Ancient History and History BA

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

This module offers what may well prove a unique opportunity: the opportunity to engage in prolonged, intensive and productive study of a topic which you have chosen for yourself and on which you will be working very much on your own terms with access to advice and subject to criticism and, on completion, assessment.

This module is built on skills acquired and/or developed in your first and second years (notably in Extended Source Study, Studying Classical Scholarship or Communicating the Past).

This module is primarily dependent on your personal research: it involves a few plenary sessions of formal teaching, and each student is allotted an individual supervisor to guide them through the process.

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 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 surveys the dramatic cultural encounter in the nineteenth century as the world of the samurai was confronted by Western expansion and the Age of Steam. It explores the forces at work in Japan’s rapid transformation from an ‘ancien régime’ under the rule of the Shogun into a ‘modern’ imperial power. Original documents examined in class draw on the growing range of Japanese primary sources available in English translation, together with the extensive works of Victorian diplomats, newspaper correspondents and other foreign residents in the treaty ports. You will have four hours of lectures and seminars each week for this module.

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.

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 surveys the dramatic cultural encounter in the nineteenth century as the world of the samurai was confronted by Western expansion and the Age of Steam. It explores the forces at work in Japan’s rapid transformation from an ‘ancien régime’ under the rule of the Shogun into a ‘modern’ imperial power. Original documents examined in class draw on the growing range of Japanese primary sources available in English translation, together with the extensive works of Victorian diplomats, newspaper correspondents and other foreign residents in the treaty ports. You will have four hours of lectures and seminars each week for this module.

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 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.

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

Module description to be confirmed.

Module content to be confirmed.

Module content to be confrmed.

This is a discipline-bridging cross-campus module, involving colleagues from across the School of Humanities.

The Silk Road will be presented as a range of archaeological, historical and scientific themes. Broad cultural themes will be balanced with the presentation of specific case studies, such as:

• The definitions of the Silk Roads
• Byzantine, Islamic and later medieval Silk Roads
• Luxury production
• Trade and exchange from the Roman and later periods
• Ming Dynasty links with the West

Scientific techniques for the analysis of materials, and their role in the interpretation of trade and exchange along the Silk Roads, will also be considered. This could be between, for example, China, central Asia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Read more about this module.

This module explores the urban image and visual culture of the best-preserved ancient Roman city, Pompeii, throughout the early imperial period and to its end in AD 79. It examines its history and topography, and analyses individual urban structures, architectural choices, sculptural and other artistic displays and monuments, their place in Roman urban development, their political, social, economic or religious function and their subsequent use and influence, including in the modern reception of ancient Pompeii. 

Topics include:

• problems of studying "urban fabric"
• Pompeii as a melting pot of different cultural traditions
• public and religious spaces in a Roman town (fora and temples, routes through the city, trade and commerce, sculptural/pictorial displays)
• entertainment and hygiene (theatres, baths and brothels)
• the domestic context (intra- and extra-mural living, interior decoration and wall-painting)
• the funerary sphere (self-representation and cultural traditions).

This module examines a fascinating and tumultuous period of Roman history: from Diocletian’s seizure of power (A.D. 284) to the sack of Rome by a Visigothic army (A.D. 410). In the 126 years which separated these two events, the Roman world was fundamentally transformed, by (amongst other things) the rise of Christianity and the decline of imperial power. This transformation is documented for us by a range of captivating sources: from St. Augustine’s disarmingly frank autobiography, his Confessions, to Zosimus’ savage indictment of the damage he alleged Christianity had done to the empire.

Over the semester, we will work our way through the period, looking at key political, social, religious, and cultural developments and analysing the source material for this absorbing chapter in Rome’s imperial story.

This module involves a detailed study of Virgil's Latin epic poem, the Aeneid, in English translation, and focuses on its interactions with the epic genre.

The Aeneid was always and immediately characterised as a 'great' poem: how does Virgil react against his predecessors to carve out his own literary territory? How is the Aeneid received and re-used by poets and other artists down the ages?

Themes will include:

• career and poetics
• Homer and Apollonius
• reception in later epic (Roman imperial, Neo-Latin, Milton)
• politics and identity
• games and reality
• gender and genre
• vision and spectacle.

This module will explore the ancient evidence for the myth of Oedipus and selected representations of the myth in the post-Classical world.

In terms of evidence, students will have the opportunity to explore ancient drama and other poetry as well as visual culture and mythographic writings.

In terms of post-Classical representations, there will be a particular focus on performance and on modern popular culture, including (but not necessarily limited to) film, popular mythology books, material aimed at children, on-line representations, and humour.

This module explores the representation of animals in ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture. Core questions include:

• What criteria did the Greeks and Romans use to distinguish humans from animals?
• What responsibilities were human beings said to have towards the natural world?
• How were animals used to explore ideas about ‘nature’, ‘culture’, and ‘civilisation’?
• How close are these ideas to our contemporary attitudes toward non-human beings?

While incorporating discussion of material evidence and the day-to-day realities of animal life in the ancient world, the module focuses primarily on the ways in which animals were perceived, analysed, and represented in ancient texts, from philosophy and natural history to satire, fable, and tales of metamorphosis. Both ancient and modern theoretical approaches will be considered, and all material will be read in translation.

During the period 800-500 BC the Greek world transformed from a collection of relatively small communities led by local strongmen to complex city-state societies with elaborate institutions, magistracies, and systems of public finance. Law shifted from an oral to a written basis; Greek settlements spread across the Mediterranean basin and Black Sea; and Greek individuals travelled to Egypt and the east, fuelling a process of dynamic cultural fusion. This period was, too, the crucible from which emerged remarkable works of literature, art, and the beginnings of Greek philosophy.

But it was an era of conflict and disruption as much as cultural and economic progress. Major inequalities in wealth between rich and poor led to social breakdown in many communities. The solutions were various: in Attica, Solon attempted to reshape Athenian institutions to place the poor in a stronger position and curb some of the more egregious abuses inflicted by the wealthy. In Sparta, a culture of material austerity emerged that hid from plain sight the visible aspects of inequality whilst maintaining the economic structures that underpinned elite dominance. For some Greek communities, the answer to these problems lay in entrusting one man with the direction of the community, that is, tyranny, which led to disaster in places like Athens and the emergence of the institutional outlines of the classical democracy. And warfare was rife: the archaic age saw the emergence on land of the tactics of the hoplite phalanx, and at sea the development of the trireme and the fiscal structures that underpinned the first state-owned navies.

This module will enable students to chart continuity and change during the epoch in which the contours of classical Greek society were firmly established. It will focus in particular on the interpretative strategies required in evaluating a highly diverse body of evidence and the methodological problems that challenge historians when reconstructing an era whose evidence is far more lacunose that that which survives for the ensuing periods

This module will consider:  

• the Persian Empire, and in particular contacts between Persians and Greeks in the approximate period 560-330 BC  
  
• major events including: the foundation of the empire by Cyrus the Great; the consolidation of the empire by Darius; the Ionian Revolt and the invasions of Greece; the Delian League and the Peace of Callias; the Peloponnesian War; the Peace of Antalcidas; Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire  
  
• major themes regarding the interactions between Greeks and Persians, including military and political conflict, but also trade and cultural engagement  
  
• Greek literary evidence, and the diverse representations of Persians and the Persian Empire presented in it  
  
• non-Greek evidence for the Persian Empire, including cuneiform writings, inscriptions, and visual evidence. 

This module will be questioning how various film presentations of the ancient world can be used to better understand both the ancient world itself and our relationship to it.

This will involve a critical understanding not just of the content of certain films but also of the related theories of cultural studies, reception studies, film theory, queer theory, semiotics, race and colonialism, sexuality and morality in both the ancient and modern world. As such this module will be heavily theoretical and will expect the students to be able to deal with complex issues not just about the ancient world, but of modern film production too. This also means that the module will have more teaching hours attached to it than other optional modules to accommodate the extra viewings for discussions.

Amongst the themes to be discussed will be the use of Greek mythology, Greek and Roman historical events, ancient religion, ancient sexuality, morality, special effects, new technologies and comparative cultural studies; all the while dealing with such case-studies as post-War European cinema, British Art House cinema, Hollywood Blockbusters and comedy and animation.

The module will be assessed by a source-analysis commentary and an exam. 

The Roman Empire was a mad, mad place! How else would you call an empire where any individual city can decide it wants to start issuing its own money – and the authorities let them do it? A place where hundreds of cities produced hundreds of currencies of local bronze coinage, each city with its own weight standards, and each using its coinage for self-promotion, celebrating local gods, temples, festivals and any other attractions that made their hometown special.

According to one calculation, some 500 cities across the Roman Empire minted coins in the 350 years from Caesar to Diocletian, churning out approximately 100,000 different coin types. This module is all about this city or ‘civic’ coinage. We won’t have quite enough time in this life to discuss 100,000 coin types, so we focus especially on what we call the Near East, i.e. Roman Syria, Phoenicia, Judaea and Arabia (30 BC to AD 270). Dozens of Near Eastern cities produced coins during this time, contributing to an immensely rich and varied tapestry of local cultures.

We will first grapple with the historical circumstances which put cities in a position to issue their own money despite being subject to Rome. The local autonomy the cities enjoyed was not a consequence of Roman folly, negligence, or administrative malpractice, but a deliberate and well-advised hands-off approach whose wisdom is proven by hundreds of years of stable and successful rule over the provinces.

In Coins, Cults and Cities, you will learn how the coins can shed light on the life of the issuing city in all its facets:

1. World of art: reception of Classical models; Greek-inspired art forms vs. local traditions; stylistic developments over time
   
2. Religious life, cults and gods: significance of religious imagery, local cult images, ‘icons of difference’
   
3. Civic pride, local identity: coins as vehicles for expressions of patriotism and public self-congratulation
   
4. Ideology and propaganda: coins as the only mass medium of the ancient world, as tools for collective self-promotion.
   
5. Complex dynamics between audience and authority: Who was responsible for text and image on coins? Who was the target audience?
   

You will get your hands on actual ancient coins of Damascus, Palmyra, Tyre, Sidon and many other cities (you get to choose which ones). Holding actual 2,000-year-old pieces of history in your own hands and examining them will teach you how to apply the knowledge and understanding you’ve gained in class to get the most out of the evidence. You will learn how to observe, analyse and interpret the evidence, and how to turn your thoughts and observations into building blocks for arguments when addressing questions or engaging in scholarly debate.

The civic coins of the Roman Near East have been the focus of my research for close to 20 years. Like me, you will find that these coins are inexhaustible fonts of insight and inspiration. There is no other kind of evidence from the Roman Near East even remotely as rich and deep as this coinage, and yet this precious source is unknown to the general public and under-appreciated even by historians and archaeologists.

This module introduces map-making for the Arts and Humanities. You will be introduced to the field of spatial humanities and will learn how to carry out spatial analyses of humanities datasets and present their findings to a high standard.

You’ll be introduced to the key principles of spatial analysis and digital cartography using open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. We will also explore the broad and exciting applications of spatial analysis.

We will also work with you to help you understand the role of GIS in digital humanities, the role of this in research and practice more widely, and the employability value of GIS as a skill.

In this module, we will study a varied selection of Greek tragedies from the fifth century BC, from a variety of critical perspectives.

These may include approaches such as:

• historicism (how do the tragedies fit into and interact with the world of the fifth century Athenian democracy?)
• performance (including the study of tragedy as a form of choral poetry)
• mythology and religion
• literary approaches (construction of plays, the representation of character, imagery).

Through approaches such as these and others, we will try to find ways of handling central tragic questions:

• why might we be attracted to watching the enactment of suffering?
• what did these profound, moving and frequently strange dramas mean in their own world and what can they mean in ours? 

This module uses literary, artistic and historical material to explore the idea of what it is to be a man and an accepted citizen in ancient Greece and Rome.

It explores how good citizens should behave and what should they look like.? How do they represent this citizenship to the rest of the world and how does this change over time? These questions bring literature, art and ancient history together with gender studies to examine the importance of gender in both bolstering and denigrating public personae.

Topics to be covered include:

• homoeroticism and Athenian identity
• dress and cultural identity
• sexual invective
• citizenship and empire
• Roman representation in the provinces
• women, politics and patronage.

The concept of the “Other” has proved extremely influential in Western culture from antiquity until the present. Societies create the “Self” and the “Other” using their own set of categories, including race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, age and religion.

This course explores the notion of “Otherness” in Greco-Roman visual culture from the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D., discussing how artistic representation and self-representation contributed to constructing and challenging ideas about Greek and Roman identity.

How did the Greeks and Romans use art to construct the “Other” and what can we learn from these representations about the relationships between in-groups and out-groups in the ancient world?

The course also investigates the ways in which Classical art escapes the structuralist binary model of Self-and-Other, merging or inverting these categories. In a brief introduction we will discuss a variety of theories and methodologies that will help students to engage effectively with the visual evidence.

The first part of the course will focus on how different categories of “Other” were gradually shaped in ancient Greek art, reflecting contemporary political, social and cultural developments. We will look at images of hybrid creatures, foreigners, women, slaves, disabled and elderly people, analysing positive and negative connotations of their apparent “Otherness”.

In the second part of the course, we will explore the diversity of Roman visual culture from the Late Republican period to Late Antiquity. As the Empire expanded, images of “Otherness” acquired a broader spectrum of meanings. Sculpture, painting and mosaic decoration from public and private contexts show how “Otherness” could be either repressed or embraced in order to impose, resist or manipulate traditional views of Romanness.

The aim of this module is to teach practical skills in media engagement and management through lectures and workshops, running in parallel with examining how archaeological data are used in media narratives through seminars.  

The seminars will use a case study approach and staff will draw on their own experience with different forms of media, such as TV, radio, podcasts, print and social media.  

In the media engagement sessions we will teach skills such as: identifying a story, writing press releases, the importance of meaningful images, running a press conference, interviewing/ being interviewed, and writing article copy. We will also consider the differences between print and social media, and the importance of being succinct – a key skill!

Students will be able to choose the topic that they work on for their assessment, but all will engage in the in-class exercises. These will include scenarios such as being journalists at a press conference, and needing to write up the story that comes out of it. They will then submit these as part of their portfolio.

These two modules are for complete beginners. They are also suitable if you have already done some study of Latin or Classical Greek (up to GCSE level). They cover the same material as ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 1’ and ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 2’. They just let you start your chosen language at a later point in your degree.

You’ll get an introduction to the grammar and vocabulary of your chosen language and you will be supported to analyse and understand basic sentences and to translate short passages.

There is no speaking and listening element - the main focus will be on reading text.

If you take these modules in your second year, you can continue onto the ‘Intermediate’ modules in your third year. Note: this is mandatory for Classics BA students.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Continue your study of Latin or Classical Greek, following on from the beginners’ level modules.

You will thoroughly consolidate the vocabulary and grammar of your chosen language and begin the detailed linguistic and literary study of an unadapted Latin or Greek text.

In Latin, you will typically read a text such as Cicero’s Pro Archia, or a book of Virgil or Ovid.

In Greek, the text might be a complete speech by Lysias or selections from a longer text such as the Odyssey or a Greek tragedy.

The assessment for these modules emphasises comprehension and analysis of grammatical structures over memorisation and translation.

Each module is worth 20 credits.

You will study prose and verse texts in your chosen language, building on the skills you learned in the Intermediate modules.

By this stage you will be at or above A-level standard, and will benefit from being taught together with first-year students who have an A-level in the language.

The modules may involve in-depth study of a single text, or may cover a group of texts representative of an author, genre, period, or theme. They will combine literary and linguistic discussion with consideration of the historical and social background.

The texts covered change each year. In Latin, recent modules have focused on the following topics:

• Flavian personal poetry (Martial and Statius)
• The emperor Claudius (Suetonius and Tacitus)
• The Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses
• Ethnicity and Empire in Latin Epic (Virgil and Silius Italicus)
• The Power of Love (Ovid and Propertius)

In Greek, recent topics have covered:

• Tragedy (Sophocles’ Antigone)
• Selections from Homer’s Iliad
• Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe
• Plutarch’s Life of Antony
• Paradoxography (a portfolio of texts exploring the weird and marvellous)

Each module is worth 20 credits.

This group of modules is for those who have already reached A-level standard. They allow you to explore the work of Latin or Greek authors in detail.

You will also:

• improve your reading fluency
• gain insight into language and literature
• build linguistic analysis and literacy skills that are valued by employers

We pay special attention to language and style. Analysis of linguistic detail will build both your literary appreciation and your language skills.

Some modules will involve in-depth study of a single text, while others may cover a group of texts representative of an author, genre, period, or theme of Latin literature. All modules combine literary discussion with consideration of the historical and social background.

Regardless of whether you take Latin or Greek, the below applies:

Levels 1 and 2 are for first-year students: they involve a systematic programme of grammar revision alongside support with reading and analysis of the set text.

Levels 3 and 4 are for second-year students: they build on the previous year’s work, allowing you to read a larger amount of text and to develop your skills further.

Levels 5 and 6 are for third-year students: you will by now be able to read texts more independently, and assessment for these modules typically allows you to discuss the set text at greater length and with a high level of literary sophistication.

The texts covered change each year, but recent modules have focused on the following topics:

In Latin:

• Flavian personal poetry (Martial and Statius)
• The emperor Claudius (Suetonius and Tacitus)
• The Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses
• Ethnicity and Empire in Latin Epic (Virgil and Silius Italicus)
• The Power of Love (Ovid and Propertius)

In Greek:

• Tragedy (Euripides’ Hecuba)
• Books from Homer’s Iliad
• Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe
• Plutarch’s Life of Antony
• Paradoxography (a portfolio of texts exploring the weird and marvellous)

These modules are mandatory for Classics BA students with an A-level in Latin or Classical Greek. Other students with A-level can choose to start with ‘Latin or Greek Texts’ at levels 1 and 2, but they may drop later modules if they wish.

Each module is worth 20 credits.