BA History

How did Plato and Aristotle influence Western political thought? How do you study class or gender today? What impact does globalisation have? Examine the history of social and political theory, critically analysing current issues. Understand key topics in politics and sociology for further study of the social sciences and humanities.

View Political and Social Theory From Plato to the Present Day on our Module Directory

Britain has experienced unprecedented changes in the last 100 years. What has brought about these changes and how have they affected the Britain of today? This course will outline political, economic, social and cultural change in the UK during the Twentieth Century and beyond and offer an insight into Britain’s place in the modern world.

View The United Kingdom from 1900 to the Present Day on our Module Directory

What can we know? How should we live? Study two important areas of philosophy – epistemology and ethics. Examine the work of key thinkers and understand the major themes in Western philosophy. Analyse contemporary issues using philosophical arguments. Become confident in the expression of your own thoughts and ideas.

View Philosophy: Fundamental Questions, Major Thinkers (optional) on our Module Directory

View Research and Academic Development Skills (optional) on our Module Directory

Gain the necessary tools with which to study history at university level. You will be introduced to history as an academic discipline and will develop the skills employed by professional historians, as well as gaining key transferable skills. This module has no single geographical focus, but uses examples from a range of different historical themes, time periods and countries.

View Becoming a Historian on our Module Directory

This is the early modern period, a span of around 250 years often regarded by historians as a time of change and a watershed between the medieval and modern worlds. Gain an understanding of this important time by looking at Europe in economic, social, cultural and political contexts. Study the patterns of continuity and change which shaped this period, and reflect on the extent to which the Europe we live in today has been conditioned by these 250 years.

View Europe Transformed: 1450-1750 on our Module Directory

Gain a deep insight into the origins of today’s world. This module presents a chronological overview of the key events in western history from the last 200 years. Look at how ideas, cultures, and economies of different peoples intersected, and changed, through the conflicts brought on by capitalism, imperialism, war, and revolution. You develop a solid foundation to study modern history.

View The Making of the Modern World since 1750 (optional) on our Module Directory

Britain is a diverse, multicultural society. Yet traditional histories of Britain often ignore the fact that British society has been remade and its culture enriched by people from a wide variety of different cultures, communities and backgrounds. This module will examine how 'race' became a defining concept for understanding British society, how mass immigration transformed the concept of Britishness, and how Black, Asian and other Ethnic Minorities had to fight in order to exercise their rights as British citizens. It will also examine the history of Europeans in Britain from Jewish immigration in the 1900s through to debates on the EU and Brexit.

View Multicultural Britain: A History (optional) on our Module Directory

This module uncovers and explores some radical ideas and practices that have often been overlooked in accounts of modern British history. From the revolutionary years of the mid-seventeenth century when radicals questioned dominant beliefs about democratic rights and property ownership – with some even advocating 'communism' – to industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century, the module examines the struggle between different classes and different people. It also explores the issues of power within the family and between genders.

View Hidden Histories: class, gender and the rise of British democracy (optional) on our Module Directory

Gain a firm grasp of US history by studying key historical events as well as important social movements. Topics covered range from the early settlements in Plimoth and Jamestown, through the American Revolution and expansion, Industrial Revolution, slavery and Civil War, up to the 1950s and 60s civil rights, women's and youth movements. Engage with novel and exciting debate about the history of the United States.

View The Great American Experiment (optional) on our Module Directory

Discover how historians communicate their work and what skills they use. This module focuses on the labour market. Explore how your abilities can be presented as convincingly as possible, and learn how your skills fit different careers. You’ll also look at the range of opportunities available and the choices our former history students have made. There will be visits from former students and other experts who talk about the professions they decided to go into.

View History Works: Beyond Your BA on our Module Directory

This module will illuminate everything you study in history. It encourages you to think about the many and diverse ways in which historians approach the writing of history. You’ll be introduced to important historical concepts that have shaped recent historical writing, such as microhistory, class, gender and race, or to an important historical theme, such as consumption, literary history and global history.

View Approaches to History on our Module Directory

Building on the skills that you have gained in your first year of study on (HR101: Becoming a Historian), this module helps you to prepare for successful completion of your Research Project (HR831) in your final year. The module explains the purpose of the Project, and provides a sense of how researchers develop research projects, from methodology and literature reviews to thinking about language, using primary sources and archives, and managing time and planning effectively.

View Choosing Your Past: How to Design and Manage a Research Project on our Module Directory

The First World War was one of the most significant thresholds in modern history. It changed European politics and societies profoundly, and had social and cultural repercussions on a global scale. This module looks beyond the traditional foci of 1914-1918, because the war was not only fought on the Western front, but also in Eastern Europe where it fomented civil wars and wars between newly established nation states. There, fighting came to an end only in the early 1920s and often gave birth to Fascism and Totalitarianism. Since the First World War was the first "industrial" or "total" war, the module will go beyond traditional military and political factors, rather addressing the new culture of war and politics and emphasising questions of social, economic, and cultural change.

View The Social and Cultural History of the First World War (optional) on our Module Directory

You will look at the roles of women and men in early modern England between 1550 and 1750. In this period men were to rule and women were to be obedient to them. But the reality was often very different to this. The practical realities of economic life and the disruptions of Civil War and Reformation meant relations between women and men varied and adapted in a period of great cultural, political, economic, social, and religious change.

View Gender in Early Modern England (optional) on our Module Directory

View Cultures of Activism: Protest in Britain, 1958-2003 (optional) on our Module Directory

This module is a gateway to introduce you to an interdisciplinary approach to China and Chinese history, and you’ll examine significant and complex issues in its modern history. We examine materials that deal with the historical, political, social, and artistic aspects of famous sites and phenomenon, such as Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and the Yellow River, in order to understand modern China at its politico-cultural core, in its relations with the outside world, its symbolic function in the new global order, as well as its path to modernisation.

View China: The Long Twentieth Century (optional) on our Module Directory

Discover how South Africa took the 'apartheid turn' and how the country had long been on a road of increasing racial discrimination. You will study the historical experience of South Africa from the late-19th to the mid-20th century. Gain a thorough understanding of the historical forces and struggles which gave rise to the segregationist state. This module aims to overturn common assumptions about South Africa.

View South and Southern Africa in the Twentieth Century (optional) on our Module Directory

History is actively constructed and not simply rediscovered in the records of the past. Historical research involves a process of selection and interpretation, and there is an active exchange between theory and empirical data. The Research Project gives you a unique opportunity to explore the making of history. You undertake a piece of detailed, critical and/or possibly original historical research. Meetings and workshops provide practical guidance on formulating a topic, researching, writing and presentation.

View Research Project on our Module Directory

In this module you’ll focus on witchcraft beliefs and witch-hunts (the legal prosecutions of individuals for the crime of witchcraft) in Europe and New England between the 15th and 18th centuries. You examine beliefs about witches, witchcraft, and the powers of the Devil at both elite and popular levels, set in the wider context of the religious/magical world-view of the period.

View Witch-Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England (optional) on our Module Directory

Understand the events in Soviet history which led to the collapse of Socialism and analyse how the Soviet state moulded the mentality of its people, looking closely at the effects this had on the stability of the USSR. You will understand the reasons that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the processes that are shaping authoritarian states, past and present. Examine its role in the world and its impact on people's self-identification.

View From Stalin to the Collapse of the USSR (optional) on our Module Directory

Our visions of the world, our very sensibilities, have been fashioned to some degree by the imperial world, and yet we are often unaware of this. By considering five works of fiction, you’ll explore key aspects of the imperial experience. You’ll study colonial attitudes and policies, and investigate the experience of colonisers and colonised, mainly in the British Empire. You’ll develop a sense of the complexity of imperialism and its cultural legacy.

View Fictions of Empire (optional) on our Module Directory

View The People's War: Making the Home Front in Britain, 1939-1945 (optional) on our Module Directory

Gain a detained insight into the history of sexuality in the United States from the colonial period to the present, with an emphasis on women. You will understand how the social construction of sexuality changed throughout time. Although women's historical experiences are positioned as central to this module, you also investigate concepts of masculinity and manhood. In addition to gender, race, class, free/un-free status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and the body, are crucial sites of analysis.

View Women, Gender and Sexuality in United States History (optional) on our Module Directory

This module looks at moments in the history of twentieth-century Britain that were not only controversial in their own time, but have continued to trouble us. From the Easter Rising to Hillsborough, this is a past that does not lie quietly. Historians, politicians, the media and the public have all been involved in debating not only 'what actually happened' but also how particular events should be interpreted, where they fit in longer views of British history and what they mean for present-day British society.

View Unquiet pasts: controversies of twentieth-century Britain (optional) on our Module Directory