BA History with Human Rights

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

What are human rights? How do we protect them? And what challenges do we face when promoting human rights on an international level? Discover the fundamental principles and practices, including topics related to international law and philosophy, which underpin the protection and promotion of our human rights.

View Foundations of Human Rights on our Module Directory

Study some fundamental texts in the “Western” philosophical tradition. We examine the assumptions underlying these texts, as well as the implications they have for us today. We explore profound themes of truth, justice, equality, freedom, democracy, liberalism, republicanism, and morality.

View Truth, Justice, and The Nature of Politics on our Module Directory

Why do states sometimes go to war? What conditions can promote peace and international stability? When are states able to form cooperative agreements to promote trade, combat terrorism, or address climate change? Explore issues in international relations which help address complicated questions concerning cooperation and conflict between countries.

View Co-Operation and Conflict 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 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 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

Explore the historical grounding of human rights by examining its origins from the 15th to the 20th century. You’ll study the practice and theory of torture, the definition of man and beast, slavery and the rights of the free man, the persecution and judicial treatment of deviance and witchcraft, the interference of Church and State in the freedom of expression, the international attempts at the definition and enforcement of rights, and much more.

View Human Rights in Historical Perspective on our Module Directory

View From Welfare State to Brexit: Politics, Democracy, and the People in Britain, 1945-2020 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 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 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

You’ll be introduced to sociology and human rights, and will learn how to research human rights in a sociological manner. You’ll consider two competing contemporary attempts to formulate a sociology of rights, as well as the problem of universalism versus relativism. Study the concept of cosmopolitanism, as well as rights across borders, the position of trans-national migrants as compared with the citizens of host countries, and investigate how far universal human rights can over-come state sovereignty in the granting of rights to non-citizens. You’ll also look at specific examples related to gender, immigration and asylum seekers, and what rich countries owe to poor ones.

View Social Dimensions of Human Rights on our Module Directory

This module runs across three years of your degree and is designed to help you reflect upon, and develop, your plans and skills for your career in the long term. The module is compulsory for all History undergraduate students, but is designed not to be onerous, and to be as flexible as possible. You can use it to either prepare yourself for your dream career, or to explore the options open to you. You will meet former Essex History students to talk about the professions they decided to go into with their history degrees. While some of these professions are closely linked to the subject of history, others are not obviously so – but historians are nonetheless well-equipped for them. We hope that hearing from History graduates, finding out about the range of career options open to History students, and gaining insights into and confidence with recruitment and the labour market, will help students to feel confident about their life after History at Essex.

View History Works: Career Portfolio on our Module Directory

This module will focus on a phenomenon peculiar to the early modern period: the prosecution of c.100,000-120,000 people for the crime of witchcraft in Europe and its colonies, which resulted in around 50-60,000 executions. In order to understand this phenomenon, and also the regional and chronological variation in witch-trials across Europe during the early modern period.

View Witches, Witchcraft and Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Europe and New England (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

How important are human rights today? What role do they play in contemporary society? And can you analyse their impact on topics like freedom of expression or global justice? Learn to identify and evaluate human rights issues in range of real-life situations, within a regional, national and international context.

View Selected Issues in Human Rights on our Module Directory

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.

View Britain’s Second World War: Mass Observation, Myth and Memory (optional) on our Module Directory