This final year module examines and compares the experience of the British people during the Second World War, the myth-making that was a part of this experience, and the shifting cultural memory of the war in Britain from 1945 to the present day. It makes extensive use of the Mass Observation Online Archive (available online via the Albert Sloman library) to examine the British experience of war and to consider how people represented the war themselves. It is a full year Module that, in the first term, focuses on the war years, introducing students to the history of the war, to Mass Observation, and to the processes by which wartime culture created the enduring myths of Dunkirk, the Blitz, the Battle of Britain and the People's War. The module uses Mass Observation alongside other primary sources to consider which stories became a part of these myths, and which were excluded or marginalised. In the second term the focus turns to the cultural memory of the war in Britain since 1945. Students are introduced to concepts and theories of cultural memory that they will go on to apply to representations of the war that are studied. The memory of the war is traced from 1945 to the current day, with themes examined including the popularity of the war film, the mobilisation of the Second World War in Britain's subsequent wars, the growth of the wartime anniversary, museums and memorials, and the 'memory wars' that have been a central aspect of the Brexit debate since 2016.

The majority of the 12 million enslaved Africans deported to the Americas during the 16th to the 19th centuries ended up working on plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. Sugar, cacao, indigo, tobacco, cotton and coffee were the main commodities produced for the rapidly expanding European markets. Slavery in the Americas contributed to the making of the modern world. You’ll examine the different plantation societies in Brazil, British Jamaica, the French Caribbean, and the Spanish colonies (Venezuela and Cuba).