develop transferable skills beyond the traditional academic skills of a History degree. Drawing on any aspect of their experience as History undergraduates, students will design and produce an accessible digital artefact presenting a topic or theme of their choosing. Students will be supported by workshops and seminars to identify suitable topics and develop communication and digital skills central to public history, and will also be encouraged to bring their extra-curricular skills and interests to this module. A virtual exhibition will showcase student work to the whole History community. In addition, students will submit an interpretative written exercise, situating and explaining the artefact they have created and analysing their experience over the course of the module.

20 credits

History Special Subject examples:

Special subjects are 40 credits each. Dual honours students have the option to take one special subject.

Anarchy in the UK? Radicals, Democrats and Revolutionaries 1830-1886

This module examines the history of radical political culture in the United Kingdom from the Reform Act of 1832 to the Home Rule crisis of 1886. The re-imagining of the British state within radical political cultures is the chief focus, with particular emphasis on the democratic ideals projected from a variety of perspectives, liberal, socialist, republican, and Irish nationalist. There were many radical proposals to transform the British polity; from a desire to extend the franchise to republican activism, the many layers of radicalism in the United Kingdom will be assessed within wider political, cultural and intellectual contexts.

40 credits

Britain's Social Revolution: Welfare, State and Society, c. 1870-1914

This module introduces students to the powerful debates about and important reforms targeted at a variety of `social questions' which haunted Britain from the late nineteenth century until the First World War. It demonstrates how new forms of knowledge, ideas about social solidarity and political and social movements shaped how Britons addressed issues such as poverty, unemployment and public hygiene. By analysing a wide variety of primary sources, including visual sources, this module will examine competing visions about the future of the nation and, in particular, what role the state should play in determining that future. 

20 credits

Cannibals and Christians: Mexico and Spain, c.1492-1600

This module examines the extraordinary clash of cultures which occurred following the 'discovery' of America, and the reciprocal relationship which developed between Europe and the 'New World' in the sixteenth century. Focusing on the sixteenth-century discovery, conquest and settlement of Central and South America, especially Mexico, the module will address such themes as the nature of the encounter, the intellectual and cultural impact, trade and exchange, migration, evangelisation and empire. The module addresses the encounter from a wide range of perspectives, evaluating the encounter from the viewpoint of sailors, conquistadors, priests, historians, explorers, missionaries, administrators and the indigenous people themselves.

40 credits

Capitalism and Identity in 19th-century Britain

How did people see themselves and the world in nineteenth-century Britain? The module emphasises the way local transformations and struggles were linked to global processes: emergence of class identities, shifting ideas about gender roles, and discourses of racial, religious and scientific superiority in a globalising world. We will study a broad range of primary sources, including textual, material and visual culture: from rival models of change and their popular reception; to the way identity was bound up with new consumer goods and fashions; to visual representations of empire and the impact of humanity upon the environment.

40 credits

Emotions and identity in Britain: from 'stiff upper lips' to 'snowflakes'

This module introduces students to an exciting area of social and cultural history: the emotions. In the early twentieth century, Britain confronted the emotional disorders of warfare, the repressed and sexualised emotions of Freudian theory, and the prevailing culture of 'stiff upper lip'. Today our emotions are everywhere, poured out on social media: we are endlessly exhorted to talk about and investigate our emotional states, wants, drives and needs. This shift has been spectacular and far-reaching, involving psychology, welfare, education and empire. This course helps students to understand how this has happened - and how our emotions are now an integral part of gender, racial and sexual identities in Britain.

40 credits

Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Britain, 1923-1945

This module examines three inter-related issues in order to assess the impact of fascism in Britain between the wars. Making full use of one of the best archives for this purpose in the country held here in the Special Collection of the University Library, first we examine the political organization, the ideas and the culture of 'native' British fascism from its inception in 1923 to the Second World War. Second, we move on to explore active and ideological resistance to British fascist and racist organisations by a loose coalition of Communists, Socialists, Liberals and even Conservatives, as well as the resistance mounted by those religious and ethnic groups most affected by fascist racial provocation and violence. Third, we will consider how contemporary interpretations of fascism, and formal and more informal relations with the European dictatorships, contributed to the National Government's policy of appeasement on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the greater definition of what was quintessentially 'British' about Britain's war aims with the outbreak of World War Two. We will approach these topics by analysing primary source material, including political pamphlets and propaganda, newspapers, public records, memoirs, oral testimonies, visual material, film and recordings, and novels.

40 credits

Food and Drink in South Asia

The food and drink of South Asia, or ‘Indian cuisine’, has become a mainstay of the British diet - with chicken tikka masala hailed as a national dish and chai available in every café.  To satiate that hunger (and thirst), this module focuses on the edible commodities, culinary cultures and gastronomic politics of South Asia in historical perspective. A most basic quality of food and drink is its necessity for survival: we all need it to live and so it should underscore our shared humanity across time and place. And yet, despite this - or perhaps more rightly because of it - food and drink has become an important means of offering historical insight into different societies and cultures around the globe and throughout time. In this module, we cover the Mughal period to Indian independence with an emphasis on the high colonial period (1858-1947). Taking food and drink as an object and organiser of historical enquiry enables us to consider such themes as: ritualised acts of food and wine consumption linked to kingship; the significance of foodstuffs to imperial trade; the impact of British colonialism on food processes, governance and practices; famine and hunger; the symbolic value of food and alcohol to socio-religious reform and Indian nationalism; class, domesticity and table manners; caste and dietary exclusion; diet, health and medicine; appetite and eating in cultural production; food as a marker of national, regional, communitarian and sectarian identities; agricultural revolutions and post/colonial change; and the globalisation of ‘Indian’ food. Thematic approaches will be balanced with sessions examining the histories of individual foodstuffs and dishes: from grains, dals, chillies and meat to chai, paan and toddy. Through these topics, students will be introduced to a broad array of historical scholarship addressing the preparation, consumption and distribution of food and drink in South Asia. They will also engage with some unique primary evidence in the form of cookbooks, autobiographies, travelogues, domestic manuals, novels and women’s magazines - complete with advertisements and recipes. Fancy a curry?

40 credits

Forced into Being: How Involuntary Migration Created Ancient Israel

Religious conflict and migration shape the Middle East now, just as they have for nearly 3000 years. Case in point: ancient Israel and its sacred texts-known widely as the Old Testament-are the product of a rather small satellite nation whose primary experiences included subjugation by larger military powers, resistance against the potential influence of foreign religious practices, and forced migration from its land that resulted in life among unfamiliar peoples. Indeed, the Old Testament is a collection of texts written by involuntary migrants to involuntary migrants, often about involuntary migration. This special subject examines how the migratory experiences of this relatively small society shaped some of the most important religious texts in history, which are sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and remain influential factors in the international conflicts of the 21st century Middle East.

20 credits

France in Africa, Africa in France: experiencing colonialism, anticolonialism, and postcolonialism

This module examines the rise and fall of French imperial rule in Africa, and its legacies and afterlives, from the end of the 19th century to the contemporary post-colonial era. By 1918, French imperial power in Africa had reached its zenith. Yet the next fifty years were characterised by contradiction, decline, and conflict, as the certainties of the ‘age of empire’ were challenged. It will explore the ideas that underpinned French imperialism; the effects of imperialism on colonised societies; challenges to imperial rule; the complex relationship between French republican ideals and imperialism; movements of people and ideas from Africa to metropolitan France; and the persistent and important legacies of empire in the post-colonial era. Through these topics students will engage with questions of how race, gender, and class were navigated in the Francophone world, drawing on source material which allows for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to draw out the voices of the people under study. Our range of primary sources represent the widest range of perspectives including African and French voices, women and men, the metropole and colony. Secondary literature will be used to contextualise the these sources and allow students to engage with the latest historiographical debates and scholarship being generated by this rapidly expanding field of enquiry. All texts will be provided in English.

40 credits

Humanitarianism, Internationalism and the British Empire, 1900-2000

What is humanitarianism? How has it shaped, and been shaped by, beliefs about Britain's role in the world? Why, in the eyes of politicians and the public, did British interests, and the interests of 'humanity' so often coincide?The unit analyses British humanitarianismfrom 1900 to 2000. We situate British humanitarianism within the history of the Empire, globalization, U.S. ascendancy, and Cold War tensions. We consider traditionally disenfranchised groups - women, children and imperial subjects - as objects and agents of humanitarian interventions, and ask whether humanitarianism can be considered as 'political' both in the past and in the present.

40 credits

Humour and Laughter in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Laughter is fundamental to human experience. Yet, the things we see fit to laugh at and how that laughter is thought about, tolerated, suppressed or celebrated, have all varied with time, place and culture with compelling possibilities for historians. Eighteenth-century Britain was a golden age of humour, brimming with bawdy jestbooks and a surfeit of satirical texts and images. It even witnessed the invention of caricature as we know it. The module explores this comic material-and ideas about it-to investigate fundamental shifts in manners, morality and political participation in the period, and the historiographical debates surrounding them.

40 credits

Italy in the Age of Dante, ca. 1200-1350

In the 13th and 14th centuries, northern-central Italy was one of the most urbanized, economically dynamic and culturally innovative parts of Western Europe, to the point that important scholars of the past have seen the Italian city-states as forerunners of modern concepts of republicanism and individualism. The cultural efflorescence of this period is still visible in the historical city centre of many Italian towns, in the frescoes of Giotto, and in the literary works of authors such as Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), best known for his exploration of the Christian afterlife in the Divine Comedy. And yet, Dante's Italy was also plagued by instability, civil wars and factionalism, as exemplified by the poet's banishment from his city, Florence, on account of political rivalries. How did the Italian city-states manage to flourish economically and culturally in such a fraught political landscape? How could they reconcile intellectual sophistication and religious revival on one side, and significant levels of violence and turmoil on the other? This module will make use of sources such as artwork, chronicles, literature and charters to explore various facets of the political, social and cultural life of the communes with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of this multi-faceted society.

The module will introduce you to the political, religious, social, and cultural landscapes of the Italian city-states between the 13th and the 14th century. It will develop your awareness of the historiographical interpretations of the period and its key features, e.g., the communal movement, merchant capitalism, the 14th century crisis and lay sanctity.

40 credits

Makers of a New World: Merchants, Scholars and Commoners in Late Medieval Europe

Between 1350 and 1450, many of the foundations of the Europe as we know it and the world has experienced it were laid by specific groups of people: merchants who established capitalist market economy and, at the same time, shaped the appearance of their cities through patronage and the promotion of new artistic models; scholars who reconsidered past evidence and the meaning of the past through the 'rediscovery' of the Classics; and commoners that developed individual and collective ways of getting their voices heard in politics and religion.The module builds on new scholarship on the late medieval period and, to an extent, the early modern period and extra-European history to engage critically with developments that have more traditionally been referenced as the Renaissance, Humanism, the Waning of the Middle Ages, and approached as transition, crisis, transformation or, more specifically, through notions including the 'disanchantment', the birth of the 'nation-state' and 'European expansion'.

40 credits

Mao and the Making of Twentieth-Century China

In 2015, citizens in Henan Province erected a 120-foot gold statue of Mao Zedong, which was swiftly torn down on government orders. Why does Mao still provoke such strong feelings? To some he is a monster: history's greatest mass murderer. But recently historians have painted a richer picture of Mao's China, trying to understand its social character, political culture, and role in Cold War rivalries. Focusing on the origins, character, and legacy of Maoist rule, and devoting most of our attention to the period between the declaration of the People's Republic in 1949 and Mao's death in 1976, we will use translated primary sources, a rich visual culture, and a burgeoning scholarly literature to explore Maoist thought and its critics; major upheavals like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution; and everyday life under 'Communism with Chinese characteristics'.

40 credits

Merchants, Pirates and Planters: The English Overseas, 1570-1624

The period c.1570-1624 saw a reorientation of England's global position, as increasing numbers of English people began to venture into unfamiliar regions. This course charts the nature and significance of their travels. We will encounter merchants in Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the far east, settlers and conquerors in Ireland and America, explorers in the frozen seas of the far north, and pirates in Spanish America. The latter part of the course focuses on the foundation of England's first 'successful' American colony, Jamestown. Throughout, we consider the motives driving these ventures, and the complex nature of the encounters that ensued.

40 credits

Nomadland: The Peoples of the Steppe, 600-1000

Nomads are the dark matter of history. Choosing neither to produce written sources, nor found cities which are the usual target of archaeology, they defy the typical means of investigation of the historian. Yet their political impact – from the Huns of Attila to the Mongols of Ghengis Khan – was vast. Fear of the nomad other, framed in terms of barbarism, is one of the defining literary themes of the settled civilisations who were their neighbours. This fear had a huge impact on settled society: the Great Wall of China was built to keep nomads out.This course asks how we can look beyond the fearsome, caricatured image produced by sedentary authors to reconstruct the politics, mentalities, and lifestyles of these crucial agents of pre-modern history. To do so, we will focus on the varied experiences of the nomadic peoples who emerged in the aftermath of the disintegrations of the great Turkic Khaganate in the seventh century. The Khaganate stretched over the vast, flat, grasslands of the Steppe, from China to Hungary and its successors settled regions across modern day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans. These new peoples and their cultural and political choices fundamentally transformed the region, and had a profound impact on the great empires around them, namely Byzantines, Sassanian Iranians, and the Islamic caliphate.Throughout, we will use material culture and sources written originally in Greek, Arabic, Armenian and Slavonic (all available in modern English translation), to ask: how do we write a history of a people who chose not to write? 

40 credits

Permissive Britain? Social and Cultural Change 1956-74

This module explores British society and culture as the nation moved from an era of austerity to one of unprecedented affluence. Key topics include the impact of affluence on class and gender relationships, the emergence of a national youth culture, changes and continuities in sexual behaviour, and debates about immigration and race. The unit encourages students to assess the significance of reforming legislation that relaxed the censorship regime, decriminalised homosexuality, enabled easier access to abortion, liberalised the divorce system and abolished capital punishment, examining the arguments of those who resisted, as well as those who championed the 'permissive society'.

40 credits

Popes, Caliphs, Emperors, ca. 1130-1215

The Crusades are known as religious wars, in search of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem. Yet they were only part of the complex interactions between peoples of different politics, religions, and cultures in the medieval Mediterranean basin. Using sources including histories, letters, buildings, art and mosaics, this module will examine how religion intertwined with medieval politics, culture and society. From Iberia to Jerusalem, and from Italy to Africa, we will investigate religion's role in expressing political power and in the everyday life of the people who lived there. How was religious authority received, understood, and contested by contemporaries?

40 credits

Reconstructing America, 1863-1877

Reconstruction -- the years in which the defeated South was occupied by Union troops -- has generated intense historical debate on topics ranging from slavery, economic production and race relations to the conquest of the West, social conflict and the reformation of cities and their people. This module will critically explore old and new approaches to the period while examining an array of primary sources. Through analysing satirical cartoons, congressional investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, and the testimonies of people formerly enslaved, we will consider why America's experiment with biracial democracy and activist government gave way so quickly to segregation and political retrenchment.

40 credits

Red Continent: Socialism in Twentieth Century Africa

When we think about the history of 'socialism', we might first consider Marx and Mao, Lenin and the Soviet Union, even Castro and Cuba. Africa rarely features in these conversations. Yet no fewer than 35 African countries claimed to be 'socialist' at some point in the late twentieth century. There was little consensus as to what 'socialism' meant in Africa, however. To some, it was a homegrown ideology, with its origins in 'traditional' village life. To others, it was a set of imported theories that could propel anticolonial liberation struggles. Critics alleged that Africa's socialists were simply pawns of Cold War superpowers. Socialism's proponents responded that they were building a new future after empire - a vision which had evaporated by the end of the century, but increasingly of interest to historians today.

Rather than seek an encyclopaedic understanding of socialism in every African country, this special subject module combines in-depth studies of key cases with the study of broader, transnational themes. We will examine the political thought of major thinkers, including pan-Africanists among the diaspora, anticolonial leaders, and public intellectuals. We will assess the 'African socialist' project in Tanzania and the military dictatorship in Ethiopia which preached Marxist revolution. Yet no leader or government controlled the meaning of socialism, as their visions were challenged by students, workers, and women's activists. Locating African socialism in a global context, we will follow the transnational journeys of these figures as they forged relationships with Cold War actors and contributed to the radical project of the Third World. 

The thematic classes will trace connections and divergences between these socialist experiences in Africa. We will investigate the role that the media played in communicating socialism. We will understand how artists, directors, and novelists all engaged with the ideas of socialism. The module will take us into the villages, to see how rural communities responded to state-making projects which were imposed from national capitals. Then we will explore the concrete design of Africa's 'socialist cities' and the livelihoods of the men and women who lived among them. Finally, we will gain an understanding of life in post-socialist Africa and ask 'what's left of the African left?' 

In this module, students will work with a wide range of primary source material. This includes excerpts from the work of major African intellectuals, like Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Senghor, and Julius Nyerere. Students will examine how these ideas were put into practice (or not) through material drawn from government archives and diplomatic cables. Moving beyond the vision of the state, we will also analyse student magazines, film, poetry, fiction, street photography and architecture. All source material and secondary reading will be provided in English, either as original or in translation.

40 credits

Resistance & Liberation in South Africa: Gandhi to Mandela

This module analyses resistance to segregation, apartheid, and white supremacy in South Africa. Drawing upon memoirs, oral histories, novels, films, speeches, news reporting, online databases, and document collections, we begin with the non-violent campaigns led by Mohandas Gandhi in the 1900s against the segregation of Indians in South Africa, and end with Nelson Mandela's election as president in the country's first non-racial democratic elections in 1994. We will explore the inspirations, nature, and effects of a wide range of forms of political, social, and cultural resistance by opponents of white supremacy - from ordinary people to elite politicians - both inside South Africa and around the world.

40 credits

Revolution, Dictatorship and Democracy in Latin America, 1944-90

This special subject uses the three themes of revolution, dictatorship and democracy to examine the history of Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning with Guatemalan Revolution (1944-54), this module explores key events over the next four decades, including the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the rise of anticommunist dictatorships across the region in the 1960s and 1970s, the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, and the 'Third Wave' of democratisation that swept the region in the 1980s. Throughout, we will identify and analyse regional trends in Latin American history while remaining attentive to national dynamics. In particular, this module will focus on two subregions of Latin America: the Southern Cone (especially Chile, Argentina and Brazil) and Central America (especially Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador). Primary sources will include government documents, speeches, visual sources and other cultural outputs, including song, poems, and testimonials. This mix of different sources will allow students to consider the ways in which gender, race, and class all shaped how different Latin Americans experienced the second half of the twentieth century.

40 credits

Slavery in the American South, 1789-1861

By 1861, some four million African Americans were enslaved in the American south. This module explores the lives of these enslaved people. We examine the roles, relationships, and experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, through themes such as social and cultural life, work, the family, community and conflict, truancy, escape, and violence. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources - from the perspectives of enslaved and formerly enslaved people, as well as their enslavers - we focus in particular upon the varied ways in which African Americans resisted both their enslavers and their enslavement.

40 credits

Stalinism and De-Stalinisation, 1929-1962

This module explores Soviet history from 1929 - when Stalin's fiftieth birthday was celebrated across the Soviet Union and he was heralded as Lenin's great successor - to the early 1960s when his body was removed from the Red Square Mausoleum under cover of darkness, and his legacy reassessed. It examines the rise, reign and - posthumous - fall of the Soviet leader and the nature of the new world he sought to create. The module will explore not only the ideological and political dilemmas of the ruling elite, but also the diverse experience of ordinary citizens who faced both new opportunities and new ordeals during a period of radical transformation.

40 credits

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the various debates on the origins and execution of the 'final solution' in Nazi occupied Europe during the Second World War.

40 credits

The Irish Revolution, 1912-1923

This module explores Ireland's revolutionary decade, from the Ulster Crisis of 1912 to the end of the Civil War in 1923. That period saw the demise of the Home Rule ideal, the rise of republicanism and the partition of the island amidst bloody sectarian and political violence. Among the issues examined are the emergency of paramilitary armies, the impact of the Great War and Easter Rising, the nature and dynamics of revolutionary violence, and the entrenchment of divisions - intra-communal as well as inter-communal. The controversial historiography of the Irish revolution, its place in public history and its cultural representations form an important aspect of the module. Above all, the sense of what it was like to live through a revolution, as a rebel, a policeman, a soldier or a civilian, is a key unifying theme of this module.

40 credits

The National Security State, Treason, and Individual Rights during the Twentieth Century

National security scares over 'whistleblowers' such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Kathrine Gun have catapulted the image of the 'traitor' back into public discourse. At the same time, controversies over Wikileaks' political agenda and Russian interference with the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential elections were as much discussed in terms of British and US national security as a threat to the security of 'the West' as a whole. These conflicts stand at the end of a century that has seen the rise of the modern surveillance state and transnational security frameworks organized through institutions such as Interpol, NATO, and the Warsaw Pact states (until 1989/91).  Over the course of the 20th century, more and more people saw themselves suspected of betrayal of the community. The First World War transformed older clearly defined criminal offences of 'high treason' against the sovereign and their immediate family members to wider accusations of treason against the nation, state, and people. The rise of communism and fascism triggered the building of new domestic public security apparatuses in the interwar period. War crimes and genocide of the Second World War further complicated debates on the morality of collaboration with the enemy. In response, security agencies professionalized their work and the early Cold War saw calls for transnational bloc-wide security regimes to combat subversion by the Cold War enemy. Since then, state surveillance has come to be seen more and more as a constant everyday threat to privacy and individual rights after the digital revolution of the 1970s.  In this special subject, we explore through rich source material the political, emotional, social, and cultural dynamics that were at play when individuals or groups from across Europe, the US and Soviet Union were accused of betraying society. We will consider how people's ethnic, gender, and class background impacted their fate of becoming 'traitors'. Taken together, their cases will provide answers to the central question of how demands for the professionalization of the national security state have impacted ordinary people's lives and rights under different forms of government and how they shape our contemporary understandings of democracy and authoritarianism.

40 credits

The Rise and Fall of the British Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1640-1807

The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history. Europeans transported 12 million captive Africans across the Atlantic Ocean between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. This contributed to the development of a transatlantic economic system that linked three continents - Europe, Africa, and the Americas - and which funnelled wealth created through the exploitation of enslaved Africans into the hands of Europeans.  Britain was the pre-eminent slave trading nation of the eighteenth century. From 1640 to 1807, British vessels trafficked 3.2 million captive Africans across the Atlantic to work in the plantation economies of North America and the Caribbean. This module traces the rise and fall of Britain's participation in the transatlantic slave trade, studying developments in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Britain, and exploring the linkages between the three. It begins in the seventeenth century with the corporate activities of the London-based Royal African Company, moves into the eighteenth century when non-corporate merchants based in the outports of Liverpool and Bristol dominated the trade, and ends with Abolitionist efforts to abolish British involvement in the trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  The module is fully Atlantic in scope. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources we will analyse the process of cross-cultural exchange on the West African coast, the horrors of the Middle Passage, the exploitation of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean plantation system, and the direct and indirect impacts of the transatlantic slave trade on early modern Britain. We will make regular use of case studies to explore the history of the transatlantic slave trade 'from below', foregrounding the lived experience of enslavement for captive Africans and the vital role of African Abolitionists in precipitating the process of abolition.

40 credits

The United States and the Cold War, 1945-1975

The Cold War shaped American foreign policy as well as domestic politics and culture for much of the second half of the 20th century. But how all-encompassing was the Cold War? How did non-state actors react to and influence the course of its development? And how 'cold' was the Cold War? This module will examine the Cold War with fresh perspective. We will revisit the traditional historiography, which focuses on high policy actors and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. But we will also gain new insight from an emerging literature that challenges such a deterministic and elite framing of what was a global conflict that involved multiple actors at all levels of society, many of whom brought with them complex motivations that existed prior to, or outside of, the rigid Cold War binary. In addition to these secondary sources, we will explore a wide range of primary source material, from declassified State Department documents to Third World assertions of sovereignty to popular films and novels.

40 credits

The Wars for Vietnam: Empire, Decolonisation and Liberation

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Vietnam was wrenched by wars: a world war, a war of decolonisation, a civil war, the Cold War, and a war against its erstwhile communist allies. By studying these conflicts, we not only learn about modern Vietnam, but also the French empire, U.S. foreign policy, and communist internationalism in the mid-20th Century. As case studies, these wars shed light on larger global processes of imperial conquest, decolonisation and neo-colonial control, communist revolution and the limits of internationalism. As an archetype of national liberation, events in Vietnam also profoundly shaped anti-colonial struggles around the world and social movements in the United States and Europe, from Black Power to the women's liberation movement. This module explores the wars for Vietnam through the themes of empire, decolonisation, and liberation, paying close attention to Vietnamese perspectives, exploring the role of France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, and uncovering the global reverberations of these conflicts. We will investigate the historiography which set the broad parameters of debate, as well as newer scholarship which has challenged these orthodox interpretations, and we will examine a wide range of primary sources, from government documents, memoirs, and oral histories, to images, fiction, and film.

40 credits

The Weimar Republic - Laboratory of Modernity

The history of Weimar Germany has often focused on elements of crisis and the rise of the Nazis. But the Weimar Republic was more than just a state of permanent crisis. It was also a laboratory of modernity, a site of permanent experimentation in politics, the arts and mass media, in gender relations and in attempts to build new communities. The module will use and engage the rich primary source record of the era. More than many other eras of history, Weimar Germany prompts us to consider the potential disadvantage of hindsight for the historian: that s/he already knows the outcome.

40 credits

The West & the East in each other's eyes 1850-2000

The idea that the 'East' and the 'West' are fundamentally different in their thinking and values and are locked in a mutually antipathetic 'clash of civilizations' is an age-old one. It has been argued by European and Asian politicians and writers alike, by imperialists and anti-imperialists, 'orientalists' and their critics, and has been manifested in a range of approaches and ideologies, including 'Orientalism', 'Occidentalism', pan-Asianism, pan-Islam, and Samuel Huntington's notorious 'clash of civilizations' thesis. It has fed into both colonialist and anti-colonialist thought. This course is intended as a case study in the history of ideas. We will investigate how ideas of a division between 'West' and 'East' have been expressed and developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries and how they have been deployed by politicians in a range of different countries and contexts. We will also examine some of the more subtle, alternative formulations of East/West cultural difference, assimilation and appropriation that have been articulated in the same period. The course will encourage you to rethink how cultures relate to each other, and about what is distinctively 'Western' or 'Eastern' about political and economic organization, human rights, democracy and secularism. Can we really talk about 'East' and 'West' as meaningful categories, and if not, when and how did people start using these terms and why, and what does that tell us about how we should understand the world and write about it? In semester 1, after an initial introduction of the themes and questions of the course, the next 4 weeks ('the West looks at the East') will analyse Western accounts of the East. The second half of the first semester ('the East looks at the West') then undertakes a chronological and thematic analysis of the different ways in which Asian governments and writers have understood, analysed and critiqued the West and its values. The second semester ('the East looks at the East') concentrates on how Asian governments and thinkers have understood the East, and their views of how far it can be said to enshrine coherent non-Western values. As well as studying transnational movements (pan-Asianism, pan-Islam and the Non-aligned Movement), we will also study selected Asian writing on democracy, human rights, nationalism, and secularism up to the present day.
During the course we will be using a wide range of documents in translation - from constitutional debates, political tracts, government declarations, policy documents and educational literature, to travel accounts, speeches, letters, poetry and images.
The course is intended to help you to rethink how you understand Western and non-Western cultures and to provide you with a more informed sense of the roots and nature of current global geo-political and cultural tensions.

40 credits

The World of Intoxicants in Early Modern England

Intoxicants were a key feature of early modern societies. This is as true for 'old' world alcohols like wine, beer, ale, and other fermented drinks as it is for 'new' intoxicants like opiates, tobacco, sugar, caffeines, chocolate, and distilled liquors that began to enter European diets after 1600 from the Levant, the Americas, and Asia. Focusing on intoxicants in England, this module considers a) the ongoing importance and, indeed, increasing significance of alcohols to culture, society, and economy over the course of the seventeenth century and b) the introduction and popularisation of new intoxicants over the same period.

40 credits

Tools of Empire? Medicine, Science and Colonialism, 1800-1950

Western science and biomedicine have, for long, been seen as symbols and agents of progress. Research in the last two decades has, however, revealed their close ties with the history of colonial conquest and rule - so much so that scientific discoveries such as guns, steamboats, and quinine have been seen as 'tools of empire'. This module will, however, go beyond this fact and discuss much larger questions of equal relevance. It will, for instance, deal with the question of the 'consumption' of science in the colonies, the role of the colonies in constituting western science, the role of medicine in furthering colonial hegemony, the 'reinvention' of traditional sciences such as Unani and Ayurveda under colonial influence, the relationship between scientific centres and peripheries, and post-colonial developments with respect to medical and scientific administration. In exploring these themes, the module will not limit itself to any particular region, but will draw upon readings from South Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

40 credits

Visions and Violence: race, empire and identity in mid-nineteenth-century Britain

British expansion did not result from a single, coherent imperial strategy, or a fit of 'absence of mind'; it developed from specific cross-cultural encounters and competing colonial visions. Some saw the Empire as a place of adventure, others an opportunity for Christianisation, still others as a 'New World' in which to build a Greater Britain. These visions were always contested and challenged both overseas and in Britain. This module explores these contested visions and the impact of empire at home. It is structured around different 'visions of empire' including those of humanitarians; missionaries; settlers; travellers; scientists and the British public.

40 credits

Sociology option module examples:

Extended Essay in Sociology

The extended essay module gives students the opportunity to undertake an independent in-depth, library-based study, on a topic of their own choosing, with support from a supervisor, plenary teaching and resources on MOLE. This will enable students to draw upon and develop both their knowledge and their thinking, to demonstrate their understanding of and ability to integrate the conceptual and substantive foundations laid in the earlier part of the programme, and to undertake a critical analysis of a topic relevant to sociology.

20 credits

Whiteness, Power and Privilege

This module explores the importance of studying whiteness in order to understand racism as a system of power relationships. You will learn about why the construction of whiteness has become a key focus in debates about race and ethnicity, and critically examine some of the key themes to emerge in this field of study.

Some topics you will explore include the historical origins of 'white studies' and the representations of whiteness in literary and visual culture. You will also examine the racialised, classed and gendered boundaries of whiteness and explore the relevance of space and place to understanding the operation of racialised power and privilege.

You will gain awareness of racism as a global issue of inequality and injustice and enhance your understanding of barriers to inclusivity. You will apply the knowledge gained from the module to a topic of your choice.

20 credits

Sociology of Evil

Despite the increasing secularisation and rationalisation of society, evil is still an all too familiar term. For some it invokes images of devils, demons and witches, for others criminals, terrorists and murderers. Moreover, the debates on the 'social evils' of poverty, prostitution and alcohol are continually recycled for each generation.

This module will introduce you to a sociological approach to evil. You will develop your own innovative case-studies of evil in combination with published research. Throughout, you will be asked to explore the ontology of evil, examine how evil is explained and accounted for, investigate the consequences of evil, develop an understanding concerning the representation of evil and assess the aetiological precedents for that representation, and, ultimately, critically determine the role evil has within society.

20 credits

Organised Crime and Illicit Markets

This module will introduce you to the growing field of organised crime studies. This rich area of research encompasses many disciplines from criminology and sociology to history, economics and politics. At the heart of organised crime studies are attempts to understand how, why and when illicit marketplaces are created and sustained and the roles of various actors within these markets.

You will have the opportunity to explore how governments and law enforcement agencies have tried to respond to organise crime by investigating a range of case studies specific to illicit marketplaces. You will also analyse the role of the media and the influence of popular culture on the way organised crime is defined and understood.

By exploring the primary literature, which covers the historical and contemporary developments in organised crime, you will be equipped to engage with sociological debates surrounding the development of this type of criminality, particularly its (alleged) increasingly transnational nature over the past two decades.

20 credits

Digital Identities

This module explores how identities are being reimagined in a digital age. It provides students with an in-depth understanding of internet and social media technologies' roles in people's identity negotiations, the relationship between digital media and social life, and offers theoretical grounding for students to critically assess their own digital identities. It reviews debates about identity formations from the earliest digital media moments while also considering contemporary concerns like: identity concealment on social media platforms; a phenomenon called 'content moderation' (to ask which digital identities are not allowed); and the extent to which digital media users can (and want to) enact 'authentic' identities. But the module also asks why people might disconnect from digital technologies altogether, as these choices - especially in areas with high levels of internet and smartphone uptake - form a key part of who a person is and how they live their lives.

20 credits

Protest, Movements and Social Change

During this module, you will gain deeper insight into how we study protests and movements and their impact on social change. 

The content will take a historical overview, tracing the development of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of social movements, matched with historical and contemporary case studies of movement from around the world. 

By focusing on what functions movements play in society, as well as how they have been studied, you will become equipped with the tools to both analyse movements, and engage with sociological debates surrounding larger questions of inequality, identity, democracy and social justice.

20 credits

Children, Families and Welfare States

This module examines welfare state support and services for children, parents and families, informed by sociological and social policy theories, concepts and research. Adopting a comparative approach, the module critically reviews different approaches to, and configurations of, welfare state support and services for children, parents and families across the UK and Western/Northern European welfare states. Four policy and provision domains are examined, namely cash support for children and families; childcare and early years' services; parental leave and work-family balance policies; and child welfare and family support services.

20 credits

Digital Marketing and Consumer Culture

You will examine key sociological perspectives on digital marketing and their broader impacts on consumer culture. The content of this module will situate the emergence of data-driven marketing within a broader social history of marketing practices and discourses.

Example topics covered include, but are not limited to, social media, eCommerce, and on-demand platforms, geo and location based marketing, influencer marketing, and video games. 

You will gain the skills and knowledge needed to critically understand the social implications and power dynamics of digital marketing and their impacts on everyday life.

20 credits

Race, technology and digital media

The relationship between technology, digital media and ideas of 'race' is far from straightforward. Unpicking it requires us to interrogate how and why technologies are designed. It also compels us to ask how, and with what effect, race and racial difference are depicted in contemporary representational media. In this broad ranging module, we place an emphasis on literature from sociology, critical media and Science and Technology Studies and situate highly contemporary examples in a longer history of the race/technology interface. Students will be equipped with the critical tools to consider how, why and with what consequence race becomes enfolded into the technologies and media that comprise our everyday lives.

20 credits

What it means to be human

New technologies and new scientific knowledge make powerful claims about `human nature’ that are reconstructing how we understand ourselves. At the same time, they also give us new potential to reshape our bodies and brains. This module aims to critically engage with these developments using concepts from a number of sociological traditions. Can biology tell us anything meaningful about social interaction or racial and gendered differences, or about ability and disability? What are the criteria by which we determine ‘the human’ and who decides what these shall be? Does our psychology have an evolutionary basis? How are the boundaries between humans and machines changing? What is the human impact on the environment? Should we use new technologies to enhance ourselves? The module will provide students with the opportunities and tools to grapple with these and other important questions.

20 credits

Intimacy and Personal Relationships

The module explores approaches to theorising and studying intimacy and personal relationships. Beginning with the Individualisation thesis and its critics, the module will go on to explore recent moves towards conceptualising personal relationships in terms of embeddedness, relationality, intimacy and linked lives. Students will also explore a range of substantive topics within the field including memory, genealogy, material culture and home, marriage and sexuality, responsibility and care, and friendship.

20 credits

Digital Health

You will explore the social implications of digital technologies in health, considering what these mean for our experiences of health and illness as patients and as citizens, for the work of health care professionals, and for the provision of health care.

During this module, you will investigate a range of contemporary developments, such as self-tracking and gamifying health, telemedicine and care at a distance, health information on the net, electronic patient records, illness, death and dying on the web, and health activism and online patient groups.

Across the topics of investigation, you will consider questions about the changing representations and cultures of health and illness, whether we can all be medical experts now, who has responsibility for health, how we relate to health care professionals, the commodification of health data and the relative benefits for state and industry. 

20 credits

Perspectives on inequalities

You will be asked to think about the everyday experiences of inequality while exploring some of the core theoretical frameworks for interrogating inequality. These everyday experiences will be brought to life through presentations with/by external guest speakers who have lived experience of these inequalities and/or have worked to challenge these inequalities. There is a focus on discussion and debate to understand and critically reflect on the module content.

This module is co-taught with local agencies, community and family members. The involvement of practitioners, community members and families means that the content is interactive and requires full attendance.

This module aims to bring academic knowledge closer to everyday life and to help you gain applied knowledge of inequalities. It also offers an important insight into the nature of and benefits of co-construction in addressing issues relating to inequalities.

20 credits

Queer Identities in the Media

You will be introduced to queer theory in order to discuss the role of different media in how gender and sexuality are constructed, represented and expressed.

The content will trace activist and academic origins of the word 'queer' and explore queer (self-)representations in mainstream and alternative media, such as newspapers, films, zines, blogs, social media and dating apps. You will also investigate how different representations promote or challenge the binaries of male versus female, masculine versus feminine, and heterosexual versus homosexual, as well as how they promote gender and sexuality transnationally.

This module will enable you to think critically across a range of social sciences disciplines. It will introduce you to different methodologies and provide a grounding in interdisciplinary social science research.

20 credits

Sex Work: Rights, Regulation and Resistance

Sex workers across the globe often experience stigmatisation, marginalisation and criminalisation. Drawing on a large and growing body of international scholarship, you will be introduced to the complexities and diverse realities of sex work.

You will engage in content that explores the various sex markets, gendered differences in the buying and selling of sex, violence, exploitation and trafficking, sex worker-led activism and resistance, and the regulatory modules used across the globe to govern sex industries.

By the end of the module, you will be equipped with a critical understanding of a range of theories and concepts that help to make sense of the social, cultural, and legal dimensions of sex work.

20 credits

Global Data Industries

Platforms and digital technology corporations now double up as the data industries, especially with their focus on data accumulation, storage, management and governance. Similarly, the emergence of data annotation and labelling firms in countries in the Global South, the rise of data centres across countries, and the emergence of governance frameworks that enable or regulate these industries make them important entities to be studied.

Through this module, you will acquire an understanding of datafication, its infrastructural and commercial dimensions, all of which undergird the development of the data industries. 

You will learn how to critically analyse the experiences of human labour and work, as well as sustainability in the context of the data industries in diverse contexts. You will also gain more experience in comprehending policy, governance and regulatory developments in relation to these industries.

20 credits

Reimagining Care: Families, Services and Policies

An increasing number of people made vulnerable by experiences of disability, old age, or family circumstances, rely on care and support provided by social care services or family and friends. Despite this, we are surrounded by narratives of social care systems in crisis, including bankruptcy of local authority providers, chronic care worker staffing shortages, poor outcomes for service users and for carers, and so on. We are also witnessing changes in the nature of care, with increasing opportunities provided by new technologies. In this module, we ask why care is facing so many challenges and consider evidence-based solutions.

Drawing on the ongoing research of the ESRC Centre for Care (hosted by the University of Sheffield), you will consider a series of issues and contexts explored in our own research, practice and personal experiences. Content will cover a breadth of childrens' and adults' care, including the varied care needs of people with physical disabilities or learning difficulties, vulnerable children, and older people supported at home or in residential care. You will also investigate the roles and experiences of those who provide care and support in the form of family carers and the paid care workforce. 

Through these topics, you will be expected to engage in wider sociological and policy debates, including the meaning of 'care', funding and affordability, the mixed economy and inequality of care provision in order to imagine policy alternatives. 

20 credits

Algorithms, AI and Society

Algorithmic systems, AI, machine learning and other data-driven technologies are transforming society. They are having wide-ranging effects which are far from straightforward. Their use results in harms as well as benefits, and algorithmic systems and AI feed into and are fed into by inequalities.

You will critically interrogate claims that AI, automation and algorithms will simply lead to a better society. You will be asked to explore the negative effects of related change and the ways in which algorithmic and AI systems are not experienced equally by all. Throughout, you will review theoretical literature on AI-in-society and on algorithmic culture, focussing on high profile accounts of their social consequences in areas such as education, welfare, social care, big tech and the media.

By the end of this module, you will have gained a systematic knowledge of contemporary and advanced level debates relating to algorithms and AI.

20 credits