English and History BA

You have the option of writing an individual research project in your final year. This can be on a topic of language, literature or performance.

You will work on a one-to-one basis with a supervisor, producing a detailed and sustained piece of writing.

There is also the option of completing a project-based dissertation. This is useful if you are interested in applied or practical aspects of English.

Recent dissertation titles include:

• 'From Diamonds to Dust: An Ecocritical Comparison Between Modernist Literature and Contemporary Environmental Fiction'
• 'The Representation of Racial Injustices in Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric'
• 'Seamus Heaney and Samuel Beckett in Relation to British Imperialism'
• 'Ethical Criticism and Zadie Smith'

This module is worth 20 credits.

The years from 1660 to 1830 are enormously important, especially in terms of the representation of the self in literature: Milton promoted the idea of the poet inspired by God; Pope and Swift mocked the possibility of anyone truly knowing their self; Wordsworth used poetry to explore his own life; and Byron and Austen provided ironic commentaries on the self-obsessions of their peers. This period also saw the rise of the novel (a form that relies upon telling the story of lives), a flourishing trade in biography, and the emergence of new genre, autobiography. This module will look at some of the most significant works of the period with particular reference to the relationship between writers and their worlds. Topics might include: the emergence, importance and limitations of life-writing; self- fashioning; the construction – and deconstruction - of the ‘Romantic’ author’; transmission and revision; translation and imitation; ideas of the self and gender; intertextuality, adaptation, and rewriting; creating and destroying the past; and writing revolution. Texts studied will range across poems, novels and prose.

Explore the novel from the late twentieth century onwards, in Britain and beyond.

We will concentrate on the formal operations and innovations of selected novelists, considering how the contemporary socio-historical context influences these questions of form. Topics considered include:

• an interrogation of the ‘post-consensus novel’
• an exploration of postcolonial texts which represent the transatlantic slave trade
• the cultural politics of late twentieth-century and twenty-first century Scottish literature

Contemporary fiction is focused on writing emerging from Britain and closely-related contexts in the post-war period. This module offers strands structured around a number of political, social and cultural frameworks in Britain. These include:

• formal analysis and literary innovations in Britain
• temporalities and the representation of time
• issues of gender, race and class
• histories of colonialism and slavery
• national traditions and politics of state
• the country and the city
• postmodernism

This module particularly explores the network of relationships between context, content and form, supported by related literary and cultural theory and philosophy.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module introduces key modern and contemporary poets.

You will build a detailed understanding of how various poetic forms manifest themselves in particular historical moments. Unifying the module is an attention to poets’ responses to the political and ideological upheavals of the 20th century.

The module will include such (primarily) British and Irish poets as:

• W.B. Yeats
• T.S. Eliot
• W. H. Auden
• Dylan Thomas
• Ted Hughes
• Sylvia Plath
• Wislawa Szymborska
• Tony Harrison
• Seamus Heaney
• Derek Mahon
• Adrienne Rich
• Geoffrey Hill
• Jo Shapcott
• Patience Agbabi
• Alice Oswald

Some of the forms examined will include: the elegy, the pastoral (and anti-pastoral), the ode, the sonnet (and sonnet sequence), the ekphrastic poem, the version or retelling, the villanelle, the parable and the sestina.

To develop a more complete perspective on each poet’s engagement with 20-century formal and political problems, we also examine these figures’ writings in other modes. This includes critical essays, manifestos, speeches, and primary archival materials such as letters and manuscript drafts.

Grounding each week will be readings on poetry and the category of the ‘political’ from an international group of critics, including such thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Charles Bernstein, Claudia Rankine, Peter McDonald, Angela Leighton, Christopher Ricks and Marjorie Perloff.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This stranded module provides students with a detailed introduction to the major works of a single author (e.g. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence). Students will select one author to study from a range on offer. They will then have the opportunity to consider in detail important thematic and stylistic aspects of their chosen author’s work, taking account of the chronological development of his/her writing practice (if relevant), and his/her relationship to key historical and literary contexts.

This module focuses on the connections between literary texts, politics, and relevant historical/cultural contexts in gothic texts. You may cover:

• poetry
• novels
• graphic novels
• films

Examples include The Haunting of Hill House (both Shirley Jackson’s novel and the Netflix adaptation), The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, and Saga of the Swamp Thing by Moore, Bissette and Totleben, and The Visions of the Daughters of Albion by William Blake.

You will explore various critical and theoretical approaches to literature, film, comics, adaptation, and popular culture. The module also seeks to decolonise Gothic Studies, including work by creators from a wide range of backgrounds who identify with a diverse range of subject positions.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Literature and Drama across the early modern period contributed to, and was often caught up in, dramatic changes in social, political, and religious culture which changed the way that people experienced their lives and the world around them. This module gives students the opportunity to read a wide range of texts in a multitude of genres (from drama, to prose fiction, pamphlets and poetry) in their immediate contexts, both cultural and intellectual. This module will situate the poetry, prose and drama between 1580 and 1700 against the backdrops of civil war and political revolution, scientific experimentation, and colonial expansion; in doing so, it will ask how the seventeenth century forms our current understandings of the world. Students will be encouraged to read widely, to develop a specific and sophisticated understanding of historical period, and to see connections and changes in literary and dramatic culture in a period which stretches from the Spanish Armada of 1588 to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.

This module examines the late twentieth and early twenty-first century globe through its correlates in fiction. The primary materials for the module will be post-war Anglophone works drawn from a wide geographical range across the world. After introducing the history of the idea of world literature, these works will be situated within a series of theoretical ‘worlds’: world literary systems; post-colonial criticism; cosmopolitanism; world ecologies; resource culture; literary translation theory. The module will also attend to critiques of 'world literature’ as a concept.

Examine 20th century Irish literature and drama.

Taking the Irish Literary Revival as a starting-point, you will consider authors in their Irish and European context. Such authors include:

• W.B. Yeats
• J.M. Synge
• Lady Gregory
• James Joyce
• Seán O'Casey
• Seamus Heaney
• Brian Friel
• Marina Carr

We focus on reading texts in relation to their social, historical, and political contexts.

This includes tracking significant literary and cultural responses to Irish experiences of colonial occupation, nationalist uprising and civil war, partition and independence, socio-economic modernisation, and the protracted period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Through the exploration of lyric poetry, this module examines cultural and literary change from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It will consider the rise of ‘named poet’, the interaction of print and manuscript culture, the representation of love, and the use of the female voice. It will develop further students’ confidence in handling formal poetic terminology and reading poetry from this period. It will also enable students to think pragmatically about the transmission of lyric in modern editions, and about how best to represent the form.

The module is designed to provide students with an understanding of the process of English Language Teaching (ELT) and of the theoretical underpinnings of this practice. In this module students will learn the principles behind the learning and teaching of key aspects and skills of English, including:

• vocabulary
• grammar
• reading
• writing
• speaking
• listening
• intercultural communicative skills

Students will also learn how to apply these theoretical principles to the development of teaching materials. This module will therefore be of interest to students who want to pursue a teaching career, and in particular to those interested in teaching English as a second or foreign language.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Speaking, listening, reading, and writing are a complex set of behaviours that are a fundamental part of our daily lives. And yet they remain difficult to fully explain.

When you hear ‘FIRE’, you immediately look for an exit and start moving. Yet all that a speaker has done is produce a string of sounds. Your mind distinguishes these from the murmuring of other voices, feet clomping on the floor, and any background music. Your mind matches the sounds f-i-r-e with a word, retrieves the meaning, and relates them to the current circumstances and responds accordingly.

How does the mind do this? And what makes our minds so special that we can do this? On this module, we begin to address these questions.

You will consider:

• Is there a language gene?
• What makes human language different from animal communication?
• What is the relationship between thought and language?
• Does everyone talk to themselves? What purpose does our inner voice serve?
• How do we learn language? And does cognition underpin our ability to learn language?
• What do language deficits tell us about language and the brain?
• How do we understand and produce speech, words, and sentences?
• What is the best way to teach children to read?
• How is sign language similar to/different from spoken language?

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module offers an advanced study of the language of literary texts and how it impacts reading and interpretation. It bridges the gap between the literary and linguistics aspects of our BA degrees. It also equips you with skills that will be useful in the teaching of English, or for a career in publishing.

You will study:

• literary style and technique
• the style of poetry and narrative
• the representation of characters' voices and consciousness
• the style of difficult texts, such as surrealism
• the history of literary style

You will learn to explain how style contributes to meaning and interpretation, and why texts affect you in different ways.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module provides comprehensive knowledge of feminist theory, as applied to a series of language and linguistic contexts.

You will explore a range of analytical approaches to language, including conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics. You will also respond to, and critically engage with, contemporary real-world problems associated with gender and sexuality, through the consideration of discourse-based texts.

Topics covered include:

• gender and sexual identity construction in a range of interactive contexts
• sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and heteronormative representations in texts
• feminist theory from the 1970s to the present, with particular focus on contemporary approaches to gender theory

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module explores the vital role that discourse plays in various communicative domains in healthcare and workplace settings. Students will explore these domains through a variety of contemporary frameworks for examining discourse and communication, including critical discourse analysis, multi-modal discourse analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics.The module offers the opportunity to analyse and reflect on the discourses of healthcare and the workplace, as two crucially important domains of social and professional life. To this end, professional and healthcare discourses will be investigated through a range of genres and communicative modes, including face-to face communication advertising, media discourse and digital interactions. The module offers a rich resource for discourse-based studies of language in professional and social life and enables students to examine the strategic uses of communicative strategies in specific social settings.

The module uses the study of place-names to show the various languages – British, Latin, French, Norse and English – that have been spoken in England over the last 2000 years.

You will learn how place-name evidence can be used as a source for the history of English, including:

• its interaction with the other languages
• its regional and dialectal patterns
• its changing vocabulary

We also consider the interdisciplinary contribution that place-names offer to historians and geographers.

For this module's assessment, you can choose a geographical area of particular interest.

This module is worth 20 credits.

The genre of dream-vision inspired work by all the major poets of the Middle Ages, including William Langland, the Pearl-Poet, and Geoffrey Chaucer. The course will aim to give you a detailed knowledge of a number of canonical texts in this genre, as well as ranging widely into the alliterative revival, and chronologically into the work of John Skelton in the early sixteenth century. The course will depend upon close, detailed reading of medieval literary texts, as well as focusing on the variety and urgency of issues with which dream poetry is concerned: literary, intellectual, social, religious and political.

Our images of Vikings come largely from the Icelandic sagas. These present a Viking Age of daring exploits, global exploration and bloody feuds, as carried out by valiant warriors and feisty women. But how accurate are the sagas when it comes to understanding what really happened in the Viking Age? Can they provide an insight into the Viking mind?

This module explores Norse and Viking cultural history, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in the study of texts. 

Topics covered include:

• The Viking Age and Viking society
• Exploration and diaspora
• Gender, marriage and family
• Religion and belief
• Outlaws
• Poetry
• The supernatural

Your one-hour lectures will provide the evidence base for discussion in the two-hour, student-led seminars. The seminars also include some language work.

Assessment for this module is by a one-hour exam of comment and analysis, and a 3000-word project on a topic of your choice in consultation with a tutor.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Peter Pan, Les Misérables, Hamilton... just a few of the iconic productions that started life in London’s West End, or on Broadway in New York. But why and how did they become so successful?

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen major changes in the way theatre is financed, produced and presented, both on stage and on screen. This module explores the fascinating world of theatre production, covering:

• the development of long-running, commercial productions
• the role of the theatre producer in making theatre
• subsidised theatre
• touring and national theatre companies
• reviewing cultures
• relationship between the theatre and film industries
• the advent of the mega-musical

Examining the mainstream and the fringes, we apply case studies including Shakespeare in production, new plays, revivals, and international hits like the ones listed above, illustrating how theatre responds to changing contexts and audiences.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module focuses on the creative process of making theatre as an ensemble. The first half of the module introduces a range of practical and theoretical approaches, including Stanislavski, Lecoq, Laban, Meyerhold, along with approaches to devised and physical theatre influenced by companies such as Frantic Assembly and Gecko. This work builds on the understanding of performance conventions developed through practical workshops begun in the first year Drama, Theatre, Performance module, and the performance theory through practice approach of the second year Stanislavski to Stelarc module. For the second half of the module, students assess which of these practical and theoretical models they wish to draw on through rehearsal practice and discussion as they develop a short , assessed, ensemble piece(s) for public performance.

This module evaluates the ways in which ideas during the Renaissance had an impact on both long-distance exploration and interstate relations. Also, of primary importance will be situating Tudor England in a pan-European context, thereby helping students better understand the rise of this island nation to become a global superpower. Topics covered will include:

• Renaissance attitudes to human potential
• Motivations for overseas exploration and travel
• Beginnings of European imperialism
• Continuities and changes in diplomacy
• Religion and foreign policy
• Travel literature and cultural diplomacy
• Xenophobia and cosmopolitanism

This module will focus on the histories of labour and capital and will explain how these two histories have shaped the modern world, particularly South Asia. It will approach a given topic from a global angle and then will illustrate it through specific western and non-western examples. It covers the following themes: 

• Industrialization: Time, Discipline, and Work
• Capital and Labour Alienation
• Capitalism & the History of the Night Work and Sleep 
• Welfare Capitalism
• Machines, Artisans, and Industrialization
• Craft Cultures and Skills
• Child Labour and Working-Class families
• Working-Class Childhoods and Schooling
• Domestic Servants and the Colonial Master

This module surveys and analyses political, religious, social, cultural and military changes during the civil wars fought across the British Isles and the British Atlantic between 1639 and 1652. The major topics to be explored include:

• the causes of the civil wars
• the mobilisation of civilian communities
• the course of the civil wars
• the impact of war on individuals and communities
• religious and political change
• the growth of religious and political radicalism
• print culture and propaganda
• the changing roles of women
• the issues surrounding the public trial and execution of the king
• the abolition of the British monarchy and the House of Lords
• the ‘Celtic dimension’ of the conflict
• the Civil Wars in the British Atlantic

This module is an examination of the links between sexuality, intimate life, identity, politics, society, power and the state in Britain since 1900. It will also examine theoretical approaches to the study of sexuality and analyse sexuality as a category of historical analysis. Key themes:

• Theorising Sexuality in History
• Free Love and Eugenics
• Sexology
• Psychoanalysis and the Therapeutic Revolution
• Sapphic Modernity
• Birth Control and Sexual Knowledge
• Marriage and Society
• Queer London: Male Homosexuality 1918-1957
• Wolfenden
• Transsexuality and Gender
• Permissive Society and Counter Culture
• The AIDs Crisis

To provide students with an understanding of the principal trends in sexuality and gender in Britain since 1900. To introduce students to competing interpretations of British history through understanding changes in sexuality and gender and to encourage awareness of the relevant historiographical debates in the field in order to assist in the development of the key skills listed below.

International history is dominated by wars; historians and international relations scholars focus with an almost obsessive zeal on the causes and consequences of conflict. The intermittent periods of peace are rarely scrutinised, other than to assess the imperfections of peace treaties and thus extrapolate the seeds of future wars. This module offers a corrective to this tendency, taking as its focus the multifarious efforts that have been made since 1815 to substitute peace for war. These include diplomatic efforts (e.g. post-war conferences, legalistic mechanisms such as the UN, arms control protocols, etc.), and those advanced by non-state actors (e.g. national and transnational peace movements, anti-war protests, etc.). Taking a broad definition of the term peace , and focusing predominantly (though not exclusively) on Britain, this module revisits some of the pivotal episodes of the 19th and 20th centuries, exposing and interrogating the often complex relationship between war and peace that emerged, and thus arriving at an alternative history of the period.

In a series of weekly seminars this module takes a critical look at the historical construction and ascendance of the Empire Windrush, and the Windrush Generation, to national prominence in the UK, deconstructing the largely mythological narrative that currently persists around this symbolic historical epoch of Black arrival in Britain in 1948. Focused largely on four significant moments of invention from 1948 to the present, the aim of the module is to equip students with a much broader view of the British Empire that brings into focus a complex and long historical picture of encounter, inbound and outbound migration preceding and in this postwar moment, as well as the conflict and civil disobedience that is obscured by the somewhat quaint story of arrival captured in the Windrush narrative.

Students will interrogate and evaluate a range of primary historical sources from the archive, including a range of oral histories, as well as the historiographical debates surrounding the Windrush in order to understand how national histories are constructed and the purposes they serve. A range of digital assets and digital history skills and methodologies will be embedded across the module – giving students the opportunity to develop their own digital archive related to the historical themes of the module.

The module explores the cultural transformations in Britain brought on by the shift to a Fordist economy (roughly covering the period 1920-50), and the social and cultural contestations that resulted. It takes chronological and thematic approaches, and topics may include:

• New experiences of factory work and the rationalisation of diverse areas of everyday life;
• New forms of advertising and commodity culture, and the anxieties and opportunities these produced;
• New forms of industrial urban leisure (e.g. the cinema and dance hall) and their role in promoting social change;
• Performances of self-hood and the contested politics of movement and habit;
• The perceived impact of Americanisation on national traditions, values and ways of life;
• The rise of the ‘expert’ across a range of fields to manage working-class behaviour;
• The development of social science and the problems of knowing ‘the masses’; Post-WW2 reconstruction and the early years of the Welfare State;

This module involves the in-depth study of a historical subject from which you will create a 10,000 word dissertation. You will have regular meetings with your supervisor and a weekly one hour lecture to guide you through this task.

Recent dissertation topics have included:

• Richard II, William Shakespeare and the Revolution of 1399
• The Image of the Male Witch in Early Modern Iceland
• Lord Salisbury and the Mediterranean Agreements: Revisiting Anglo-German Relations, 1886-1896
• A Re-evaluation of Prince Lichnowsky's Role as the German Ambassador in London in the July 1914 Crisis
• Interwar British Fascist Movements and Race, 1922-1940
• 'No Country, No Home': The Abandonment of the South Vietnamese by the United States after the Vietnam War
• Visions of Loathing and Desire: Representations of Masculinity in Late Soviet Posters

The module offers an overview of the history of witchcraft and covers a wide geographical area spreading from Scotland to the Italian peninsula and from Spain to Russia. Such breadth of reference is of vital importance because, in contrast to the uniform theology-based approach to witch persecution in Western and Central Europe, the world of Eastern Orthodox Christianity represented a very different system of beliefs that challenged western perceptions of witchcraft as a gendered crime and lacked their preoccupation with the diabolical aspect of sorcery. The module’s geographical breadth is complemented by thematic depth across a range of primary sources and case studies exploring the issues of religion, politics, and social structure.

What is a human? What characteristics and qualities divide human and non-human animal? What accounts for human variation? Is the orang-utan a human or an animal? Do mermaids exist? Can humans possess both sexes in one body? To what extent do parrots possess intelligence?

During the eighteenth century, these kinds of questions were at the forefront of the minds of Enlightenment philosophers, natural historians, and physicians across Europe. They also played a role in popular interest in ‘curiosities’ and ‘wonders’ that were served by freak shows and reports of the monstrous and aberrant. Although societies across the world have posed similar questions for centuries, in eighteenth-century Europe the answers were directly informed by colonial conquest. European imperial encounter with non-European peoples, animals and environments opened-up new questions and ideas about what it meant to be human and where the boundary between human and non-human lay. 

This special subject explores European-imperial debates over the meaning of ‘the human’ and the relationship between humans and their environments in the period of the Enlightenment. The focus is largely on Britain but integrates study of networks of ideas that spanned European and imperial geographies. The module is based on a series of case studies including (but not limited to): mermaids, rhinos, troglodytes, ‘wild’ children, orangutans, intersex people who were displayed as ‘hermaphrodites’, dwarves, and parrots. In many instances, these and other human and non-human spectacles of difference were enslaved, transported, exhibited in freak shows, examined by physicians, and dissected after death. As a history of the entanglement between colonialism and science, this module is as much about violence and power as it is about ideas. By exploring how ideas of the ‘human’ were constituted through colonial encounter, this module draws on studies of race and racism, gender, sexuality and disability. The aim is to consider how the reframing of the boundaries of human during this period of European imperial expansion has impacted our modern relationships to each other, as humans, to non-human animals, and to the environment. 

Typically this special subject module surveys and analyses social and cultural change in the West during the `long Sixties' from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s.

Key issues include:

• The origins and nature of changes in norms of behaviour in the 1960s such as the sexual revolution, attitudes to authority, and the role of youth in society.
• The impact of wider historical developments such as post-war economic prosperity and the Cold War (the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis took place in 1962, for instance).
• An emphasis on looking at the experiences of ordinary people while acknowledging the role of major leaders.
• The origins of a counterculture in the United States and Britain.
• The Vietnam War.
• The development of protest movements such as the civil rights campaign in the United States; the anti-nuclear movement (CND was founded in 1958); student protest movements; the anti-Vietnam War campaign.
• The movement of protest campaigns toward the use of violence, and ultimately the development of terrorist campaigns in the 1970s (Baader- Meinhof, the Weathermen, the Red Brigades).
• The `second wave' of feminism from the late 1960s.
• The representation of the decade in popular culture, both in the 1960s and in subsequent decades, and in particular the politicisation of debates about this controversial period.

This module surveys and analyses Russia’s development between the 1905 revolution and the end of the civil war in 1921.

The module focuses on key features of this period, including:

• the causes for and impact of the 1905 revolution
• Russia’s economic and industrial development
• challenges to rural life
• the development of civil society
• the impact of World War One on Russian society.

Themes include:

• the importance of social identity in revolution
• the importance of symbolism and imagery in understanding revolution
• the role of violence and the language of hatred
• the roles of individuals and key political groups within the revolutionary process.

Module convener: Dr Sarah Badcock

The first half of the module is an in-depth chronological survey of the domestic history of England from the Good Parliament of 1376 to the deposition of Richard II in 1399. We will investigate how the royal family and their friends - a colourful and sometimes scandalous group - struggled to rule the country with the aid of such government instruments as show trials, intimidation, legal advice, murder and poll-taxes. The remaining part of the module considers England's relations with its neighbours and the impact of Lollardy on society and the Church in this period.

The purpose of this module is to encourage students to develop a detailed knowledge of primary evidence and recent historical debates in the Thirty- Years’War addressed at three levels: as a war of religion, as a clash of interests between the imperial crown and German territorial princes, and as a human catastrophe of monumental proportions. Although its drama unfolded primarily in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, the war drew in such diverse participants as Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Spain. In pursuit of self-seeking political goals, they formed unlikely alliances and created obstacles to the conflict’s resolution. However, the outcome of the war was to ensure the survival of Protestantism in Central Europe as well as to provide a stable political and religious status quo that lasted into the modern age. The module discusses the Thirty Years’War by drawing on various historiographical traditions that represent the views of major international players.

This module will investigate the lives and ideas of early to mid-20th century critics of British imperialism. The emphasis will be on critiques that emerged from outside the British isles, with a focus on four regions in particular: the Caribbean, East Africa, the Middle East and India. However, there will also be some investigation of the connections between anti-colonial activism in the British Isles and beyond.

More specific topics include:

• The influence of Marxist ideas on colonial critique, with a particular focus on the Caribbean, including the roles of Eric Williams in Trinidad and Cheddi and Janet Jagan in Guiana.
• The contrast between collaborative reformers, such as Eridadi Mulira, and radical revolutionaries, such as Dedan Kimathi, in Anglophone East Africa.
• Metropolitan critiques of empire with a particular emphasis on the role of activist women such as Barbara Castle and Doris Lessing.
• The significance of culture and cultural critique as an aspect of anti-colonial thinking, as explored in the writings of Mohandas Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu.
• The power politics of nationalism after independence, focusing especially on the relationship between Nasser and his critics in the Middle East.

With regard to methodology, particular priority will be accorded to primary source material, including philosophical writings, articles, campaigning pamphlets, letters, diaries and memoirs of anticolonial activists.

The module examines the roles and perceptions of women of medieval Christian, Jewish, Islamic identities in Medieval Iberia in the period 1000-1500. It considers different types of evidence, including literary, art and archaeology. It transcends the traditional Christian-western European focus on Medieval Studies and makes a stand against hegemonic narratives.

We will study how medieval women expressed themselves and how they understood their role in diverse societies and at the same time how their respective societies viewed them. We will evaluate how beliefs and patriarchal traditions shaped gender roles and how women expressed themselves under constrictive situations and how they demonstrated agency, conforming to or protesting against these restrictions. In the case of Medieval Iberia, the topic will consider broad debates about co-existence and discourses of identity and segregation.

We will focus on case studies of women, considering social status, economic occupations and engagement in the religious and intellectual life in their context. We will consider aristocratic women, queens, artisans, peasants, writers, nuns, saints and prostitutes, women going about their everyday business and women that had exceptional lives in an attempt to demonstrate the diversity of voices and expressions of female agency.

The analysis of evidence will pay special attention to the female voices as expressed in primary sources; on court cases, treatises, literature and we will contrast with legislation and misogynistic literature. The module will engage with feminist scholarship and gender studies historiography and consider the development of new theories and methodological approaches to the discipline.

Many see medieval Europe as a violent and dangerous place, one in which there was little by way of law and order. A war that lasted over a hundred years (c. 1337-1453) might well be taken as evidence of this. However, this war, which was at its heart about who should sit on the French throne, was far more complex (and interesting) than this would suggest. Indeed, in studying the Hundred Years War, we are able to learn a great deal about the people who lived and died in late-medieval England, France, Germany and Spain:

• Why did people fight?
• How did people fight?
• Were there laws dictating how war should be conducted?
• What role did chivalry play in all of this?
• How did war impact on women and non-combatants?
• Were there medieval pacificists?
• Do the sources of this period really allow us to understand war fully?
• Did this lengthy war lead to a new sense of national identity?

These are some of the core questions that underpin this module. While this is, then, a module about a war, it is also a module about the society who fought in and experienced this prolonged conflict. 

In the two decades after the First World War, two modern western European countries, Italy and Germany, were transformed from liberal, parliamentary democracies into fascist dictatorships. Historians have offered detailed accounts of the political machinations that made this transition possible. Yet recent historical research has been led by different questions: what reconciled so many ‘ordinary people’ to the anti-democratic, illiberal and increasingly murderous policies upon which these regimes embarked? This course explores how fascism transformed ordinary life, and how culture was employed to translate fascist ideas into lived experience.

This module introduces students to the social and cultural history of drugs, principally in terms of how they were promoted and received within the West, referring mostly to the period since 1900.

It examines not only certain key developments within the history of mainstream pharmacology, but also at the way (now) illegal narcotics originally entered the market place, often as medicines. It focuses upon the way polarised cultural opinions about drugs evolved, with attention particularly paid to the contingencies of geographical location and historical period.

Seminars introduce drug therapies and the controversies surrounding them, with the aim of highlighting wider social interests— including the power of the state, drug companies, religious organisations and the influence of public opinion

In this module, you’ll explore the basic narrative of Italy’s involvement in international relations and military conflict from 1922, but especially during the Second World War.

Using a range of sources, you will understand, assess and evaluate competing historical interpretations of the experiences of Italians during the Second World War. You will use this critical analysis to form your own independent judgement of this period.

We also look at how popular culture, such as novels and films, has impacted engagement with history and shaped our view of the past.

Module description to be confirmed.

This module is an in-depth study of the impact of the French Revolution on British politics, society and culture between the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803. Through an exploration of primary documents and secondary texts, students will investigate the events of the period and consider the wide range of interpretations that have been applied to these years by contemporaries and historians. Subjects for consideration include:-

• 'the revolution debate' (e.g. Burke, Paine and Wollstonecraft)
• the development of popular radical and loyalist political organisations
• the government's use of legal apparatus against radicals and publishers
• the impact of scarcity and food crises in a time of war and economic dislocation
• the emergence of a so-called 'revolutionary underground' after 1795
• the Irish rebellion of 1798 and its antecedents
• the ways in which loyalism, patriotism and nationalism were articulated during this period (e.g. Hannah More and James Gillray)

This module examines the history of travel to and within Italy in accounts written by British travellers in the period c.1780-c.1914, especially these key topics:

• methodologies necessary for analysing travel writing as historical evidence
• the nature of the 'Grand Tour', including the experiences of women travellers
• collecting and the development of notions of taste
• the changing nature of travel writing in the nineteenth century, including the Romanticisation of travel
• the appearance of middle class travellers as 'tourists'
• the 'guide book', a new genre of writing

This module explores religious ‘faith’ in England from c. 1215 to the beginning of the Reformation in 1534.

The English church made great efforts in this period to consolidate Christianity amongst the masses through wide-reaching programmes of instruction, regulation and devotion. However, historians disagree as to how successful the church was in its efforts.

The module investigates the relationship between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ religion and examines how the church sought to maintain its authority in matters of faith. It asks how people responded and the degree to which they fashioned their own religious practices and beliefs. It also considers the violent repression by church and crown of those deemed ‘heretics’.

It looks at the condemned teachings of the Oxford academic John Wycliffe and the significance of those who followed his ideas, known as Lollards.

Module convener: Dr Rob Lutton

In 1348 the Black Death arrived in England. By 1350 the disease had killed half of the English population. The module concentrates upon the stories of the epidemics' survivors and what they did to adapt to a world turned upside down by plague. It examines the impact of this unprecedented human disaster upon the society and culture of England between 1348 and 1520. It examines four particular groups of survivors:

• Peasants
• Merchants
• Gentry
• Women

The module explores English society through translated medieval sources. Themes include:

• Impact of the Black Death
• Religious and scientific explanations of the plague
• Changes in peasant society and how peasants lived after the plague  Merchants, their lives, businesses and shifting attitudes towards them
• Gentry society and culture in the fifteenth century and the development of an entrepreneurial ‘middling sort’
• Women’s lives and experiences in a post-plague patriarchal society The module poses a simple question: How central is the Black Death in explanations of long-term historical change and the evolution of the modern world?

By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain controlled one of the largest and most populous empires in history. This module examine some of the major events and dynamics that shaped the character of British imperialism, and the historical debates over them.

Particular attention is paid to the relationship between London, the ‘Imperial Metropolis,’ and India, South Africa, and the British colonies in the Caribbean.

The module interrogates the idea of ‘imperialism’ itself and focuses on post-colonial theory and ‘New Imperial History’ in order to critically re-appraise the operation of imperial systems and to apply an interdisciplinary perspective to their study.

Module convener: Dr Sascha Auerbach

This special subject introduces students to key themes within the medical history of colonialism, particularly examining the implications of the inequitable power relations inherent in any colonial project and how these have specifically contributed to the development of health principles and policies. The module looks at the way in which western medical theories of disease and healing shaped ideas about colonial environments, populations, bodies, and racial differences in the imaginations of colonisers. Medicine is revealed not only as a vital tool of colonial domination, but also as fundamentally limited as a successful mechanism for colonial social control. At the same time, the paradox that some western medical interventions did improve the health of many sectors of the population is addressed.

Given the wide chronological and geographical breadth of the topic, a series of 'snapshots' are offered to give a flavour of important aspects of western medical colonialism. The module principally, but not exclusively, uses historical examples within the British experience in the Americas, Africa and India. Approaches to tackling the health of unfamiliar climates, as well as the way colonial medical polices were conceived and implemented are critically discussed via case studies. Finally, the module examines some of the legacies of these attitudes in the post-colonial world.

This module examines the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), its underlying causes and legacy for present-day Spain. Commencing with the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931, students will consider the principal historical forces and conditions that gave rise to the outbreak of war in 1936 in Spain. The module is delivered through a series of student-led seminars in which students present their understanding of a specific historical event, theme or ideas through their study of primary and secondary sources, and respective historiographical debates. Thus, students will develop an in-depth understanding of the war through propaganda, myth, revolutionary ideology, anti-clerical and gendered violence, as well as, for example, the significance of Badajoz and Guernica. The conflict is also considered in the wider context of the "European Civil War"; specifically, the role of military interventions on the part of regimes in Italy, Germany, Portugal, and the Soviet Union, and the influence of non-interventions by Britain and France. 

In 1665, London suffered the worst plague epidemic since the Black Death, killing over 97,000 people. The following year, the Great Fire destroyed four-fifths of the ancient City of London within three days. This module explores the impact of these events and places them within the context of the 1660s and the city’s past and future history. We will investigate how Londoners across the social spectrum responded to natural disasters and crises, the challenges that these presented to community values and group identities and how the spread of news reflected fears over religious difference and terrorist plots. The course also examines the changing character of the city across the period including concerns over health, the environment and the use of green space.

We also investigate:

• Responses to Plague and Fire, e.g. the desire for urban reform versus nostalgia for an older, ideal ‘London’ .
• How and why the lived experience of Londoners changed over the period, e.g. new spaces for social interaction such as coffee houses, private clubs and new forms of public entertainment.
• London’s emergence as a modern capital and world city—was this a pivotal moment?
• We also analyse people’s ambiguous attitudes towards London itself, which sometimes characterised it as a centre of disease, disorder and moral bankruptcy, while at other times celebrating its proud mercantile wealth, overseas ambitions and importance as a royal capital. 

Primary sources include the lively diaries of Samuel Pepys, letters, England’s first newspapers, pamphlets, sermons, and the capital’s rich visual sources.

The modern world inherited and produced various free and unfree labour regimes—slavery, bonded labour, indentured labour, free-wage labour, child labour, ‘unskilled’ women labour. Race, caste, colonialism, and industrial capitalism shaped and continue to shape working lives, their work culture, and struggles. In this module, we will investigate the conditions of workers by exploring topics such as:

1. Enslaved labourers in the cotton plantations of America,

2. Docks workers at the Mombasa (in Africa) port,

3. Indian indentured labourers in Caribbean colonies,

4. Factory workers (male, female, children) in British and Indian factories,

5. Bonded caste labourers (agrarian slavery) in Indian fields.

The module touches upon key themes, such as free and coerced labour, night-time and sleep of workers, the social reproduction of labour, feminization of the workspace, the emergence of industrial time, etc.

The module aims to provide students with an understanding and critical analysis of how race, caste, colonialism, and capitalism shaped the lives of working people in the last 300 years. Conceptually, it touches on themes such as industrial time, forced and waged labour, child and women labour, sleep and the night-time of workers. In terms of learning resources, the module focusses on archival primary sources, documentaries, and the cutting-edge research on global labour history.

This module looks at the development of Europe from the rise of Napoleon until the 1848 Revolutions. The German historian Thomas Nipperdey once wrote that ‘in the beginning was Napoleon’.  Napoleon broadened and reshaped the dynamics of the French Revolution, war and state reform. He was also a symbol of a new world where an individual from a lower noble family and an obscure island could dominate the continent.

The module takes a chronological view of politics, international affairs, war, personalities and ideas. Coverage will focus on France, the German states, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Northern Italy.

The general structure will be:

• legacy of the French Revolution
• the rise of Napoleon
• Napoleonic Europe at its Zenith
• Napoleon’s Fall
• the Congress of Vienna and the 1815 Settlement of Europe
• ideological and cultural currents in early 19th century Europe
• government and politics
• the situation in 1848.

This module evaluates the ways in which ideas during the Renaissance had an impact on both long-distance exploration and interstate relations. Also, of primary importance will be situating Tudor England in a pan-European context, thereby helping students better understand the rise of this island nation to become a global superpower. Topics covered will include:

• Renaissance attitudes to human potential
• Motivations for overseas exploration and travel
• Beginnings of European imperialism
• Continuities and changes in diplomacy
• Religion and foreign policy
• Travel literature and cultural diplomacy
• Xenophobia and cosmopolitanism

This module explores the lived experience of rural people in the spaces of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, from the outbreak of the Crimean war in 1853 up until the consolidation of the collectivisation process in 1932. This module explores the diversity of the peoples living in this region, the challenges and patterns of their everyday life, and the relationships of rural people with State power. The module is organised thematically, moving week by week through issues including faiths and beliefs, family and community, politics and protest, military service and population movement, Questions around gender and the specific roles and experience of women are raised throughout the course. A diverse array of primary sources are utilised through the course, including memoirs, fictional literature, ethnography, paintings, photographs, posters and official documents.

Module description to be confirmed.

Module content to be confirmed.

Module content to be confrmed.