History Department
Undergraduate Modules
Available in 2016/17
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Contents
Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................... 5
First-Year Modules ............................................................................................................................................ 8
AM101 Latin America: Themes and Problems .......................................................................................... 8
AM102 North America: Themes and Problems ......................................................................................... 8
AM103 Comparative History, Literature and Film of the Americas .......................................................... 9
HI127 The Medieval World ........................................................................................................................ 9
HI153 Making of the Modern World ....................................................................................................... 10
HI173 Empire and Aftermath .................................................................................................................. 10
HI174 The Enlightenment ........................................................................................................................ 11
HI175 Making History .............................................................................................................................. 12
HI176 Kill or Cure: The History of Medicine and Health.......................................................................... 12
HI177 Politics and Society in Africa from 1800........................................................................................ 13
HI178 Farewells to Arms? War in Modern European History, 1815-2015 .............................................. 13
Second-Year Modules ...................................................................................................................................... 15
AM204 Early American Social History 1607-1776 ................................................................................... 15
AM211 Reform, Revolt and Reaction in the US....................................................................................... 15
AM213 American Historical Cinema........................................................................................................ 16
AM217 Caribbean History: From Colonisation to Independence ........................................................... 16
AM219 From the Revolution to the Drug War: Mexico’s Twentieth Century ........................................ 17
AM220 "The Country of the Future?" Introduction to the History of Modern Brazil ............................. 18
HI203 The European World, 1500-1750 .................................................................................................. 18
HI209 Social History of England, 1500-1700 ........................................................................................... 19
HI253 Gender, History & Politics in Britain, 1790-1939 .......................................................................... 20
HI255 Religion and Religious Change in England..................................................................................... 20
HI260 Nation and Memory in Russia, Poland and Ukraine, 1800 to the present ................................... 21
HI271 Politics, Literature and Ideas in Stuart England: c.1600-c.1715 ................................................... 22
HI274 Renaissance Research Project....................................................................................................... 22
HI275 The British Problem: Empire, Conflict and National Identities 1558-1714 ................................... 23
HI276 Radical Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe, 1918-1939 ....................................... 23
HI277 Africa and the Cold War ................................................................................................................ 24
HI278 From Cradle to Grave: Health, Medicine and Society in Modern Britain ..................................... 24
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HI280 The Ottoman Empire and Europe, 1453-1922 .............................................................................. 25
HI281 Being Human: Human Nature from the Renaissance to Freud .................................................... 26
HI290 History of Germany, from 1890 to Today ..................................................................................... 27
HI291 Britain in the Twentieth Century: Narrating the Nation ............................................................... 27
HI293 Galleons and Caravans: Global Connections 1300-1800 .............................................................. 28
HI296 The Scientific Revolution in Perspective ....................................................................................... 28
HI297 Twentieth Century India: Colonialism, Democracy and Protest ................................................... 29
HI2A5 Individual, Polis and Society: Philosophical Reflections in History ............................................... 30
HI2A6 Urban Catastrophes: Disasters and Urban Reconstruction from 1906 to the Present ................ 30
HI2A7 A Global History of Food ............................................................................................................... 31
Final-Year Modules .......................................................................................................................................... 32
Special Subjects ........................................................................................................................................... 32
AM407 Slavery and Slave Life in the American South, 1619-1865.......................................................... 32
HI312 Radicalism in the English Revolution 1640-1660 .......................................................................... 32
HI31G The Birth of Modern Society? Britain 1660-1720 ......................................................................... 33
HI31J The French Revolution, 1774-1799................................................................................................ 33
HI31R The Elizabethan Reformation ....................................................................................................... 34
HI31T India after Indira............................................................................................................................ 35
HI31Z Reinterpreting the Holocaust: Sexualities, Ethnicity, Class ........................................................... 35
HI32B Kenya's Mau Mau Rebellion, 1952-60 .......................................................................................... 36
HI398 Crime and Punishment in the Long Nineteenth Century .............................................................. 36
HI3F9 The Forging of the Iberian World, c.1400-c.1600 ......................................................................... 37
HI34D The Cultural History of the NHS .................................................................................................... 37
One-Term Special Subjects (for students returning from Venice at Christmas) ......................................... 38
HI317 Russian Revolution, 1914-1921..................................................................................................... 38
HI31F Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans: China, India and the West 1601-1833 ............................ 38
HI388 Religious Conflict and Civil War in France c.1560-1600 ................................................................ 39
Advanced Options ....................................................................................................................................... 40
AM411 Histories of Gender in the Americas: Ladies, Wenches, Hombres and Machos......................... 40
AM417 Slavery, Memory and Memorialisation ...................................................................................... 40
AM420 Space, Place and Movement in Atlantic Slave Societies: Brazil, Cuba and West Africa, 1791-1888
................................................................................................................................................................. 41
AM434 From the Blues to Hip Hop.......................................................................................................... 42
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HI31E Stalinism in Europe 1928-1953 ..................................................................................................... 42
HI31X Feminism, Politics, and Social Change in Modern Britain ............................................................. 43
HI320 Florence and Venice in the Renaissance ....................................................................................... 44
HI32A Politics of Protest in Europe, 1968-1989 ...................................................................................... 44
HI33S Justice, Power and Religion in the Islamic World: Shari'a Law Across History ............................. 45
HI34C Building the Future: The Politics of Urban Planning in Europe, 1848-1989 ................................. 45
HI34I Medicine, Empire and the Body, c.1750-1914 ............................................................................... 46
HI383 Madness and Society .................................................................................................................... 47
Other Final-Year Modules ........................................................................................................................... 48
HI323 Historiography............................................................................................................................... 48
Dissertation ............................................................................................................................................. 48
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Foreword
Introduction
Please note that the modules listed are those that we intend to run based on the latest information regarding
staff availability. Circumstances can change, however. Although unlikely, teaching staff can retire, take jobs
elsewhere, take parental leave, or suffer from ill health. This might mean we have to withdraw a module at
a later point. If that is the case, we will explain the reasons to our students. We also cannot guarantee that
students will get their first choice of modules or that classes of different modules will not clash, but we do
everything we can to avoid such problems.
Syllabi
The syllabus for each undergraduate course in the History Department is available on the online syllabi
webpages.
Deadlines
The deadlines to apply for History modules are listed below. Please note that other academic departments
may have different application deadlines for their own modules.
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History Undergraduate First Year Modules: midnight (GMT) on Tuesday 4th October 2016, the end
of the second day of week 1 of the autumn term
History Undergraduate Second-Year Modules: midnight (GMT) on Sunday 5th June 2016, the end of
week 6 of the summer term
History Undergraduate Final-Year Modules: midnight (GMT) on Sunday 5th June 2016, the end of
week 6 of the summer term
Places are not allocated on a first-come first-served basis, but instead all History and CAS students (both
single and joint honours History and CAS students, and including 'History, Part-Time' students and 'Liberal
Arts, History Pathway' students) who submit their module nomination form by the relevant deadline are
given equal consideration. Those students who miss the relevant deadline are required to wait until the
module allocation process has been completed for those students who did submit by the deadline, and then
to make their choices from the reduced number of module places that still remain available.
History and CAS students are strongly recommended to spend sufficient time perusing the websites of the
available modules to enable an informed choice as to their preferred modules. No student can be guaranteed
their first choices, and so it is important to spend as much time considering reserve choices as first choices.
If a student is selecting more than one History or CAS option module, they are not permitted to repeat their
first choices as a reserve choice elsewhere on their module nomination form (if it is not possible to allocate
a module as a first choice, they it cannot be allocated as a reserve choice and so there is no point including it
as such). However, students may repeat their reserve choices for more than one module place.
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Changing Module Nominations
Students may change their module nominations by resubmitting their form as many times as wish prior to
the nomination deadline, and the last module nomination form submitted prior to the deadline will be the
one used for the module allocation process. Due to the intensive administrative demands of allocating
modules to students, it is not possible to cater for students that wish to change their module nominations
after the nomination deadline.
Update of Modules
Please be aware that teaching staff update and refresh the module syllabi during the summer vacation, and
so the individual lecture and seminar topics currently on the module websites may be reorganised or
amended and the bibliographies may be updated to reflect this and to add any relevant new publications.
However, the main themes and topics of each module will remain as stated.
Timetabling
It is unfortunately not possible to specify the timetabling of the lectures and seminars for the second-year
and final-year undergraduate modules at the time of the Summer Term module nominations, although many
modules will be scheduled for the same day/time slots as the previous academic year. However, some
modules will inevitably be rescheduled to alternative days and times, including the possibility of a small
number of modules being rescheduled for lectures at 6pm-7pm. Students will be informed once the teaching
timetable has been finalised.
Field Trips
Some modules may include an optional field trip that will incur a small cost for each student who goes on the
field trip. Students who are unable to attend such field trips due to financial hardship may apply to the History
Head of Department for the field trip costs to be covered by the Department.
Module Allocation Results
The results of the undergraduate second-year and final-year module allocations are published online at the
end of the summer term of the preceding academic year. The results of the undergraduate first-year module
allocation are published online on the Thursday of the first week of the autumn term.
Queries
If you have any queries regarding the History Department's module nomination and allocation process please
contact the History Department Administrator, Mr Robert Horton, at R.S.Horton@warwick.ac.uk.
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Additional Information
Additional information is available online:
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History and CAS Students Considering Outside Options
Non-History Students Seeking a History or CAS Module as an Outside Option
Information for Visiting International Students
Undergraduate Module Nomination Forms
First Year Undergraduate History and CAS Modules 2016/17
Second Year Undergraduate History and CAS Modules 2016/17
Final Year Undergraduate History and CAS Modules 2016/17
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First-Year Modules
AM101 Latin America: Themes and Problems
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am101
Compulsory for CAS students. Available to History students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS team-taught undergraduate first-year module draws
on the expertise of a number of Latin American specialists to
provide a wide-ranging overview of themes and problems in Latin
America’s social, political and cultural history. The module begins
with the first meetings of Iberians, American peoples and Africans
at the end of the fifteenth century, and ends with a consideration
of the vibrant new social movements that have helped shape
democratic transitions and the new “Pink Tide” in recent decades.
The first term focuses on colonial history and the eventual
independence of the region; the second and third terms consider
post-colonial nation-building. Along the way, a number of themes
stand out: tension between elite projects and popular actions; the
problems of political violence and democratic inclusion; Latin America’s revolutionary tradition; the quest for
nation-building; tensions and positionings over race, religion, gender and indigeneity; land and labour; and
the growing economic and military might of the United States. The module provides both excellent grounding
for students who wish to specialise in comparative Americas topics in the future, and an excellent
introduction to how the continent fits with and compares to other regions of the world and their histories.
AM102 North America: Themes and Problems
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am102a
Compulsory for CAS students. Available to History students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS first-year module introduces students to topics in
North American history, from the first European settlements of
the early 17th century to the 1990s. Its primary focus is on the
British North American colonies and on the USA, although there
is some attention to the history of New France and of Canada.
Detailed coverage of North American history is not feasible, and
is not attempted. Instead, students are asked to consider some
major recurrent themes (including social history, race, class,
gender, and political developments) by studying key episodes and
events in some detail.
Lectures and seminars address the following topics: Native America; European exploration, settlement and
migration to North America; the development of colonial society and North America's position in the Atlantic
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World; the American Revolution; political and social development from 1776-1861; Civil War, Reconstruction,
and segregation; westward expansion and imperialism; industrialisation, opposition, and reform, 1870s1920s; the women's movement; the Great Depression and the New Deal; the Second World War and the
Cold War; the affluent society; the Civil Rights movement and the counterculture; the rise of the new
conservatism; and the United States since the end of the Cold War.
AM103 Comparative History, Literature and Film of the Americas
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am103
Compulsory for CAS students. Not available to History students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
In this 30 CATS multidisciplinary first-year undergraduate core module of the course 'History, Literature and
Cultures of the Americas', students will be asked to look at various topics of Comparative American Studies
through history, film and literature. After a brief introduction to essay writing and film and literary theory,
students will look at some of the key themes of American studies today including indigenous-European
relations, US hegemony, race relations, and violence. In doing so they will be introduced to the
methodologies, research techniques and theories of Comparative American Studies, from the use of
quantitative data to comprehend the scope of the slave trade to the harnessing of oral testimony to
understand the mechanics of Chicago drug gangs.
HI127 The Medieval World
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi127
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS first-year undergraduate module provides a
thematic introduction to European history of the later medieval
and Renaissance periods and will broaden understanding in
preparation for the second-year 'The European World' core
module. Original documents form an integral part of the module,
and students can develop their computing skills in consulting
them. The module syllabus includes Feudalism, economic life,
religious life and spirituality, human relations and the family,
intellectual life and education, visual culture, politics and war,
Europe and the wider world, the crusades and the age of
discovery.
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HI153 Making of the Modern World
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi153new
Compulsory for History students. Available to Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option. Not available to CAS students.
'Making of the Modern World' is the first year core module for all
full-time History single honours and joint degree students. It may
also be taken as an option by part-time students, visiting students,
and students from other departments. In addition to the standard
timetable, the module is also offered every few years as an
evening option for part-time Historical Studies students. The
module is only available as a 30 CAT version.
The module contextualises later modern history by providing a
framework in which major historical processes of the later
modern era are studied on a world-wide scale. The module moves
away from a eurocentric and narrative focus and provides more
scope for historical approaches based on, among other things, culture, identity and environmental history.
The central focus of the module is the rise of the modern, its diffusion and resistance to it. Central features
are the Enlightenment, the rise of democracy, industrialisation, imperialism and political and cultural
revolution.
HI173 Empire and Aftermath
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi173/
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Empire casts a long shadow over history-writing today. Designed
and taught by a team of lecturers who are experts in the history
of India, the Sinophone world, the Middle East, Africa and Britain,
this 30 CATS first-year option module introduces students to the
study of empire, and to its many scholarly controversies. Although
‘Empire and Aftermath’ unfolds using a loose chronological
structure (and, in the main, draws on episodes from the British
empire), this is not a 'what happened?' module. Given that we are
all writing history in the aftermath of empire, this module aims
instead to equip students to grapple with our collective postcolonial predicament.
In order to do this, topics and readings for this module combine fine-grained empirical analysis with larger
theoretical questions and readings. In other words, this module invites students to explore questions like:
‘What is post-colonial history?’ or ‘What is the relationship between formal political representation and
scholarly representations of people, place and events that pepper the history of empire?’ and, finally, ‘Is it
wrong to admire Niall Fergusson?’ (Yes).
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The module is also meant to make you think about how we should think and write about imperialism and its
aftermath. There will be a significant emphasis on the ideas and methodologies of what has become known
as post-colonialism. Throughout the module, we'll discuss the extent to which imperialism continues to exert
an influence over the ways in which historians and others conceptualise parts of the world that were once
colonised as well as former colonial powers.
HI174 The Enlightenment
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi174
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS first-year interdisciplinary option module will
introduce students to the Enlightenment, a movement of ideas
c.1650-c.1800 that has been seen as laying the foundations of
modernity. The Enlightenment embraced science, religion,
politics, economics, exploration, collecting, literature, print,
morality, international relations, sexuality and art. It affected
much of Europe but also Europe's colonies, seeking to rid the
world of what it saw as superstition and ignorance and to replace
them with reason and progress. That Enlightenment 'project'
shaped the British, American and French revolutions but remains as controversial today as it was in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
This module is delivered by a team of lecturers drawn from within the History department but also, reflecting
the multi-disciplinary nature of the Enlightenment itself, from the departments of English and Comparative
Literary studies, Art History, French, German and Law. No prior knowledge of the period is necessary (we
know that it will be very new to most students) and the module will complement "Making of the Modern
World (HI153)" which begins with a week on the Enlightenment. It will also help prepare History students for
the core second year module, The European World (HI203).
Students taking the module will be offered the opportunity to make a field trip, to the Enlightenment Gallery
at the British Museum (itself a creation of the Enlightenment's desire to collect and order knowledge).
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HI175 Making History
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/makinghistory
Compulsory for History students. Not available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This is a 30 CATS first-year core module for all single-honours and
joint-honours history students, but is not available to students
from outside of the History Department or to visiting exchange
students. The module explores the practice of history through the
research process, from primary sources to the presentation,
dissemination, manipulation and consumption of historical
interpretation. It encourages students to think critically about
materials, scholarship and their own approach to academic work
in different media.
This module includes input from and interaction with the
University Library (Academic Services Team), the Modern
Records Centre, the Academic Technology Team and Student
Careers and Skills.
HI176 Kill or Cure: The History of Medicine and Health
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/kill_or_cure/
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS team-taught first-year option module will introduce
students to the global history of medicine. We will cover a wide
thematic range -- from medical systems to medical surveillance,
from empire to AIDS -- and the module's chronology therefore
spans the modern and early modern periods. Geographically too,
this module will take students from Europe and North America,
to China, Africa, and beyond. Lectures will be delivered by the
academic staff of the History Department's Centre for the History
of Medicine.
Lectures in term one will introduce basic concepts, sources and historiographic trends, as well as key ideas,
events, practices and participants in global medicine. Lectures in term two will explore themes and case
studies at the heart of the history of medicine from a range of different historical and historiographical
perspectives. Lectures in term three will tackle contemporary medical concerns and debates, drawing on
historical and interdisciplinary perspectives.
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HI177 Politics and Society in Africa from 1800
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi268
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS first-year option module is an introduction to the
modern social and political history of sub-Saharan Africa. The
course takes a chronological approach, covering three broad
periods: the nineteenth-century precolonial, colonial, and
postcolonial eras. Starting with a discussion of the idea of ‘Africa’,
students will familiarise themselves with the changing nature of
African trade and commerce after the ending of the slave trade;
with the character and development of political authority in the
nineteenth century; with the establishment of colonial rule through treaty and conquest; with the effects of
colonialism on colonised African societies; with the growth of anti-colonial sentiments and the emergence of
nationalisms; and with the impact of decolonization and the formation of postcolonial states. The final
lectures and seminars will explore the nature of postcolonial African states, and include discussion of issues
such as the Rwandan genocide and ‘development’ in Africa.
Weekly lectures will provide a chronological framework. Seminars elaborate the themes from the lectures,
but concentrate on regional case studies and debates within the historiography.
HI178 Farewells to Arms? War in Modern European History, 1815-2015
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi178
Available to History and CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
In the early twenty-first century, many commentators argue that
European societies have broken politically, military, and culturally
with a past long shaped by wars and military conflicts. Following
the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ensuing transatlantic dispute,
many US conservative commentators argued with Robert Kagan
that "Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus" (Of
paradise and power. America and Europe in the New World
Order, 2003). In this view, Europeans would now be both both
unwilling and incapable of using war and military power to ensure
their security. More recently, historian James Sheehan invited us to rethink modern European history as the
painful, cruel, and costly process whereby European societies redefined their relationship to war as an
instrument of policy (Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe, 2008). These
debates, like the history of warfare, raise a series of ethical, political, and intellectual issues of continuing
import and relevance.
This team-taught 30 CATS first-year option module will introduce students to the history of war and conflicts
in modern European history from 1815 to 2015. It will consider how war, its conduct and experience, shaped
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states and societies in Europe. It will also investigate how the transformations of warfare reflected the
evolutions of European societies.
The lectures will provide a brief outline of the military conflicts that shaped the experience of Europeans
throughout the period. Most importantly however, in conjunction with weekly seminar discussions, they will
help students understand how wars affected – and were transformed by – political ideologies and regimes,
cultures, understandings of race and gender, economic systems and international relations and institutions.
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Second-Year Modules
AM204 Early American Social History 1607-1776
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am204
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS option module is available to second year
Comparative American Studies and History students, and to
fourth year Comparative American Studies students. Options are
designed to complement the first year core courses by providing
the opportunity for study in greater depth of particular regions,
periods or themes. This module is the earliest chronologically of
three options on North American History available to second-year
students, each of which builds on the first year North America
Themes core course. While complementing modules on
nineteenth and twentieth century North American topics, this
module also provides a comparative dimension to those students taking modules in early Latin American and
Caribbean history.
This module examines English colonies in North America from their establishment in the early seventeenth
century to their break away from Britain in the 1770s. It will examine why the English felt the need for colonial
expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, why they chose North America and how they went
about creating new societies three thousand miles from home. While much of the module will be arranged
chronologically, time will be set aside for the consideration of several social, ethnic, and cultural themes that
do not fit quite so neatly into this format.
AM211 Reform, Revolt and Reaction in the US
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am211
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS option module examines the turbulent history of the United States from the New Deal through
to Watergate. Drawing on the rich recent historiography on this subject, it explores how different
movements, some rooted in local activism, others based on established political groupings, responded to a
rapidly changing social, economic and cultural landscape. In particular, it shows how liberal reformers,
radicals, and conservatives all seized the initiative at different times, but due in large part to a shared
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tendency to substitute rhetoric for clear analysis, all eventually failed, leaving the US by the mid 1970s, in a
state of ‘imagined’ and, in some senses real, crisis. Key themes include the New Deal and the Great
Depression; the impact of the Second World war on racial and gender relations; post-war anticommunism
and the contradictions of the ‘Affluent Society’; the liberal agendas of the civil rights movement and the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations; the military, social and political consequences of Vietnam; the radical
vision of the New Left and counterculture; the re-emergence of a grass-roots political right; the ‘rebirth’ of
feminism; 1968 and the ‘end’ of the 1960s; and Nixon, Watergate and the 1970s.
AM213 American Historical Cinema
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am213
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS option module is available to second-year History
and Comparative American Studies students. While
complementing modules on nineteenth and twentieth-century
North American topics, this module also offers a comparative
dimension to those students taking courses in the evolution of
mass culture and historiography.
This year-long survey of Hollywood's historical film genre focuses
on the studios' engagement with American history in films
ranging from The Birth of a Nation (1915) to Far From Heaven (2002) and Changeling (2008). Readings,
lectures, and seminar discussions will consider issues in historiography, narration, ideology, genre,
censorship, race, gender, and reception. Module readings will be divided among traditional and revisionist
historiography, historical novels later adapted for the screen, screenplays, and recent critical assessments of
“filmed history.” Topics this year will include the biopic, the war film, the western, and the gangster genre.
AM217 Caribbean History: From Colonisation to Independence
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am217/
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Since Europeans ‘discovered’ the islands, territories and peoples
of the Caribbean in 1492, this region has been subjected to
externally-directed processes of imperial rivalry, colonial
settlement, the cultivation of plantation crops, land clearance
leading to environmental degradation, and the extermination of
the indigenous populations and the forced importation of
millions of enslaved Africans and indentured labourers from Asia.
This second-year option module offers an introduction to the
history of the Caribbean and its place in the wider world. It will
present key themes in Caribbean history, including slavery, the plantation, ‘race’ relations, emancipation and
its aftermath, and resistance. Of particular concern will be how colonisation made the region’s societies
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dependent on other parts of the world, a dependency which survived both the ending of slavery and
colonialism, and how efforts have been made to challenge and transcend this. The course will accomplish
these objectives through addressing the historiography of the region, as well as readings from sociology,
anthropology and geography. It will also provide experience of working with a variety of primary sources,
including films, images, and literature.
The module starts by locating that part of the world we now refer to as the Caribbean in its broadest historical
and geographical context. In the first term, we will mainly focus on the transformation of the Caribbean into
a colonised region by considering European ‘discovery’, the arrival and expansion of plantations and,
crucially, the establishment of slavery. Resistance to these processes, as well as their economic, political,
social, cultural and environmental consequences will be persistent themes. During the second term, we will
consider the gradual and uneven dismantling of colonialism in the Caribbean, with the formal ending of
slavery, the rise of American influence and decolonisation, including the Cuban Revolution. The module ends
by asking what the history of the Caribbean might reveal about globalisation, as well as if the shift from
colonialism to independence really represents a significant change in the region’s relationship with the wider
world.
AM219 From the Revolution to the Drug War: Mexico’s Twentieth Century
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am219
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Over the past century, Mexicans have endured a revolutionary
civil war, two religious uprisings, a vicious Cold War counterinsurgency, nearly fifty years of authoritarian government,
countless devaluations, and nearly a decade of violent
confrontations between drug cartels. Yet Mexicans have also
experienced far-reaching social reforms, unparalleled levels of
economic growth, rapid rates of industrialization and
urbanization, and seventy years of relative political stability. This
module seeks to understand these contradictions and the ways in which they have affected Mexicans’
everyday lives.
Students will be asked to examine at a range of subjects including the ideologies of revolutionary leaders,
like Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Subcomandante Marcos; the politics of the world’s longest running
one party state; the long struggle for indigenous rights; the experiences of Mexico’s urban poor; and the
machinations of the country’s cartels. To do so, students will be asked to adopt an interdisciplinary approach,
combining works of history, anthropology, sociology, political science, journalism and literature.
This 30 CATS second-year option module will appeal to students interested in social mobilizations, radical
politics, US hemispheric influence, and transnational crime.
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AM220 "The Country of the Future?" Introduction to the History of Modern Brazil
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am220
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
According to an old Brazilian joke, “Brazil is the country of the
future – and always will be.” Yet, after hosting the 2014 World
Cup and preparing to host the 2016 Olympics, and as Brazil’s
booming economy ensures its place within the “BRIC” group of
major emerging nations, perhaps the future has finally arrived.
But how much do we really know about this giant among Latin
American nations?
This 30 CATS second-year option module aims to get beyond the
stereotypes – whether the heady images of samba, sex, “racial
democracy” and futebol, or the disturbing pictures of
shantytowns, drug barons and obscene social inequalities – in
order to understand the major political, social and economic
patterns that have shaped Brazil’s history since independence. Along the way, we will explore what Brazil
shares with its Latin American neighbours – a heritage of Iberian colonisation; dependence on agricultural
exports and the twentieth-century struggle to industrialise; the gradual forging of a new national identity
based on ideologies of race mixture and a corporatist political tradition. We will also explore what makes it
unique: its close links to Africa that give Salvador the largest black population of any city outside Nigeria; its
incredible diversity of climates, peoples, and natural resources; its uneasy blend of “cordiality” and
dissimulated violence.
HI203 The European World, 1500-1750
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi203
Compulsory for History single-honours students. Available to all other History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students,
and as an Outside Option.
'The European World 1500-1750’ is a core module which all second-year
single honours history students take and is also available to other students
as an option. Core modules are designed to complement teaching in more
specialised options by providing a broad international context for
understanding historical developments, and to develop the ability to study
and communicate (both orally and in writing) through a relatively intense
programme of seminars, lectures and essay work.
This module is designed to provide a broad survey of European
developments in the early modern period, extending the survey taken in
Year 1 on ‘The Making of the Modern World’. It complements the
department’s early modern options (which often focus on aspects of
political, social, religious and cultural history in particular regional settings)
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by providing an overview of structures of European society in the early modern period. It examines the main
features of development and change through four themes: 1) Society and Economy 2) Religion 3) Culture and
4) Politics.
This module examines major themes in the political, religious, cultural, economic and social history of early
modern Europe as well as paying attention to Europe’s encounter with non-European societies. It
concentrates on several key aspects of the period: social and economic structures and changes; the
Protestant and Catholic Reformations and their consequences; changes in elite and popular culture, including
the print and scientific 'revolutions'; European contacts with Asia and the Americas; problems of governance;
and the development of ‘absolutism’. Particular national developments are examined, but these are placed
in a broad and comparative context.
HI209 Social History of England, 1500-1700
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi209
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module explores
the social history of England from 1500 to 1700. This module has
no pre-requisite modules, but will complement the general
knowledge of early modern Europe that is acquired through the
second-year module HI203 The European World, 1500-1750 (a
core module for single-honours history students and an option
module for joint-honours history students) and other early
modern European history options.
The focus of the module is on the majority of people who lived
and worked during the early modern period; on their habits of life
and courtship, of industry and of resistance or subversion.
Students will be (re)introduced to Social History as a discipline,
and will consider continuity and change in England by
interrogating a unique period of the country's past.
Weekly one-hour lectures cover a broad and fascinating array of
material, including riot, crime, religion and witchcraft, poverty, hierarchy and gender, agrarian change, urban
and rural societies, and even civil war. Weekly one-hour seminars build on these lectures by fleshing out
specific themes from the week, and by inviting students to engage in some of the great historical debates
which have shaped the discipline of Social History in the modern era.
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HI253 Gender, History & Politics in Britain, 1790-1939
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi253
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This module is a 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module.
Options are designed to complement the second-year core module by
providing the opportunity for study in greater depth of particular
regions, periods or themes.
This module complements the Department’s offerings in both British
History and in the study of women and gender. Its chronological focus
ranges from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
This module considers the theory and practice of women’s participation
in British economic, social and political life. Key themes will include
education, employment, citizenship and social reform. The module
aims to provide an introduction to debates about gender and history
and employs a variety of sources (including novels, autobiography,
political pamphlets and social investigations) to explore women’s and
men’s engagement in public life.
HI255 Religion and Religious Change in England
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi255
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module explores
the social, cultural and political context of religion in England
between the late-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. It builds
on the knowledge of early modern Europe acquired through the
second-year core module, and complements other departmental
options on early modern Germany, society and culture in France,
and the social history of early modern England. It provides a
sound foundation for students going on to take final-year Special
Subjects and Advanced Options in early modern English social or
cultural history, as well as for the MA in Early Modern History.
This option introduces students to a range of important themes in the field of late medieval and early modern
English religion, not so much from a theological, as from a social and cultural perspective. Its main focus is
the impact of the early Reformation (under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I) on religious belief and practice
in England, though it approaches this from the long view of the later fifteenth century. The module
commences with a detailed examination of strengths and weaknesses in late medieval Catholicism, focusing
both on institutions (clergy, monasteries) and on structures of belief (saints, sacraments, purgatory). The
significance of unorthodox religion, Lollardy and early Protestantism, is explored and related to the reform
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policies of the Tudor monarchy. Equal attention is devoted to those who opposed and to those supported
the religious changes of the sixteenth century, and throughout there is a particular focus on parishes, and
parish churches, as centres of religious culture and social organisation.
HI260 Nation and Memory in Russia, Poland and Ukraine, 1800 to the present
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/natmemory
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Would you like to understand what is going on in Ukraine today
and what is behind the Russian-Ukrainian conflict? Do you want
to understand why so many people in the past and present were
and are willing to die for their nation? Would you like to know
how the Ukrainian, Polish and Russian nations were made? Then
this 30 CATS second-year option module is for you. In Autumn
Term we will be discussing how Polish, Russian and Ukrainian
intellectuals and politicians in the 19th century 'imagined' their
nations and how they tried to include the peasantry in the nation. In Spring Term the module concentrates
on the 20th century, especially the period of the two World Wars (1914 - 1945) and the period from the
collapse of the Soviet Union to the present. You will hear about the importance of symbols, history writing
and culture for nation building. You will learn how to analyse national operas and folk music, national
literature and history paintings. Other important topics are the connections between war and the nation and
the experience of common suffering. At the end of the year you should have a good knowledge of Ukrainian,
Polish and Russian history and current affairs, you should be able to identify different types of nation building
and - last but not least - should have learned not to trust historians.
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HI271 Politics, Literature and Ideas in Stuart England: c.1600-c.1715
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/stuartengland
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS interdisciplinary second-year option module
examines the interaction between the politics, literature and
ideas of the long seventeenth century, and as a result should
appeal to all types of historians, political scientists and literature
students, as well as those interested in cultural studies and
intellectual history.
Broadly speaking the module is split in half, with the first term
being structured around the writing of four major authors: Francis
Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jonathan Swift. The
second half of the module takes a thematic approach to literature
and ideas through the Stuart period, which will include such
topics as: biography, autobiography and diaries; censorship of the
press; religious and political radicalism; the new, experimental
science; news and its different forms; corruption; satire and
polemic; radical consciences; women’s writing; republicanism;
and utopias. The module will exploit JISC Historical Texts,
together with other on-line resources. If you would like to hear an
outline and rationale for the module please listen to the
Introduction Podcast (it may take a short while to load).
HI274 Renaissance Research Project
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi274
Compulsory for single-honours History students on the 'Renaissance and Modern History' pathway. Not available to any other
students.
Taught in the spring term, this 15 CATS module is compulsory for those
second-year students taking the 'Renaissance and Modern History'
pathway of the single-honours History course. The module supports
students' Italian language study and prepares them for their final-year
term of study in Venice and for further study.
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HI275 The British Problem: Empire, Conflict and National Identities 1558-1714
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/british_problem
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS second-year early modern option module will
explore the attempts of Early Modern monarchs and
governments to gain hegemony over the British Isles and
establish an imperial dominion beyond the Atlantic. Moving from
the accession of Elizabeth to the death of Queen Anne, the
module will incorporate the ‘plantation’ of Ireland and America,
the Civil Wars, the 1688 Revolution and the 1707 Act of Union. It
will focus on the connections between the kingdoms, and show
how relations across the British Isles were affected by conflicts
over the powers of crown and church, and challenged by splits between rival religious communities. These
tensions, as the module will highlight, were grafted onto ancient national, cultural and ethnic fault lines. The
module will look at how the experience of civil war, unrest and revolution took place within a larger
international setting, studying the impact of civil and religious divisions on the development of the overseas
empire, and highlighting the competing European affinities that impinged upon subjects of the three
kingdoms. The module will focus on the experiences of the different religious, national and ethnic groupings
within the British Isles and British America, and will encompass the history of culture and ideas, as well as
religion and politics. While following a chronological structure, it will examine the longer underlying themes
of religious and national consciousness, and consider how the question of British, English, Irish or Scottish
identity was explored by poets, scholars and artists within the period. The aim will be to fix the events under
consideration within wide horizons, with students encouraged to assess the British kingdoms and empire in
a comparative framework, alongside the experiences of other European states. Students will explore
accessible primary sources, while entering into critical examinations of the rich historiography underlying the
module.
HI276 Radical Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe, 1918-1939
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/democracy
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
The years between the two world wars (1918-1939) in Europe saw
the rise of radical political movements, both on the extreme right
and extreme left. At times, those defending democracy were able
to hold their opponents at bay, but more often than not did
radical movements, mostly on the right, succeed in taking over
the state, which allowed them to implement their political
programs.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module will discuss radical political movements, their
struggle against each other and democratic societies. We will inquire why they succeeded in some countries,
while democracy could prevail in others. Finally, we will consider how radical movements that took power
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implemented their politics. While the module will draw upon national case studies, it aims at understanding
radical politics in the interwar period as a genuinely European phenomenon. Themes will include the Russian
revolution and its impact on the European working-class movement; the rise of fascist and other radical
rightist movements; the struggle for democracy in the era of Popular Fronts, and implementation of fascist
regimes in Italy and Germany. Further national case studies will include Hungary, Austria, France and Spain.
HI277 Africa and the Cold War
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/africa_and_the_cold_war
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS second-year option module introduces students to
major debates in the history of the Cold War in Africa, aiming to
set these issues within their historical, social and cultural contexts
over the period from 1945 to the 1990s. The module provides a
chronological overview of key events in the period, connecting
African events to the broader stream of the Global Cold War.
Three critical case studies - the Congo in the 1960s, the Horn of
Africa in the 1970s, and southern Africa, including Angola, from
the 1974 to 1994 – will be examined in depth. Students are
encouraged to engage with some of the most important
questions facing Africa in this period - the rise of nationalism, the
emergence of autocracy and one-party states, the rise of national
debts (often bloated by excessive military expenditure), and the agency of African actors in their dealings
with the Cold Warriors of the West and the Soviet Bloc and its allies. The roles of Cuba and China will also be
considered in depth, and the final part of the course looks at the unravelling of Cold War politics in Africa
after 1990, asking whether this process explains the dramatic increase in armed conflicts in the continent at
this time?
HI278 From Cradle to Grave: Health, Medicine and Society in Modern Britain
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/cradle_to_grave
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
‘From Cradle to Grave’, a 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module,
explores medicine in modern Britain through the lens of the lifecycle,
examining how health care and medical interventions impinge on individuals
and families from birth, through adolescence, maturity and aging, to death. It
focuses on a wide range of themes – childhood disease and child poverty, the
challenges of adolescence, fertility, reproductive health, childbirth and
maternity, diet and wellness, chronic disease, the menopause and aging. The
module is particularly concerned with the evolving relationship between
family, state and medical provision in terms of the creation of services, as well
as the question of ‘who is responsible for health?’ The module will focus on
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the rise of the state’s involvement in health care and changing institutional provision and the role of
individuals, households and communities as active participants in their own health care, as well as the impact
of voluntary organisations and patient/user groups. The module considers the role of geography, mobility,
economics, class and gender alongside age as determinants of health issues and access to care.
The module will adopt a ‘medical humanities’ framework in terms of reading and, while the bulk of the
literature is historical, we will also read materials from other disciplines which have been deeply influential
in shaping the subjects we explore: including anthropology, gender studies, human and social geography,
sociology, and literature and narrative studies. There will be a strong focus on patient narratives, and the
module will also aim to interrogate the role of the media in commenting on medical services and shaping
public perceptions. Through our readings and a ‘media watch’, we will relate the issues explored in the
module to recent and current debates in health care; thus alongside childhood disease and ideas of risk we
will consider the recent controversy about MMR vaccination, as we explore nutrition and diet we will look at
the ongoing panic about levels of obesity, and in our session on fertility and reproductive health we will focus
on current debates on the cost and consequences of extending fertility treatments.
HI280 The Ottoman Empire and Europe, 1453-1922
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/ottoman
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest-surviving
empires in history. It existed in one form or another from the turn
of the fourteenth century until 1922, and at its greatest extent
reached to Croatia and Algeria in the west, the Persian Gulf in the
east, Ukraine in the north and Yemen in the south. The empire
played a significant role in the history of Europe: it ruled large
parts of eastern and southern Europe; it was an important
antagonist or ally of all the European powers; and it was a major
trading partner for European societies.
This undergraduate second-year option module examines the place of the Ottoman Empire in European
history both in terms of Ottoman rule in south-eastern Europe and in terms of the relations between the
empire and the European states. The module covers the period from 1453, when the Ottomans began their
expansion into a world power with the conquest of Constantinople, until the collapse of the empire in the
aftermath of World War I. Students will engage with some of the fundamental questions in early modern and
modern history: the shift of economic and political power from Asia to Europe, the rise of nationalism and
the transformation of multi-ethnic empires into nation-states, and the relationship between Islam and
Europe.
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HI281 Being Human: Human Nature from the Renaissance to Freud
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi281
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Please note that students are not permitted to study both this module and 'The Scientific Revolution in Perspective (HI296)'.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year module introduces
students to the different ways in which humans have thought
about themselves from the Renaissance to the early 20th century,
both as individuals and as collectives. It forwards the idea that
‘human nature’ is not a universal, trans-historical concept
constant over time, but rather, is socio-culturally constructed. At
different moments in time, ‘being human’ has been constructed
and interpreted differently according to dominant values, norms,
and systems of knowledge. This module investigates those
differences over time in Western culture and how they link to wider social, cultural and economic contexts.
Students will learn about crucial moments in the history of conceptualising and defining ‘human nature,’
from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, to Freud and early modernity. Among other things, the
module explores how 15th-century humanists felt that all that was worthwhile about being human was to
be found in God, the scriptures, and classical texts. During the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 16th and
17th centuries, however, it began to be believed that humans possessed the creative power to ‘discover’
new things about themselves and their vastly-expanded world (the ‘new world’ of the Americas).
This module also documents how, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries, the idea of ‘human nature’
came increasingly to be articulated and worried over, and how a new age of ‘humanity’ was envisioned.
Rationality and reason became key attributes of the Enlightenment self; sociability, free speech, natural laws
and universal rights came to be seen as structuring 'civilised' society. Also important was the linking of
individuals and populations to economics and the territorial politics of emergent nation states. In the 19th
century this process continued, but ‘being human’ was increasingly defined in terms of natural laws with
ever-greater trust being placed in the natural sciences and, ultimately, the science of psychology.
Overall, the module asks how a new age of humanity and new ways of knowing one-self came into being,
and discusses what these new ways of understanding the self closed off or overlaid. Underlying the module
is the question of the extent to which we are still within the Enlightenment project, or not.
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HI290 History of Germany, from 1890 to Today
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi136
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
In this 30 CATS second-year undergraduate option module,
students will critically examine the history of Germany from the
end of Bismarck's rule to the Berlin Republic of today. In the
approach to this period, students will consider past and present
historical perspectives ranging from German particularism, issues
of citizenship and ethnicity, gender and history of sexuality,
history of everyday life and voices of the "little people", to
cultural studies. We will discuss wars, genocides, high politics and
people complaining in food lines, Jewish Germans in hiding, Communists responding to the Nazi persecution,
and hopeful young East German antifascists: The aim will be following and understanding the many
perspectives of what was, and today is, Germany. In this pursuit, students will have the chance to conduct
their own research and write a piece of Germany's history.
HI291 Britain in the Twentieth Century: Narrating the Nation
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi291
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module explores the problem of
narrating the history of twentieth-century Britain. It asks whether the story of
Britain in the twentieth century is best understand as the making, unmaking, and
remaking of the nation. It examines the roles of social change, war, Empire,
culture, and politics in the construction of the nation. It assesses the extent to
which class, gender, and race divided as well as united the British people. It
considers the relationship between British identity and that of the four
constituent nations of the United Kingdom, and it concludes with examination of
the roles of history and the heritage industry in the narration of the nation.
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HI293 Galleons and Caravans: Global Connections 1300-1800
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi163
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Galleons and Caravans introduces the global history of the early
modern world. We are now living in a time of both great
connections and significant divisions and misunderstandings
between different parts of the world. This module addresses
these by investigating the history of cultural interactions between
different parts of the world, especially in religion, art, science,
trade and consumption habits. This 30 CATS second-year option
module follows the circulation of people, knowledge and goods
in the early modern world, and compares empires and great cities. The module will be set within the
theoretical framework of global history. Topics include diasporas, material culture, the Chinese and Ottoman
empires, cities, the silk route, the Manila galleons, maps and travellers.
HI296 The Scientific Revolution in Perspective
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi296
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Please note that students are not permitted to study both this module and 'Being Human: Human Nature from the Renaissance to
Freud (HI281)'.
The early modern period witnessed dramatic changes in the way
that Europeans studied the natural world and in the theories they
held about it. New ideas emerged about the structure of the
cosmos, the nature of light and motion, and the building blocks of
matter. New plants and animals flooded into Europe from the East
and West Indies and changed the way that naturalists described
and classified the living world. New machines, such as air pumps
and electrical generators, allowed experimenters to probe more
deeply into nature; and new instruments, including telescopes to
barometers, allowed them to quantify what they found. In 1450 few natural philosophers used mathematics
or experiment to study the causes of natural phenomena. In 1800 most of them did so, and many belonged
to institutions that were dedicated to these pursuits.
Historians often refer to these changes as the ‘Scientific Revolution,’ but that phrase has come under attack
in recent years. There is broad agreement that the period 1450-1800 was an important one in the
development of modern science. But there is much debate about the timing, causes, and consequences of
the Revolution, and some historians maintain that it was not Revolutionary at all, that it was too diffuse and
drawn-out to justify an analogy to political revolutions.
The aim of this 30 CATS second-year option module is to assess the traditional narrative of the Scientific
Revolution by describing the main developments in early modern science and placing them in their
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intellectual, political and economic context. The lectures do not argue for or against the Scientific Revolution.
Instead they deliver a conceptual, historiographical and chronological framework that will help students to
decide for themselves.
The module presents science in the round. It considers the two-way interaction between science and the
wider world, and it deals not only with the theories of early modern science but also with its methods,
materials, literary form and social organisation. The module will deal with the technical content of science in
a way that is accessible to students with no background in science but that shows the relevance of this
content to a historical understanding of science.
HI297 Twentieth Century India: Colonialism, Democracy and Protest
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi297
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module will
introduce students to some of the more dominant and durable
strains of Indian political mobilization in the twentieth century. It
will explore Gandhian anti-colonialism, the nationalism of the
Hindu Right, the politics of caste and anti-caste movements, leftled workers’ and peasants’ struggles, and the developmental
nationalism of the post-colonial state. The module is divided into
two parts. In the first term synoptic lectures and seminar
discussions will be held on each of these strands of modern Indian politics. The second term will introduce
students to individual political texts, written by figures representative of the traditions mentioned above,
and will help orient students to both historical and contemporary debates. At the beginning of the third term,
two film screenings and a discussion will be organized, in order to stimulate a discussion of popular-cultural
treatments that bear upon the ideological traditions introduced in the course. So the module is intended,
simultaneously, as an introduction to traditions of politics which continue to be influential in India and as an
introduction to the study of political ideologies and their defining texts.
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HI2A5 Individual, Polis and Society: Philosophical Reflections in History
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi2a5
Compulsory for students on the History and Philosophy joint-honours course. Available to other History students, CAS students,
Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
This module will introduce students to a range of long-eighteenth
and early-nineteenth century texts in which there is sustained
reflection and commentary on the individual, the polity, and an
emerging conception of society. In doing so, this module raises
broader philosophical questions about the construction of
identity, character and virtue, political realism and idealism, and
relativism and individualism. The module also involves students
in reflecting on the changes in styles of painting, architecture and
fashion and linking this to the core themes. The emphasis of the
module is on how as historians we should approach some of the
major pieces of writing of the period, both the more and the less
philosophical. Consequently, a core component of the module is
encouraging a close reading of the texts, coupling this with raising
questions about the importance of historical context in
generating and reflecting critically on such readings. The module
is structured thematically, taking conceptions of the individual,
then the polis, then society; but within those themes it is structured chronologically, allowing students to
have a sense of the increasing interaction of different lines of argument.
This 30 CATS module is compulsory for second-year students of the 'History and Philosophy' joint-degree,
and is also available as an option module for second-year students of other degree courses.
HI2A6 Urban Catastrophes: Disasters and Urban Reconstruction from 1906 to the Present
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi2a6
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Urbanization is a defining feature of modernity and its history.
Although the majority of the world population did not live in
towns and cities before 2008, the experience of urban life offers
a very useful perspective on the making of the modern world.
Centres of political power, cultural influence, and economic
activities, towns and cities have long played a critical role in global
history. As a result, urban disasters often threatened the longterm trajectories of cities and states alike as their human and
material toll reverberated for years and decades thereafter. From
San Francisco in the 1900s to Beirut in the late-twentieth century, the capacity of urban settlements to
recover from environmental catastrophes, industrial accidents, economic decline, and from the ravages of
war revealed the strengths and the weaknesses of their social fabric. In dramatic circumstances, urban
30
reconstruction also brings to light many issues of great importance to modern historians: the link between
the built environment and local identity, the nature of social cohesion, the relationship between state and
civil society, the emergence of transnational solidarity, etc.
This 30 CATS second-year option module will introduce students to urban history by focussing on the most
extreme examples of urban crises in the twentieth and twenty-first century. It will combine general and
comparative discussions with individual case-studies that will inform our collective reflection. Those will
include cities destroyed by earthquakes (Valparaiso, 1906; Tokyo, 1923; San Juan – Argentina, 1944, or
Mexico City, 1986); hurricanes (New Orleans, 2005); fires (1871; San Francisco, 1906; Salonika, 1917) or
accidents (Halifax, 1917). We will also consider the dramatic impact of deindustrialization and economic
decline (Camden, NJ). Inevitably, of course, this module will deal with post-conflict reconstructions including
in the aftermath of the First World War (Reims and Lviv); the Spanish Civil War (Barcelona); the Second World
War (Coventry, Leningrad); the Lebanese Civil War (Beirut) and the collapse of Yugoslavia (Sarajevo).
The module will also go beyond urban history to introduce students to the history of humanitarian action.
We will indeed highlight the roles played in urban recovery by a host of local, national and transnational
charitable initiatives. The module will therefore trace the origins of humanitarianism and of humanitarian
NGOs. It will also underline the interdisciplinary nature of a field of enquiry where historians often collaborate
and learn from urban planners, architects, political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists.
HI2A7 A Global History of Food
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi2a7/
Available to History students, CAS students, Visiting International Students, and as an Outside Option.
Eating is a deeply human activity. Language itself probably
developed out of our desire to cook and share food. Yet the way
we eat now may be destroying important aspects of human
society and the environment itself. How did we get into this
mess? This 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module
explores the long history of the production, marketing and
consumption of food, from ancient times to the present, from
vegetarianism to the first battery chicken. It provides a
framework for thinking about the place of food and eating within
historical analysis. The module considers food from multiple overlapping perspectives - ethics, labour,
environment, community, power, health, hunger and science - to help contextualise our current attitudes to
food, and to introduce important historical concepts (from 'moral economies' to 'biopolitics') relevant to all
areas of historical analysis.
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Final-Year Modules
Special Subjects
Special Subjects are generally much narrower in focus than Advanced Options. They require students to engage in-depth with a
large body of primary sources (usually comprising roughly 500 pages of texts or a comparable volume of other media). Seminars and
examinations focus above all on questions of source critique/interpretation and contextualization.
AM407 Slavery and Slave Life in the American South, 1619-1865
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am407
Available to History students and CAS students. Not usually available to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
Please note that students are not permitted to study both this module and the Advanced Option module 'Space, Place and Movement
in Atlantic Slave Societies: Brazil, Cuba, West Africa, and the US, 1791-1888 (AM420)'.
This module is a 30 CATS Special Subject module for final-year
students taking degrees in the History, Literature and Cultures of
the Americas and History (both single-honours and joint-honours
degrees). It builds on core modules given in the first year, and
complements second-year modules offered on colonial and
nineteenth century North American history, as well as modules
on early Latin American and Caribbean history.
This module examines the institution of slavery in the southern United States. It allows students to study
racism and slavery in America, from the early colonial period through to the mature plantation society which
existed before the Civil War. Through the study of contemporary documents, students will explore the
interaction between race, class and gender in a slave society and gain an appreciation of the experiences of
the slave population held in bondage. They will be enabled through the use of written evidence and
quantitative data to understand why Americans turned to slavery, why some elements of the white
population supported slavery and why others did not. Students will also learn the different social, cultural,
religious and economic techniques used by African-Americans to survive the institution of slavery.
HI312 Radicalism in the English Revolution 1640-1660
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi312
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Special Subject module
explores the popular and radical dimensions of the civil wars and
their aftermath. For the first time, ordinary people played an
active and visible role in public affairs of national significance,
initially through petitions, demonstrations, and riots. Subsequent
topics include the issue of popular allegiance, and the impact of
the wars on the civilian population. The module's core, however,
lies in the emergence of radical movements, many of them
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religious in inspiration, mapping out competing models for a new religious, social and political order, among
them the millenarian Fifth Monarchists, evangelical Quakers, proto-democratic Levellers, libertarian Ranters,
and communist Diggers. The module also examines the most radical phase of mainstream politics - the trial
and execution of the king, and establishment of a republic - and the controversial career of Oliver Cromwell,
seen by the radicals as both hero and betrayer. There is also plentiful scope for assessed work on the
pioneering role of radical women in this period, as petitioners, prophets and preachers.
HI31G The Birth of Modern Society? Britain 1660-1720
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/modern_society
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS Special Subject final-year module examines how far
the period 1660 to 1720 – the age of Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe
and Jonathan Swift – marked a period of transition from an ‘early
modern’ to a ‘modern society’. As the image suggests,
contemporaries saw themselves both looking back into a recent
history of civil war and, self-consciously, forward to a 'modern'
world. This was the period in which ‘Britain’ was formed (after
England’s union with Scotland in 1707), and in which the impact
of two major revolutions was assimilated. We will study, through
a close engagement with primary sources, the emergence of a
free press, the power of public opinion, intense party rivalries,
novel forms of journalism, an innovative literary culture that saw
the birth of the novel, a scientific revolution and an early
enlightenment in ideas and beliefs. The module explores claims that in politics, religion, the economy,
science, ideas, nationhood, culture and society, Britain witnessed transformative change, the legacy of which
we still face today. As part of the module we shall have a field trip, usually to Blenheim Palace, built in the
first decades of the eighteenth century for the Churchills, one of the most controversial families of the age.
There are some background podcasts you can listen to.
HI31J The French Revolution, 1774-1799
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi31j
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Special Subject module
provides an opportunity to study in depth one of the most
significant events in world history, which has shaped European
politics and culture and has had global reverberations.
Promethean and tragic, the French Revolution has inspired and
haunted political imaginations ever since 1789. 'It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times', wrote Charles Dickens.
Historians still debate over the Revolution's mixed legacies. While
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it inaugurated rights, universal manhood suffrage, and civil equality, it also unleashed terror,
authoritarianism and empire. The French Revolution is an especially vexed subject since it bequeathed the
very terms and values we use to assess it. Ongoing debates about liberal and social democracy, the viability
of regenerating societies according to Enlightenment ideals, and the necessity of violence in establishing
democracy all grew out of the French Revolution itself.
This module treats the origins, course, and legacies of the French Revolution using a wide range of sources:
historical, scholarly, literary, and cinematic. Students will explore many different dimensions of the period -political, social, economic, intellectual and cultural -- and will explore these dimensions on the local, national
and international levels. The module is inspired by the belief that an understanding of the French Revolution
and the world it created helps make our modern world today more legible and meaningful.
HI31R The Elizabethan Reformation
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi31r
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This module will explore the impact and significance of religious
developments in England in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603),
with the aim of showing how they transformed society, culture
and politics at both national and local levels.
This module is a 30 CATS Special Subject, only available to finalyear undergraduate students, and does not require any
prerequisite modules from previous years of study. Students not
studying a single or joint honours history degree will not normally
be permitted to take this module.
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HI31T India after Indira
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi31t
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This module is an undergraduate final-year 30 CATS Special
Subject. Students are not expected to have studied India
previously.
Why would a woman join a march holding a sign that reads: ‘We
came to learn, we did not come to die’? In order to answer this
and other thorny questions, this module examines key events and
movements in India during the last quarter of the twentieth
century. Major topics include: the rise of the Hindu right, the rise
of historically oppressed groups as a political force (such as Dalits
and lower castes), and the rise of globalization as everyday
practice and as economic orthodoxy.
Students undertake close analysis of different kinds of 'primary
sources': published scholarship, archival documents, films and
oral testimony.
In short, this module introduces students to the study of India’s contemporary history and the nature of –
and prospects for – postcolonial democracies.
HI31Z Reinterpreting the Holocaust: Sexualities, Ethnicity, Class
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/holocaust
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Special Subject module
introduces students to Nazi Germany’s project to murder
Europe’s Jews and other minorities during the Second World War.
The primary focus is to study these genocides and to deepen your
understanding of events and experiences, as well as to introduce
you to different scholarly interpretations and themes. The other
goal of this module is to study the origins and implementation of
the Holocaust from the contrasting perspectives of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims. Moreover, this
module considers how violence and trauma are narrated, remembered, and reflected in film and literature.
In the seminar, we will discuss gender and sexuality, narrativity and issues of memory, artistic representation,
and also the application of historical theories.
There are no pre-requisite modules, but students will ideally have already studied general European history
or the history of modern Germany/France/Britain. The seminars requires close study of scholarly literature
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and published sources, and so you must ensure you read and think about the assigned readings before each
seminar so that you can participate in the discussion.
HI32B Kenya's Mau Mau Rebellion, 1952-60
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/mau_mau
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Special Subject module
examines a wide variety of sources related to the origins, conduct
and memorialization of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion of 1952-60.
The sources will reveal the complexity and ambiguities of what
was both an anti-colonial rebellion against British rule and a civil
war within the colony’s Kikuyu community. The module has a
particular focus on understanding the motives and actions of
those Kikuyu who joined the rebellion, and those who opposed it. The sources used will include key
documents from Kenya’s colonial history before 1952, the memoirs of those who participated in the
rebellion, official records from both Kenya and the UK – including documents released since 2012 as a result
of the court case brought by Mau Mau veterans against the British government - and fictional accounts of
the war in Britain and Kenya (including films). Sources produced by all sides of the conflict will be discussed.
Students will examine the many political and cultural uses to which this deeply contested history has been
put, including the use of historical evidence in the court case that brought an acknowledgement from the
British government that Mau Mau suspects had been tortured.
HI398 Crime and Punishment in the Long Nineteenth Century
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi398
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year Special Subject is an innovative module
which involves the students in all aspects of the design and
assessment. The syllabus is negotiated with both topics and
primary sources selected at the start of the course in two
workshop sessions. The aim is to immerse students in the reality
of archival research from the very beginning of the module and to
prepare them for their dissertation or assessed piece. The
assessment may also be negotiated and take the form of an
exhibition, play, website, multimedia resource, museum display, a conventional long essay, or any other form
which is agreed by the department and the tutor.
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HI3F9 The Forging of the Iberian World, c.1400-c.1600
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi3f9
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
In this 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Special Subject module
students will develop their understanding of the complexity of
the interactions of different groups in the Iberian Peninsula and
Spanish Atlantic world in the 1400-1600. Students will focus in
particular on the inter-faith relations between Christians,
Muslims, and Jews, and the cultural and intellectual legacies of
the interactions between these groups. Students will think about
the history of Islam in Europe and use the complex history of the
Iberian Peninsula to question some of the parameters of existing
global histories. Students will also reassess the long history of
colonialism, looking at patterns of religious violence, early
Atlantic expansion, ‘reconquista’, and the development of the
Spanish Empire. Students will approach these topics through the prism of a range of translated primary
sources and engage in the historiographical debates over constructs such as ‘convivencia’ and ‘reconquista’.
HI34D The Cultural History of the NHS
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi34d
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
The idea that the British people believe in the NHS and that it has
a meaning reaching back to its foundation in 1948 is deeply
influential and politically significant. It is often remarked that the
NHS is now the closest thing to a national religion in modern
Britain. Yet historical examination of this belief, and of whether
and how meaning has in fact changed over time, remain
remarkably under-explored. Indeed, there is a striking contrast
between the common claims about the centrality of the NHS to
British life and identity, and its marginal position in most existing social and cultural histories of post-war
Britain. This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Special Subject module provides students with the opportunity
to be involved in efforts to develop our first cultural history of the NHS.
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One-Term Special Subjects (for students returning from Venice at Christmas)
HI317 Russian Revolution, 1914-1921
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi317
Available to single-honours History students on the 'Renaissance and Modern History' pathway. Not available to any other students.
The module offers students an opportunity to explore the history
of the Russian Revolution in great depth. There is no requirement
for you to have taken any previous courses in Russian history or
politics and the teaching will not assume that you have done so.
The module covers the political, social, economic and cultural
history of the Russian Revolution examining the impact of war;
the February Revolution; the events of 1917; the Civil War; War
Communism ; the uprisings of 1920-1 and concludes with the Tenth Party Congress and the Kronstadt
rebellion. It is divided into two halves - The collapse of the old order; the emergence of the new Soviet order.
HI31F Treasure Fleets of the Eastern Oceans: China, India and the West 1601-1833
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/treasure_fleets
Available to single-honours History students on the 'Renaissance and Modern History' pathway. Not available to any other students.
The module explores European discovery and trade in Asian
exotic and luxury commodities. Those commodities: spices,
textiles, porcelain and tea, brought from South-east Asia, China
and India transformed the domestic lives of Europe’s elites and
ordinary people. The module emphasises the encounters and
connections of Asia’s and Europe’s material cultures. It
investigates how curious exotics collected on voyages of
discovery became European desirables and even necessities. It
looks at how the goods were traded first by Asian merchants,
then by Europe’s East India Companies. It looks at how these
precious goods for world trade were made, then transported in
long-distance sea voyages. It shows how the trade was organized
across far-flung trading posts via ships risking storms, privateering and war. Such goods from afar became
the gifts of diplomatic missions. They inspired scientific expeditions and experiments, and they entered into
the European art world. The treasure fleets of discovery and encounter turned to the ships and navies of
empire. The module connects older historiographies of colonialism and imperialism to new questions arising
from global history. It looks to art history, the histories of collecting and display and anthropology to
understand the meanings of the goods and the desires for exotic cargoes.
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HI388 Religious Conflict and Civil War in France c.1560-1600
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi388
Available to single-honours History students on the 'Renaissance and Modern History' pathway. Not available to any other students.
This undergraduate final-year Special Subject module focuses on
the experience of war in sixteenth-century France from the
perspective of local communities as well as the crown and the
nobility. It draws on a wide variety of contemporary sources in
English translation including correspondence, memoirs,
legislation, petitions and prints. The aim of the module is for
students to develop an understanding of the circumstances which
led to and perpetuated civil war and why repeated attempts to
establish peaceful confessional co-existence failed. Students will develop the critical skills to engage with
current historiographical debates, and be given the opportunity to write an extended piece of assessed work
using both primary and secondary sources.
39
Advanced Options
Advanced Options are generally much broader in focus than Special Subjects. They address a challenging topic, sometimes
including a comparative dimension, with particular emphasis on conceptual, methodological and/or interdisciplinary issues. They
may involve some analysis of primary sources but they focus above all on advanced scholarship and historiographical debates.
AM411 Histories of Gender in the Americas: Ladies, Wenches, Hombres and Machos
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am411
Available to History students and CAS students. Not usually available to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
Were slave-owning ladies in the American south really like
Scarlett O’Hara? Do Mexican men describe themselves as macho?
This 30 CATS final-year Advanced Option module examines the
social construction of ideas about masculinity and femininity in
the Americas during the past two hundred years, looking in
particular at the origins of some of the gender stereotypes
familiar through literature and cinema. Drawing on a wide range
of sources - from poetry written by Chicana feminists and works
of Queer Theory to nineteenth-century Spanish American novels
- it explores the shaping of gender norms in Anglo and Latin America. The importance of race and class in
differentiating the behaviours expected from both men and women is a particular focus. Topics covered
include the origins of the white Southern obsession with inter-racial sex and ‘white womanhood’, the
accuracy of view that Hispanic society is fiercely concerned with honour, and the place of homosexuality
within ‘macho’ Latin cultures. The module contrasts the versions of the past presented in historical writings
with those depicted in novels, poetry and film, and seeks to explain when and why particular gender
stereotypes emerged.
AM417 Slavery, Memory and Memorialisation
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am417
Available to History students and CAS students. Not usually available to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year Advanced Option module will examine the
place of memory and memorialisation in relation to slavery and
its aftermath in the Atlantic world. The commemorative events
surrounding the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of
the British slave trade in 2007, along with current demands made
for Western governments to apologise for past involvement in
slavery and to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves, have
shown the continuing significance of the memory of slavery.
However, this module will not only explore the construction of
public memory about slavery (as well as forms of forgetting) as a twentieth and twenty-first century
phenomenon, but consider how memory and memorialisation and have operated in the past. The module is
in three parts: memory in the era of slavery; remembering slavery after emancipation; and remembering
40
slavery today. In each case, individual and collective memories are examined through their expression in
texts (such as slave narratives), speech and performances (such as oral cultures), and sites and landscapes
(such as monuments and museums). Throughout, memory is considered as a means through which identities
are understood and expressed, and as a contested realm of social and political struggle. The primary focus of
the module is on the Caribbean, and how slavery in and slave-trading to the region are remembered in the
UK. Comparative material will also be drawn from the USA, Brazil and West Africa. The module uses historical
work on memory and also attends to debates in related fields, such as sociology, cultural geography and the
interdisciplinary field of ‘memory studies’.
AM420 Space, Place and Movement in Atlantic Slave Societies: Brazil, Cuba and West Africa,
1791-1888
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am420
Available to History students and CAS students. Not usually available to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
Please note that students are not permitted to study both this module and the Special Subject module 'Slavery and Slave Life in the
American South, 1619-1865 (AM407)'.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Advanced Option module
uses the theme of movement, space and place as a window onto
the comparative social, political and economic history of
nineteenth-century Atlantic slave societies. One of the defining
elements of enslavement was the lack of the right to control one’s
own movements; at the same time, Atlantic slavery involved the
greatest forced movement of human beings in modern history.
Geographical knowledge and human movement were tools for
the structuring of colonial and post-colonial slave societies,
polities and economies, but they also became a means by which such projects might be subverted, not least
by the enslaved themselves.
After introducing some key concepts and ideas, the module begins with an overview of the dynamics of slave
trading in the making of an “Atlantic World” and the states and societies that composed it. Subsequent
thematic weeks consider the role of human movement in a series of key areas: the creation of new societies
and cultural mixtures in the Americas; the central importance of gender in shaping slaves’ approach to space,
place, and “resistance”; war and rebellions in the Atlantic World; and the movements of ideas, as well as
people, in formulating abolitionist movements and arguments. While providing a pan-Americas overview on
these issues, the module focuses particularly on the three societies that came to characterise the “second
slavery” of the nineteenth century: Brazil and Cuba as primary case studies, with the United States as an
important secondary case study for the purposes of drawing important contrasts and connections. The final
weeks consider post-emancipation responses and draw comparative conclusions.
41
AM434 From the Blues to Hip Hop
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/undergraduate/modules/am434
Available to History students and CAS students. Not usually available to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
During the early C20th various musical forms, which drew on local
musical cultures, many of which were African-American, came
together to remake popular music as a dynamic and vibrant force.
As the century progressed popular music became an important
factor in popular culture more generally, influencing, among
other things, politics, media, leisure and fashion. Popular music’s
importance has long been the subject of debate with criticism
from commentators and intellectuals, including the Frankfurt
School’s Kulturindustrie’ critique which saw it as commodified
entertainment, whereas others, notably Eric Hobsbawm, saw
popular music as more complex and at times both hegemonic and
counter-hegemonic.
These debates have continued and become part of a lively historiography which this 30 CATS undergraduate
final-year Advanced Option module draws upon as it explores the main developments in African-American
popular music. It uses, but takes a critical approach to genre, explores popular music’s role within mass
culture, the impact of technology, the relationship between popular and art music, the debate over
‘authenticity’, the link to other arts movements, the impact of race, gender and class, and music’s role in
reflecting and changing politics and identity.
HI31E Stalinism in Europe 1928-1953
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/stalinism
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Advanced Option module
aims to examine the phenomenon of Stalinism between 1928 (the
beginning of the “Revolution from above”) and 1953 (Stalin’s
death). After a discussion of the transformation of the economy,
society and culture the focus is on the social and cultural history
of Stalinism as a ‘civilisation’. The Soviet leadership attempted to
implement a socialist way of life and to construct a socialist
identity. The consequences of this attempt for everyday life are
considered as are central mythologies of Stalinist propaganda and
the ‘culture of violence’. We will also discuss how far Stalinism
was a purely Russian/Soviet phenomenon. We will therefore look
at the consequences of Stalinism for the international communist
movement and for the sovietisation of Eastern Europe after 1945. Students will examine theories on Stalinism
and how the Cold War affected the interpretation of Stalinism. We will discuss the totalitarian approach, the
revisionist approaches of the 1980’s and the post-revisionist discussions of the recent period. Students will
42
examine primary sources, including official materials such as political speeches and propaganda and sources
such as private letters, diaries, and memoirs.
HI31X Feminism, Politics, and Social Change in Modern Britain
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/fpsc
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year Advanced Option module will provide
students with an overview of the politics of feminism and its
relationship to changing gender roles in modern Britain. It will
introduce students to themes key to feminism within a wider
historical context, especially class, race and sexuality. The module
will look at religion and secularisation; the rise of the birth control
movement and debates over freedom of sexual expression;
tensions of class and race within feminist movements;
transnational feminist connections; and the role of the imperial
context in shaping feminist ideas and identities. Its broad
chronological reach will aim to overcome artificial distinctions
between ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ waves, and encourage
students to identify and historicise common currents within
feminist thought, as well as turning points and ruptures.
Each seminar will approach feminist political thought alongside
an assessment of the ‘realities’ of women’s lives in Britain. Attention will be paid to how social movements
emerge, operate and are responded to both by individuals and the state. The module will deepen history
undergraduates’ experience of historiography. It will examine the impact of feminism on the discipline of
history and the methodological challenges of writing histories of social movements which transcend
boundaries between intellectual, social, oral and cultural history. The module will therefore combine use of
primary sources (including political texts, oral histories, and film and visual sources) with a thorough
grounding in the historiography of gender and feminism and an introduction to some of the theoretical
models used to understand the formation of identities, subjectivities and political agency.
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HI320 Florence and Venice in the Renaissance
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi320a
Compulsory for single-honours History students on the 'Renaissance and Modern History' pathway. Not available to any other
students.
Like other advanced options, this module involves the study of
broad-ranging themes in a comparative and interdisciplinary
context. It examines developments in two major Italian states and
draws on insights from neighbouring disciplines such as art
history, anthropology, and economics. Compared to modules in
earlier years, there is a greater emphasis on historiographical
debate, seminar work, and engagement with primary sources,
although not to the same extent as in special subjects.
After examining the concept of the Renaissance, this option
analyses the cultural, economic, political, social, and religious
history of Florence and Venice from the late fourteenth to the late
sixteenth century. The module also sets developments in Florence
and Venice against those in the princely courts of northern and
central Italy. Whilst focusing on Italian states, the option will also
consider issues with a wider resonance. These issues include
gender, charity, violence, ritual, church reform, and cultural and economic change. The module makes use
of an extensive range of primary sources. Living in Venice will familiarise students with that city. They are
also encouraged to visit Florence.
HI32A Politics of Protest in Europe, 1968-1989
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/protest
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
Compared with the violent political struggles, that at times turned
into civil wars, during interwar Europe, the decades after 1945
look relatively quiet, stable and peaceful, especially in Western
Europe. Yet, Europe on both sides of the iron curtain did witness
waves of massive protests, most notably in the decades between
1968 and 1989, which suggest that a great number of Europeans
desired to radically alter the political, social and cultural order.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Advanced Option module will take a close look at both the protest
waves and revolutions of 1968 and 1989, as well as at radical grassroots politics in between. It will encourage
students to think of European history during the twentieth century in transnational terms that cut across the
Iron Curtain. We will therefore discuss the themes of the module – such as the revolts of 1968, politicized
countercultures, the peace and environmental movements, or sexual politics – in a transnational way that
looks at both Eastern and Western Europe. A second key goal of the module is to explore if and how the
44
contours of the political itself changed in these movements, as categories like subjectivity and personal
feelings, and subjects like sexuality and the environment gained prominence in the movements.
HI33S Justice, Power and Religion in the Islamic World: Shari'a Law Across History
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/sharia
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year Advanced Option module
examines shari'a law (Islamic law) in several historical contexts
including the medieval Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, colonial
India, the modern Middle East and modern Britain. The module
historicizes shari'a law by tracing the many different ways it has
been understood throughout history, and focuses in particular on
two themes:
1. the changing relationship between shari'a law and political power
2. the different structures of authority that have lain behind shari'a law as it transformed from a
scholarly discipline into a tool of government and then into the political program of radical opposition
movements
The module engages with the different approaches modern historians have taken to the study of shari'a law,
from the Orientalist tradition that focused on the study of classical texts of jurisprudence to the law and
society approach that has used court records to study how law was practiced in specific historical contexts.
As well as introducing students to one of the liveliest fields of Islamic history, the module also equips students
to understand and engage with some of the key issues in today's world, including political Islam and the rights
of minority communities in the west. Students also explore how shari'a law was both a tool of imperial rule
and an object of contestation in Muslim and European empires.
HI34C Building the Future: The Politics of Urban Planning in Europe, 1848-1989
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi34c
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Advanced Option module
explores the politics of urban planning in Europe from the
beginnings of urbanization in the nineteenth century to the
reurbanization of European cities in the post-WWII period. We
will consider the design of city centres, suburbs, and new towns,
illuminating both the ways in which different regimes and their
urban planners sought to order society, and the many forms of
neighbourhood identities and protests that problematized
changes to the built environment. This period provides us with many examples of ambitious planning tied to
45
political agendas from the post-1848 goverments and their plans to extend Europe’s capital cities, through
the era of Fascist and Nazi planning, and into the even more ambitious plans of states to build exemplary
cities on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Geographically the module will explore planning at the centre of a number of European states (England,
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Russia/USSR) but uniquely, it consistently turns to see how this differed
on the periphery, in secondary cities and colonial territories. Seminars will draw upon a range of written and
visual sources, including the plans developed by architects, engineers, and town planners, and their
theoretical writings about what planning was designed to achieve. Much of this thinking is also captured in
architectural and building magazines, as well as in exhibition guidebooks. Furthermore, we will look at
photographs taken by municipal governments and the police, and those snapped by protesters looking to
critique state housing polices. The module is intended for students interested in modern European history,
including European colonial ventures and global entanglements, and it places a strong emphasis on the ways
in which European politics developed in spatial and visual forms. It will encourage students to think about
the connections between political history, spatial history, and the representation of the built environment.
HI34I Medicine, Empire and the Body, c.1750-1914
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi34i
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Advanced Option module
explores the fundamental transformation in attitudes about
health and the body in the age of European imperial expansion.
Focusing on the period 1750 to 1914, it examines how encounters
with unfamiliar bodies and diseases led Europeans to rethink both
the theory and practice of medicine, and the nature of human
diversity.
Through a critical examination of course materials, students will evaluate the relationship between global
history and medical history, considering how imperial aims influenced medical culture, and how medical
realities in turn inflected the practices of imperial management and control. Using historical, anthropological,
literary and visual sources, students will gain an overview of a variety of topics illustrating European selfconfidence in its natural knowledge and superiority and how fears of pollution and degeneration came to
challenge these certainties. In the process, students will learn how the evolution of racial theory and how it
played out in different contexts, and how tropical encounters shaped the character of colonial medicine. By
the end of the year, students will be able to situate how racialized bodies, experiences of health and illness,
medical research, and anthropological theories framed the imperial enterprise.
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HI383 Madness and Society
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi383/
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate Advanced Option module
will utilise secondary literature and a selection of primary
(including online) sources to explore the relationship between
madness and society from the 18th century to the present day.
We will seek to understand lay and medical responses to mental
disorder, based on scientific, cultural, intellectual and popular
ideas and influences. One session will be devoted to the patient’s
view, but throughout the module we will attempt to be sensitive
to the position and response of patients (and their families) to the
label of insanity. A major focus of the module will be the rise of
institutional approaches to the treatment of mental disorder
from 18th-century ‘mad-houses’ to asylums governed according
to the dictates of moral management, and then towards the end
of the 19th century vast establishments 'silted' up with ‘chronic’
long-term patients. We will also explore the apparently
concomitant rise of psychiatry, as well as the responses of
psychiatry’s opponents. We will focus on debates about the possibilities of offering care and treatment
outside an asylum context and the shift to ‘care in the community’ with its mixed outcomes at the end of the
20th century. Different approaches to the classification of insanity will be explored, alongside treatment
regimes, changes in definitions, explanations and depictions of madness, as expressed in psychiatric texts,
cases notes, asylum archives, legal records, the reports of reformers and Lunacy Commissioners, novels, art,
photography, film and patient narratives. We will seek to understand the economics of incarceration and
care, the input of policy makers, and the role of religion, class, gender, race and ethnicity, family and
community in defining insanity and its treatment. The module is largely centred on British sources, but
includes material on North America, France, and colonial settings (and you are urged in your reading and
essays to expand the geographical boundaries further).
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Other Final-Year Modules
HI323 Historiography
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi323
Available to History students. Not usually available to CAS students, Visiting International Students, or as an Outside Option.
This 30 CATS undergraduate final-year module is compulsory for
all single-honours History students, and is an option available to
all joint-degree History students. The module complements
teaching in specialised History modules by providing a broad
context for understanding developments in the discipline of
history during the modern period. It asks students to consider
what form of thinking and writing (what kind of human
endeavour) ‘history’ is, and to relate the historiographical
developments discussed during the module, to the works of
history they study on Advanced Option and Special Subject
modules. Teaching is delivered through weekly one-hour lectures and weekly ninety minute seminars.
Students may choose to base a Dissertation on this module (module code HI33A).
Dissertation
www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/dissertation
Compulsory for single-honours History students and CAS students. Available to joint-honours History students. Not usually available
to Visiting International Students or as an Outside Option.
A dissertation is compulsory for all History single honours
students, compulsory for all 'History, Literature and Cultures of
the Americas' students, and an option for all joint degree
students. The dissertation is weighted at 30 CATS and must be
based on a final year History or CAS module that the student is
enrolled on, either an Advanced Option, Special Subject, or
Historiography. The dissertation length is up to 9,000 words, not
including footnotes or bibliography.
This module will allow students to undertake a substantive piece of historical research and produce an articlelength essay at the end of it. It gives students the opportunity to work in a way similar to an academic
historian: identifying a suitable research topic; mastering the relevant historiography; immersing themselves
in a wide variety of primary sources, where appropriate; and being able to sustain a coherent and logical
argument. As a final year module it will encourage students to put the training received in their earlier years
of study to practical use.
The dissertation must be a new piece of work - you should not have published it previously in whole or in
part in any other outlet, which includes web-publications.
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