All courses | Moodle 20-21

HR903-7-SP : Race and Class in the United States, South Africa and Britain: Select Topics

As is well known, South Africa and the United States are two countries in which racial identity and conflict became peculiarly entwined with class formation and antagonisms. In the nineteenth century in both countries, slaves were always black, masters white; segregation arose in both places as new classes came into being and old ones (slaves, slaveholders, for example) declined; and labour movements in both states were to be stamped by a racism that often saw unions seeking to keep black workers out of particular jobs. Moreover, ethnic and racial identities came to have a salience so great that all too often they prevented general class solidarities from arising amongst black and white workers. Years of intense class consciousness, which saw great conflicts between labour and capital could also see murderous battles within the working class.

This module aims to explore the complex relationship of race to class in South Africa and the US from the time of the slavery through to the rise of racial segregation in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The module is designed to give students a greater understanding of the contexts which shape racial ideologies, conflict and discrimination. Topics traversed will include the comparative experience of slavery; key moments in slavery and the law; race and class at transitional moments (the Civil War and Reconstruction in the US South; the Boer War and Reconstruction period in South Africa); the relationship of the emergence of capitalism to the rise of segregation; the problem of racism and labour movements; and the utility of psychoanalytic perspectives to the analysis of racial consciousness.

HR909-7-__ : Illness and Culture in 18th-And 19th-Century Europe

This module examines medicine from the perspectives of social, cultural and gender history. It considers medicine as a culturally-embedded body of knowledge, a contested field of practice, and a significant source of gendered experience and perception. Students will be encouraged to develop a critical understanding of the theoretical and methodological approaches that inform the historical literature in this field. Case studies are mostly drawn from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but a few are from the twentieth century. Topics will vary from year to year, but will include most of the following: the nature of medical knowledge, the body in medical and social theory, illness and gender, gender and healing, professional identities, the history of the patient, doctor-patient relations, and the social construction of disease. The course consists of nine two-hour seminars and a hands-on introduction to using the resources of the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine (London).

Module Supervisor: Catherine Crawford

HR915-7-__ : The Afro-American Heritage: Post-Emancipation Societies in Latin America

Slave-trade, slavery and its Abolition have, for long time, constituted well established areas of historical research. Only more recently has interest shifted to Afro-American culture and post-emancipation societies, as part of the emerging field of post-colonial studies.

This course will start with the aftermath of Abolition in Brazil and the Caribbean and focus on three broad themes:

I) The transformation from slaves into workers and peasants.

II) The development of Afro-American popular culture.

III) 'Race', racism and citizenship.

Module Supervisor: Matthias Rohrig Assuncao

HR921-7-__ : The Public History Workshop

This module will explore how the past is transmitted and constructed in numerous public contexts, allowing students to compare contemporary presentations with those from a previous era. We will examine the many different genres and spaces through which history is, and has been, conveyed, from the museum, to the documentary, to the war memorial, school textbook, Hollywood epic and even computer game. The workshop aspect of this module will enable students to bring the theoretical understanding they draw from their readings into regular seminar discussions with the University's own public history practitioners, who will describe and answer questions about their past and current projects. Students will discover how scholarly research is made accessible to a wider audience; the way medium and audience interact to shape what kind of history is presented; the role of history, memory and myth in the creation of public identities; and the political contests that 'applied' history often generates. Students will also be given the opportunity to themselves create, participate in, and/or critique a piece of public history as part of their coursework assessment.

Module Supervisor: Alix Green

HR922-7-__ : Gender and Identity in Early Modern Europe, c.1450 – c.1750

This module will examine the ways in which gender divisions were constructed, experienced, affirmed and challenged, and the ways in which gender relations were played out and regulated in Europe c.1450-c.1750. It aims to do this in various ways. For example, it will look at certain key phenomena of the early modern period (the Reformation and religious change, and the hunting of witches, for example) and analyse how they affected gender and gender relations and the extent to which men and women experienced them differently. It will also focus on selected methodological debates with particular significance for the early modern period (whether or not there was a sixteenth-century 'crisis' in gender relations, for example, and the use of psychoanalytic theory to establish the psychological dimension of sexual difference) in order to assess how useful they are in furthering our understanding of early modern gender.

HR924-7-__ : Approaches to Cultural and Social History

This module focuses on the theoretical and methodological implications of the 'cultural turn'. It introduces students to key concepts in the field, exploring debates about the meanings of such terms as 'subjectivity', 'identities', and 'discourse'. The latter part of the course pursues the possibilities opened by cultural approaches, as reflected in new and emerging debates and themes such as childhood, public and private, sex, the psyche, and memory. Throughout we will be asking questions such as: what makes cultural history distinctive? What are its sources? How does an emphasis on representation change or challenge accepted notions of the relationship between language and experience, evidence and interpretation, the economic and the cultural?

Module Supervisor: Xun Zhou

HR925-7-__ : A Global History of Food, c.1400 - c.1750

Food is the bread and butter of human civilization - except, both bread and butter are culturally specific. Let's broaden our minds. The traditions of what is considered edible, how it is produced, prepared and consumed are central to the definition to each society's culture and, at the same time, often demonstrate enduring traditions of inter-continental contacts. In a globalised economy where the supermarket can provide us the foodstuffs whatever the season and whatever their country of origin, we are liable to forget both how local food cultures can be and, equally, how long-standing global transfer of comestibles has been. This module will investigate the cultural and social history of food, centring around the changes created by the encounters between the Americas and Europe from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century.

Module Supervisor: Thomas Freeman

HR929-7-__ : The Making of Consumer Culture: Britain 1780-1960

Until very recently the social history of consumption was virtually ignored by professional historians. It was only during the 1980s - a decade which witnessed the celebration and deification of the consumer - that this subject began to attract serious scholarly attention. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and employing a variety of primary as well as secondary source material (film and advertisements as well as written texts) this module explores both the origins and development of the 'consumer society' and also what is meant by that term.

HR931-7-FY : Dissertation

Your dissertation is the centrepiece of your MA work. It gives you the opportunity to develop and to demonstrate your skills as an academic researcher and scholarly author, as you investigate and interpret a topic of your choosing.

HR935-7-AU : Research Methods in History

This module covers practical issues relating to researching History in Britain. Subjects covered include: identifying the skills required for particular historical research projects; choosing and funding research topics; project management; interaction with the University and supervisor; the use of libraries and archives; bibliographical skills; and writing up and publishing research. The module also covers particular sources and methods for their analysis including: institutional records; autobiographies, diaries and oral history; legal records; and visual records, including film. There will also be a visit to the Essex Record Office.
The aim of this module is to provide students with a rigorous and practical preparation for undertaking historical research in Britain in the period since the sixteenth century. By the end of the module students should have come to understand the structures of archival and library provision in the UK; acquired practical skills of project management; and familiarised themselves with some of the key institutions and sources they will need to use in their research.

Module Supervisor: Matthias Rohrig Assuncao

HR943-7-__ : The Past in Hiding: Legacies of War, Holocaust, Occupation and Collaboration in Post-1945 Europe

This module explores how Germany, Italy, Holland, Poland, France and Austria dealt with the legacies and memories of fascism, National Socialism, occupation, collaboration and resistance. Coming to terms with the recent past of war, Holocaust and destruction was a European teask carried out differently in different countries. New founding narratives were created and former enemies were replaced with new ones. Taking the traingle of history, memory and narrative as a starting point, the module explores ways in which different nations coped with the past, providing insight into historical narratives and political thought in post-1945 Europe. After the end of the Second World War, Europe's population was faced with death and destruction on an unprecendented scale and there was little time, so it seemed, to mourn and reflect. New governments and new political systems quickly replaced the previousones and oftern based their foundation on an explicit stance against totalitarian regimes. Stories of resistance an martyrdom, of suffering and victimhood were essential to create the sense of a new beginning.

Module Supervisor: Nadine Rossol

HR945-7-__ : The Cold War and the Remaking of British Citizenship, 1945-89

The experience of total war transformed the relationship between citizen and state in twentieth-century Britain. The first and second world wars saw a massive expansion of state power into everyday life: men and women were mobilised to serve in the armed forces and as workers in the domestic war economy. Alongside increases in the 'obligations' placed on citizens there was also an expansion of 'rights', from the expansion of the franchise from 1918 to the implementation of the welfare state after 1945. The cold war also had a profound impact on British citizenship. The state compelled young men to serve in the military until the early 1960s; it stigmatised members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, declaring communists to be unthinking agents of an enemy power. Cold war citizenship was not simply a top-down affair imposed by the state, however. Ordinary people articulated their own visions of citizenship based on resistance to the cold war orthodoxy, whether as Marxists or peace activists. This module will explore how the cold war shaped the concept and practice of citizenship in Britain after 1945, allowing students to analyse how the conflict led to new understandings of the citizen's relationship with the state and the wider community.

Module Supervisor: Matthew Grant

HR948-7-__ : Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs (From the Sixteenth to the Twenty First Century)

Drugs are an intricate part of modern history. Study on drugs opens an opportunity for us to approach modern history from a different, refreshing yet equally authentic angle. This module questions the received knowledge by looking at the cultural and social history of drugs from the sixteenth century to the twenty first century. It covers opiates use in China and Britain as well as the global culture of smoking well before the advent of the 'Opium War' and 'War on Drugs' from the second half of the nineteenth century. It charges the multiplicity of drugs used in the twentieth century and highlights their diverse modes of consumption by a variety of social groups, from opium-smoking scholars to morphine-consuming housewives and heroin-injecting peddlers. The module will also show how prohibition in the early twentieth century contributed to social exclusion, driving drug consumption downwards the social ladder as it criminalised, and how far government policies purporting to contain narcotics actually created a 'drug problem'.