Modules

Year 1
The first year of the History degree offers you the opportunity to study a range of periods and approaches to history. Many of the modules cover quite large topics or long periods; these are intended to introduce you to subjects which may be unfamiliar and which pose new questions and new problems, showing you how wide the study of history really is.

You will take ‘Making History’ which will enable you to develop more advanced study skills through working in a small, intensive seminar. These require extensive reading, discussion, and writing about problems of historical interpretation in a defined area, and will focus on both primary and secondary sources. The module is divided into different strands from which you will make your choice.

In addition, you will choose five further modules from a list of approximately 12. You must choose at least one Medieval, one Early Modern, and one Late Modern Module.

The modules on offer change each year, as they reflect the research interests of staff; we cannot guarantee in advance that a particular module will be running in any particular year. This list gives you an idea of example modules:

Modern Times: a Cultural History of Europe, c. 1860-1960
Reformation Europe
The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, 1607-1865
The Birth of Western Society, 300-1050 AD
The Making of Modern Africa: Change and Adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Year 2
In the second year, you will study five modules. One of these, ‘Conversations with History’, is a double-module which is taught through student-led seminars. It develops your understanding of issues of historiography, provides an introduction to the writing of more extended historical argument, and prepares you for the final year Dissertation. This is an important feature of our course, and so all Single Honours students will take it. It is divided into different strands covering different topics from which you will make your choice.
This list gives you an idea of some of the modules running in 2019/20:

Conversations Strands: The End of the Roman Empire; Slavery in Modern Africa; Discipline and Modernity
Treasure of Heaven: Medieval Monasticism
Political Culture in Japan since 1688
Gender and Sexuality During Britain’s Long Twentieth Century.
Alongside ‘Conversations’, students take four further modules. These are taught intensively over half of the academic year (two in the Michaelmas term and two more in Epiphany and Easter terms).

Year 3
The third year allows you to specialise, with a triple-module Special Subject, taught entirely through seminars, which involves close study of primary sources. In the final year, you will also undertake supervised independent research leading to the writing of a double-module Dissertation. Given this emphasis on focused study and independence, there is no requirement for you to study a range of periods in this year.

As well as the Special Subject and the Dissertation, you will also take a single module in the third year: these are all strongly reflexive in character, encouraging students to think about the ways in which historical knowledge is produced.

Special Subjects include:
Developing Africa
Politics and Welfare: England 1880-1914
The Princely Court in Northern Europe, 1350-1500
A World Turned Upside Down: Radicalism and the English Revolution.

Single module:
Gods, Guns and Globalization: A History of Religion in Africa
East Asia in the Historical Perspective
Health, Wealth and Happiness
History of American Capitalism.

You will choose your own Dissertation topic, through consultation with a supervisor. There are some limits, set by the availability of primary material and the expertise of supervisors, but the potential range of topics is very wide indeed: in recent years topics have varied from representation of bandits in twentieth-century Hollywood films to ceremonial in medieval France.

Tuition fees

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