History and American Studies BA (Hons)

The US is a paradox when it comes to nature: it is both the country that invented the national park concept and the biggest carbon dioxide emitter historically; it was the first country to celebrate Earth Day in 1970, but it is also where the hyper consumerist lifestyle first emerged; it is the birthplace of some of the oldest and most important environmental NGOs and of climate denial. How can we make sense of the US and its relationship to nature? Are Americans doomed to destroy the natural wonders of their nation? Can we envision a red, white and green nation that would put science and technology at the service of sustainability and environmental justice?

The module will answer these questions by examining the US’ complicated relationship to nature chronologically. In doing so, we will re-examine and challenge conventional narratives of US history by integrating the role of nature as a historical actor in its own right. Examples of themes covered include: nature and conquest; Native American environments; nature and technology; the wilderness myth; animals in US history; environmental disasters; urban nature; the rise of environmentalism; environmental justice and environmental racism; waste and pollution; toxicities, etc.

The module will approach these themes using the tools of the environmental humanities. Combining historical, visual and literary analysis with insights from ecology and other ‘hard’ sciences, we will achieve a thorough understanding of environmental phenomena in their full complexity.

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) to Alan Ball’s True Blood (2008-), this module invites you to explore the dark, shadowy world of the Gothic in relation to a diverse range of literary texts and modern media. Combining the study of familiar canonical fictions with new and challenging material, we will train our focus on the enigmatic figure of the vampire, examining its various transitions and developments through the lens of critical and cultural theory.

Through an analysis of the Gothic, the module aims to develop your critical thinking, as well as your existing knowledge of literature, film, and television dating from 1816 to the present day. In doing so, it will encourage you to reflect on and interrogate the complex ways in which Gothic texts engage with, and intervene in, broader cultural debates about gender and sexuality.

This module will enhance your understanding of postwar American literary culture in its broader social, political, and
economic contexts. Mid-century America was a time of profound contradictions: while US citizens lived under the shadow the bomb, many experienced unprecedented economic prosperity and access to new material comforts. We will explore how national paranoia
about the spread of communism and the nuclear arms race sat alongside – and fed into – the postwar image of the American ‘good life’, an image of suburban conformity underpinned by the growth of advertising and consumer culture. We will consider how postwar fiction and poetry challenges this demand for conformity in both content and form: through its complex representations of the American cold war experience and its innovative narrative and poetic strategies. The texts on this module offer insights into postwar attitudes towards a diverse range of topics, including national and international politics, work, leisure, and domesticity, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity.

In this seminar-based module you will study the roots, trajectory, and legacies of the African American Freedom Struggle since 1945. Although the primary focus will be on the movement for racial justice in the US South between roughly 1954 and 1968, that history will be placed in longer chronological and broader national and international contexts. More specifically you will study the grass-roots activities of African Americans engaged in various forms of resistance and protest alongside the histories of the major civil rights groups – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). You will interrogate their tactics, examine their often fraught relationships with each other, and assess their achievements and failures in the face of widespread resistance to racial change. You will examine the contributions of the extraordinary ordinary people at the heart of the struggle, as well as those of nationally prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King. In this module you will also analyse the relationship between the civil rights movement and the federal government, address the role of the media and popular culture in shaping both the history and popular understandings of the post-war Freedom Struggle, and examine the international coordinates and impact of the struggles.

The module examines the history and significance of the Black Panther Party (BPP), a radical protest group formed in Oakland, California in 1966. It locates the BPP within its intellectual, political, geographical, and social context, giving students the opportunity to engage with important texts that influenced the BPP while also considering the BPP’s contribution to ideas about political struggle. The module details the history of the BPP from formation until its decline into irrelevance in the late 1970s, spending considerable time focusing on key individuals such as Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the FBI repression which resulted in the deaths of numerous BPP members, gender relations in the Party, and the BPP’s political and intellectual development. Students may start the module thinking that the BPP simply represented a violent response to African American oppression dominated by guns, leather jackets and Afro haircuts but they will end the module with a nuanced understanding of the profound contribution of the BPP to American history.

In this module you will learn how different scholars have conceptualised and written about women, crime and subversion from 1400 to 1800. You will assess and analyse why and how tensions in the early modern period meant that authorities across Europe directed their attention upon women in specific ways. The influence of the Protestant reformation is examined in terms of its impact upon female behaviour. Female criminality and subversive behaviour will be examined through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, including feminist and gender theories. Key concepts at the fore of this module include witchcraft, petty treason, infanticide, female piracy, prostitution, adultery and fornication, lesbianism, the crime of cross-dressing, and women’s strategies in European court systems. You will move beyond areas classified as criminal to behaviour considered as subversive and deviant, such as domestic disorder. You will utilize a wide range of primary sources including court records, the Old Bailey legal records, assize court records and female testimonies from across Europe which will equip you to think critically about academic literature, primary sources and historical interpretation.

The dissertation gives you the opportunity to work on a sustained piece of research of your own (guided) choice and to present that research in an organised and coherent form in a major piece of writing. The module will teach you how to function as an independent researcher, learner and writer. The dissertation represents the culmination of your studies as a Joint Honours student. You will apply the skills developed in your earlier studies to a discrete body of primary sources, working upon a clearly defined topic. In designing and implementing your research project, you will draw on insights and approaches from both of the disciplines that from part of your degree. The dissertation will develop your research skills and allow you to work independently, drawing on the advice and guidance of a designated supervisor.

You will learn about the origins, evolution and dynamics of one of Europe’s most recent – and deadly – intra-state conflicts. The ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, 1968-98, was marked by their persistence and seeming intractability. With the paramilitary ceasefires in the 1990s, a new era opened; but difficulties remain in moving from a mere absence of violence to a genuine peace. You will examine the dynamics of violence and its impact on the politics and culture of Northern Ireland over a fifty year period, and the significant challenges posed to peace since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

This module examines the political, social and cultural history of Paris between 1815 and 1900. You will study different aspects of the history of nineteenth-century Paris – revolution, urban development, popular culture, and artistic life – through a range of primary sources, including contemporary artistic and literary representations of the city. You will assess and analyse the relationship between the city of Paris and political change during this period, with a particular focus on urban insurrection and revolution. You will also explore artistic movements such as Romanticism and Impressionism, as well as the rise of leisure and consumer culture and the urban development of the city, especially during the Second Empire (1852-1870). Throughout the module, you will investigate wider historical debates about urbanisation and the growth of the nineteenth-century European city. In looking at the history of nineteenth-century Paris – the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’, as the German theorist Walter Benjamin described it – from a range of perspectives, this module will enhance your knowledge and understanding of cultural and social approaches to history, and develop your ability to use interdisciplinary methodologies in your study of the past.

In this final year module you will gain familiarity with the ideas of the ostracised, the disenfranchised, the heterodox, the rebels, the heretics, and, in general, those women and men who, often defiantly, thought outside the boxes of dogma, doctrine, and the socially, politically, and morally acceptable within the strictures of a very specific context: the Inquisition-dominated early decades of a global empire led by Catholic Spain.

In this course you will be able to explore the relevance of marginality, innovation, and challenging established ideas in the constant flux of changing tensions that determine the evolution of human civilisations. With a focus on the spiritually and socially scandalous, you will learn how groundbreaking and “dangerous” ideals and behaviours contributed to reshaping the canon of values that constitute and consolidate Western Civilisations during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. This will be illustrated by Spain’s example of coexistence, conflict and intersection between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as by its attempt to build a coherent new Christian Empire made of diverse peoples.

With the invaluable help of fascinating resources such as translated archives of the Spanish Inquisition, treatises, chronicles, diaries, sermons, admonitions and “forbidden” books, you will be able to explore how women and men of very diverse backgrounds conspired against the official. They often sacrificed their own life in the process of proposing alternative ways of thinking and being in an unforgiving context of rampant orthodoxy and brutal repression and punishment of those who strived to be different.

This module will appeal to anyone interested in telling stories. It will help you think about how your existing historical skills can be applied beyond university, while equipping you with experience of project management, team building, and working with a range of non-university stakeholders. This module gives students the opportunity to make their own short audio documentary. Students pitch, script, record, and edit their own documentaries using audio equipment and free, open-source, cross-platform audio software. Students will be given a broad theme (such as the 1970s and the Northeast of England) and will then generate a proposal and ‘pitch’ this to the class. Following selection, groups will then work on developing a script and identifying interviewees. Teams will produce their documentaries by dividing up the production responsibilities, so that students gain not only experience of teamwork but also of making a specific contribution to the project. Across the semester, the class will progress through the stages of pre- and post-production together week-by-week. Portable recording equipment will be made available and students will be (i) instructed on using industry-standard audio equipment; (ii) classes on ethics and oral history techniques; (ii) training on how to use editing software. At the same time, the class will both engage with relevant literature and listen to a range of audio documentary in order to better understand creative and production issues. The emphasis in this module will be both on the finished documentary but also on the process involved and the skills acquired along the way.

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Sometimes it can seem that concern about climate change and the broader environmental crisis is a recent phenomenon whose effects are largely felt in other parts of the world. This module challenges these assumptions. You will learn about the origins of these concerns in their British context through five environmental disasters that shaped Britain after the Second World War. They are the devastating east coast floods of 1953, the collapse of the spoil heap onto a school at Aberfan in Wales in 1966, the wrecking of the Torrey Canyon, an oil tanker, off the Cornish coast in 1967, the near-extinction of birds of prey as a consequence chemical pesticides in the 1950s and 60s, and the hurricane that caused widespread destruction to woods and forests in 1987. You will spend two weeks on each of these case studies. The first week will focus on the event itself and its human and non-human causes and costs. The second week will focus on the event’s long-term political, social, and cultural consequences. Among the questions you’ll consider are: How did public opinion and the media respond to these disasters? What short and long-term effects did they have on government policy? In what ways did these disasters catalyse the development of the modern environmental movement? How has our understanding of what constitutes a natural disaster changed over time? You will learn about the historical development of theories of climate change and you will be able to contextualise historically the environmental crisis that is shaping political culture today and develop a greater understanding of why it is so difficult to agree on possible solutions.

In July 1979 a broad-based opposition movement led by a small group of young guerrillas - the ‘Sandinistas’ - overthrew the Somoza dictatorship which had ruled Nicaragua for 43 years. The euphoria of triumph quickly soured, as the new Sandinista government faced division at home and aggression from overseas, in the form of a US-funded proxy conflict, known as the ‘Contra War’. In this module, you will learn how ordinary Nicaraguans experienced the revolutionary decade by working with a wide range of sources, including memoirs, poetry, and murals. You will draw on testimonios and oral histories to critically evaluate the impact of the revolution’s programmes in education, agrarian reform, and women’s rights; and you will explore the Contra War in the context of the wider Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. Finally, you will use your detailed knowledge of the period to assess the relative importance of a number of factors, including US aggression and Sandinista failings, which together caused the eventual defeat of the revolution.

Being an early modern king could be dangerous. Over the course of the period, monarchs were executed, assassinated, and deposed. While Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I lost their heads, boy-king Louis XIV pretended to be asleep as the angry Parisian mob entered his bedroom during the Fronde and James I narrowly escaped being blown up by the Gunpowder Plot. Even if not resolved in loss of life or deposition, monarchical crises that gripped early modern Europe posed a significant challenge to royal authority and legitimacy. These moments of crisis were connected to the changing nature of royal power, redefined in clashes between monarchs and their subjects exacerbated by the Reformation, dynastic politics, the changing relationship between monarchs and nobles, the emerging concept of the state and new ideas about how it should be governed. Over the course of this module you will examine monarchical crises through case studies including the executions of Jane Grey and Mary Stuart, assassinations of Henri III and Henri IV, the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution, the Fronde, and the Defenestration of Prague and deposition of the Winter King, Frederick V. We will consider the causes, outcomes, and representations of these crises through a variety of sources, including pamphlets, chronicles, letters, and images. We will also consider the representation of these events in the modern media such as film, television, and fiction writing.

In every empire, including the British case, non-human animals have been a crucial presence. Domesticated creatures, such as cows, pigs and sheep, accompanied European colonisers and assisted in the – often violent – processes that led to land clearances, changed environments, indigenous dispossession, and the spread of European settlement. This module seeks to give you a sense of the complicated and contested place of animals in empire. For some human colonisers, the hunting, killing, stuffing and exhibition of wild animals symbolised the European’s command of nature, and helped justify the whole imperial endeavour. But animals could also make trouble for empires: efforts to reproduce prized species and breeds did not always work; many animals spread disease; the growth of pest populations was a constant source of anxiety; and imported species could bring environmental changes that endangered both indigenous and European settlement.

This module considers this complicated interweaving of human and non-human histories in the British empire story, from the early modern settlements of seventeenth-century New England to the colonies of indirect rule in twentieth-century Africa. The first week will introduce you to the methodologies of animal history, and what an animal history of empire requires and might reveal. Thereafter, each week considers a species and a regional case study (e.g., rabbits/Australia; cows/southern Africa; tigers/British India). This simple structure introduces learners to themes as various as imperial masculinity and violence (hunting), ecological and social crises (epizootics), colonial community and family life (pet ownership), colonial urban history (pest control), imperial cultures in the metropole (taxidermy) and colonial national identity (animals as symbols). Importantly, the module is not exclusively structured around British and European viewpoints and actions: episodes such as the Xhosa cattle killing in 1850s southern Africa, to take one example, allows for a consideration of the differences and similarities in European and indigenous human-animal relationships.

You will learn about the relationship between empire, ecological degradation, and conservation through key themes such as ‘ecological imperialism’, ‘green imperialism’ and ‘animal agency’. Finally, this module will help you to historically contextualise current debates about human-animal relationships and the imperial roots of our ecological crisis; you may also recognise that the British empire experience provides examples and lessons that might help us rethink contemporary anthropocentric attitudes, and to develop healthier alternatives.

In this module, you will be provided with the skills to complete a written dissertation and a public-facing output on a topic that you will agree with your supervisors. The dissertation with public history represents an opportunity to apply the skills you have acquired at earlier levels, as well as a chance to develop new skills, both theoretical and practical, associated with public history. In Semester One you will produce the written piece of work. This written piece, which can take the form of a ‘short dissertation’ or ‘extended essay’, may be an analysis of a discrete body of primary sources, a discussion of historiographical controversy, or an intervention in a current debate about the public understanding of the past. In Semester Two you will work with your supervisors to produce a public output (the ‘knowledge exchange’ component), such as a digital exhibition or public history podcast, based on your research for the short dissertation/extended essay. The knowledge exchange aspect may include work with an external partner. The ‘Dissertation with public history’ is an exercise in research and public engagement and is intended to develop your research and communication skills, as well as your ability to work independently. Topics will be supervised by two appropriate tutors, one with subject-specific knowledge, the second with knowledge exchange experience.

In this module, we will consider how young people have responded to, and in some cases shaped, major episodes and developments in modern and contemporary history. In examining youth action, we will cover a variety of movements and campaigns. For example, we will discuss the role of communist and fascist youth organisations in the 1920s and 1930s as well as the involvement of students in anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles. Moreover, we will investigate youth politics in the Cold War, the impact of student protests in the 1960s as well as young people’s efforts to address issues such as gender equality or the fate of the environment.

The scope of the module is international, with examples that cover cases from Europe (France, Germany, Russia), Africa (Ghana, South Africa), Asia (China, Japan) and the Americas (Brazil, Mexico, the United States). We will pay particular attention to global aspirations and connections, as we will trace how young activists sought to build ties across national borders. Such efforts will also allow us to consider how various movements imagined and pursued the quest for a different world and a better future.

In this module you will learn how the world’s biggest democracy came into being, starting with the successful struggle for independence and going up to the 21st century. You will develop a broad understanding of India’s postcolonial politics, culture, economy and society. Using a diverse range of materials, you will analyse how the British Empire’s ‘Jewel in the Crown’ established itself as a postcolonial democratic republic amidst numerous obstacles, tensions and conflicts.

The first half of the module introduces you to the contemporary history of India through five episodes, which help us to understand key issues like decolonisation, secularism, corruption and liberalisation. The second half of the module considers six themes, exploring how these tell us different things about India in the second-half of the 20th century. Chronologically, the module begins with anti-colonial nationalism of Mahatma Gandhi and others, from around the 1930s onwards. The module then covers almost the entire period of independent India, from the creation of the republic and partition of the subcontinent in 1947, right up to 2019 – the year in which the current Hindu nationalist BJP government won a second consecutive landslide victory, marking for many the demise of India as a secular, multicultural democracy.

The second half of the module covers six major themes: Gender, Caste, Migration, Conflict, Communalism, and Environment. Exploring the recent history of India through these different lenses provides new angles for understanding the ‘world’s largest democracy’ from a range of diverse perspectives.

In this module you will discover how the histories of travel and tourism are deeply connected to the making of modern Britain and Ireland. You will explore the history of tourism from its eighteenth-century origins, when seaside towns and spas welcomed their first visitors and British and Irish aristocrats embarked on Grand Tours of Europe. You will learn how British and Irish landscapes were made iconic by Romantic writers, and how the development of steamships, railways, roads, bicycles, and motor travel revolutionised the way in which journeys were experienced and narrated.

You will discover how the royal tourism of Queen Victoria and her descendants helped strengthen the political union of the United Kingdom, and how the tourism industry forged cross-border links, promoted cooperation, and encouraged dialogue between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State after the Partition of Ireland in 1921. You will also learn how tourism was connected to the expansion of the British Empire, as travellers on Thomas Cook’s tours followed missionaries, traders, and empire builders to the Middle East, Africa, and India. You will consider how Black British travellers have experienced city space and the countryside in different ways to their white counterparts, and the photography of Ingrid Pollard will prompt you to think about the relationship between race and national identity in Britain today.

You will learn about key concepts and debates in the history of tourism, such as mobility, authenticity, landscape and place, gender, post-colonialism, the interaction of ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’, and the growing importance of travel as part of individual and national identity. You will engage with a wide variety of primary source material, from personal travel accounts, guidebooks, and timetables to the rich visual and material culture of postcards, illustrations, paintings, photographs, and poster artwork.

Most people find out about politics, and what is going on in the wider world, through the media. It is therefore critical to understand how the media functions in contemporary society. This module focuses upon the debate about the role of the media in liberal democracies: is it an independent check on the exercise of power or an instrument by which the powerful manipulate the masses? What is the impact of the media upon individuals: does it inform us or brainwash us? How are the Internet and other new technologies affecting individual’s ability to access alternative sources of information to the established media? What implications do these new media have for states that seek to direct, if not control, the public’s access to information? What role, if any, should propaganda play in a liberal democracy? Using concepts, such as power, and theories of media effects, media performance and interpersonal communication, students will be encouraged to engage with these fundamental questions.

This module is concerned with popular music culture and its relationship to film, an area much neglected in academic film studies, television studies and popular music studies. As such, it seeks to address this absence by looking at a number of key junctures where popular music culture, the cinema and television inter-relate, exploring debates about gender representation, authorship, genre and music in performance, as well as how the films studied relate to context of their production and reception. The module, therefore, covers topics such as the following in a largely chronological fashion. An indicative syllabus is as follows:
1. Early moments: The significance of the early Elvis Films: King Creole
2. Punk rock on film: The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle
3. The revisionist musical: Von Trier, Lhurmann et al
4. Popular Music and national identity: The Commitments
5. Popular Music and ‘Race’ representation: 8 Mile
6. Gender play: Velvet Goldmine, In Bed with Madonna
7. The popular music / rock documentary
8. Dance and the male body: Saturday Night Fever
9. The concert film" from Wadleigh's Woodstock to Godard's One plus One.
10. Critical approaches to music video: Corbijn, Cunningham et al.
11. Nostalgia and the popular musical biopic: Control

You will learn to understand how the term ‘cult’ has been applied to film and television programmes in different ways, and how the concept has developed across history. The module will enable you to critically examine the ways that cult has been theorised both in relation to films and television programmes, and some of the key differences between cult television and cult film. You will understand how cult can be applied to both films, the reception of films, as well as how it has increasingly infiltrated marketing discourses. Case studies on the module include midnight movies, authorship and cult, fandom, telefantasy, censorship and controversy, exploitation cinema and global cult cinema.

The modern period in horror cinema is generally seen as beginning in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. This module explores the wide range of horror films produced since that date, primarily in the US but also considering the development and influence of horror film production in Italy, Japan and the UK. Through this exploration, the module will identify key themes, formats and cycles, and engages with the relation of the horror genre to changes in the film industry and to broader social and historical change. It also explores the aesthetic innovations and challenges offered by a range of forms of horror, and the creative ways in which the genre has experimented with film form and style. In taking the module, you will acquire an understanding of the critical and cultural issues raised by this important area of American and global culture and you will develop your own critical and analytic insights into a range of iconic horror films produced between 1968 and the present.

In this module, you will critically examine the relationship between US filmic institutions (films and industrial bodies – hereafter “cinema”) and different social contexts, including, for example: changes to the Hollywood Studio System (and the birthing of the “New Hollywood”), cinema’s responses to war and global trauma, and cinema’s engagement with issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality. Taught through lectures, demonstrations (film screenings) and student-led seminars, the course explores many of the ways cinema has engaged with key societal concerns.

You will be required to read and reflect on specific theoretical and empirical academic work by leading scholars and commentators and, using your analytical and interpretive skills, relate this work to the issues raised in class and by the accompanying film screenings. The module is assessed by a written essay or equivalent video essay, which is designed to test your knowledge of film history and industry (one of the world's major mass communications industries), to evidence a sophisticated understanding of the issues under scrutiny, and your ability to work to a deadline. Ultimately, the module asks you to consider: What is the significance of studying cinema as a mass communications industry, an outlet for personal expression, and as a political tool? What can cinema tells us about history? What can cinema tell us about ourselves?

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.