BA History

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 1939–2019: Eighty Years in the Life of the United Kingdom on our Module Directory

View Research and Academic Development Skills on our Module Directory

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 Becoming Enlightened Citizens: Foundations in Politics and Government (optional) on our Module Directory

Want to study Hamlet? And contemporary works by Angela Carter or Kazuo Ishiguru? Interested in World War One poetry? Study a range of drama, poetry and prose fiction. Describe, analyse and reflect on key texts from Shakespeare to the present day. Become familiar with the crucial terms for assessing literature.

View Major Writers in English Literature (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 300 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 300 years.

View Europe Transformed: 1450-1750 on our Module Directory

View History Works: Career Portfolio 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 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 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 on our Module Directory

View Resisting Empire 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

Are you considering a career in teaching? Would you like to get a taster of the teacher training process? This module will give you valuable advice as well as hands-on experience which will enhance your application and provide you with a chance to get involved in history teaching activities in local schools. You will also get a chance to chat with people who have undertaken teacher training, which will give you an insider’s viewpoint. You will get the chance to observe experienced teachers, participate in lessons as an assistant, and finally deliver a session of your own. You’ll also get the chance to explore the range of careers you can pursue with a teacher training qualification, including adult learning, community learning and engagement, or teaching in non-traditional environments.

View History in Schools (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

In this module you’ll explore the shifting meanings of the natural and supernatural worlds during a period that encompassed three major shifts in intellectual outlook during the early modern period in Europe: the Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. You’ll look at the way in which early modern people understood the boundaries between human and animal, body and soul, life and death, science and religion, and reality and imagination.

View Supernatural and Natural Worlds in Early Modern Europe (optional) on our Module Directory

View History Works: Career Portfolio 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

Recent scholarship in several disciplines has grappled with the question of how cultural perceptions affect bodily experience. Using an interdisciplinary framework, we will explore the meanings and experience of pain in Europe, particularly in England and France during the long eighteenth century. The course starts and finishes by considering the extent to which a mind and body split occurred during this period.

View Pain: A Short History (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

London is more than just a normal city: its scale, diversity, cultural and economic might put it on a different scale to anywhere else in Britain. This module focuses on the story of London's cultural, economic and political growth, and its relationship with the rest of Britain, and Europe. We explore London's status as a 'free' city, its relationship with the church and Reformation, the life of migrants and marginal communities, theatre and trade.

View London 1500-1700: Reformation, Wealth and Destruction (optional) on our Module Directory

Sailors held the early modern empires together. Without them, there would have been no colonies, no migration, no East India trade, and no African Diaspora. This module covers Atlantic maritime history from ca. 1415 to ca. 1850, including the 'Age of Discovery', sailor life, labour, maritime social history, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, fishing and whaling, the Age of Revolution, and (of course) piracy.

View Maritime Life in the Age of Sail (optional) on our Module Directory

View Henry VIII and his reign (optional) on our Module Directory