War, Culture & Society in the 20th Century
(ECSH0003)
Course Guide - 2007/8
WELCOME
This guide is designed to give you all the important
information you need to know about studying
War, Culture and Society in the 20th Century.
Read it carefully and keep it throughout the year.
Dr Emma Hanna
Course Leader
Email
E.L.Hanna@gre.ac.uk
Office hours
Thursdays 10am – 12 noon, KW126
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In the first term we will concentrate on the First World War (1914-18)
In the second term our focus will shift to the Second World War (1939-45)
Teaching
The course is delivered through weekly lectures and seminars which ALL
students MUST attend.
Lectures
Thursdays, 3-4pm (Stephen Lawrence L104)
Seminars
Group 1 – Thursdays, 4-5pm (Stephen Lawrence L104)
Group 2 – Thursdays, 5-6pm (Stephen Lawrence L106)
Field Trips
At Greenwich we are ideally placed to visit a number of sites in London, Kent and
mainland Europe which are closely related to this course. Field trips are included in
this syllabus with the intention of enriching your experience of this course and all
students should attend the trips as you would for lessons on campus. However, this
does not apply to the three day trip to France and Belgium. While this is a highly
enjoyable and informative trip it is not compulsory, but students registered for War,
Culture and Society will have first refusal on places for the visit.
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Thursday 8th November – Imperial War Museum (2-5pm)
-
A three day field trip to First World War battlefields, museums and cemeteries
in France and Belgium will be organised in the Spring term.
-
Term two field trips will include Chartwell and the Cabinet War Rooms.
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Core Reading
The successful study of History requires a great deal of self-directed study. The
majority of this will be spent reading and taking notes.
There are two core texts for each term. For the first term I recommend that you
purchase copies of De Groot’s Blighty* and Marwick’s The Deluge (2nd ed)* to use
throughout the first term. New and second-hand copies can be bought relatively
cheaply from Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) and Play.com (www.play.com) in
addition to bookshops.
Term one
*- De Groot, Gerard, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War, (Longman,
1996) ISBN: 0582061377
*- Marwick, Arthur, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 2nd ed
(Macmillan, 1991) ISBN: 0333548477
- Pope, Rex, War and Society in Britain, 1899-1945, (Longman, 1991) ISBN:
0582035317
- Stevenson, John, British Society 1914-45, (Penguin, 1984) ISBN: 0140220844
In addition to the above core reading you will need to supplement your studies
(especially for seminar preparation, presentations and essays) by dipping into
the following books, ALL of which are held in University of Greenwich libraries:
Agnew, Kate, Children at war: from the First World War to the Gulf, (London:
Continuum, 2001)
Bessel, Richard, Germany after the First World War, (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993)
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Bishop, James, The Illustrated London news social history of the First World War,
(London: Angus & Robertson, 1982)
Braybon, Gail, Women workers in the First World War: the British experience,
(London: Croom Helm, 1981)
Bridgham, Fred (ed), The First World War as a clash of cultures, (Columbia, S.C.:
Camden House, 2006)
Brown, Carrie, Rosie's Mom : Forgotten Women Workers of the First World War,
(Northeastern Univ.P., 2002)
Carmichael, Jane, First World War photographers, (London: Routledge, 1989)
Cawood, Ian, Britain in the twentieth century, (London: Routledge, 2004)
Constantine, Kirby, & Rose. (eds), The First World War in British history, (London:
Edward Arnold, 1995)
Darracott, Joseph & Loftus, Belinda /Imperial War Museum, First World War Posters
(London: Imperial War Museum, 1972)
De Groot, Gerard J, The First World War, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)
Evans, R.J.W. and Strandmann, Hartmut Pogge von (eds), The coming of the First
World War, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
Fegan, Thomas, The "baby killers" : German air raids on Britain in the First World
War, (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002)
Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000)
Glover & Silkin (eds), The Penguin book of First World War Prose, (London: Viking,
1989)
Grayzel, Susan R., Women and the First World War, (Harlow: Longman, 2002)
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Grayzel, Susan R., Women's identities at war: gender, motherhood, and politics in
Britain and France during the First World War, (London: University of North Carolina
Press, 1999)
Hattersley, Roy, The Edwardians, (London: Abacus, 2006)
Howard, Michael, The First World War, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Keegan, John, The First World War, (London: Hutchinson, 1998)
Lloyd, David, Battlefield tourism: pilgrimage and the commemoration of the Great
War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939, (Oxford: Berg, 1998)
McDonough, Frank, The origins of the First and Second World Wars, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Powell, Anne (ed), A Deep cry: a literary pilgrimage to the battlefields and cemeteries
of First World War British soldier-poets killed in Northern France and Flanders,
(Aberporth: Palladour, 1993)
Robb, George, British culture and the First World War, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
Robbins, Keith, The First World War, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
Silkin, Jon (ed), The Penguin book of First World War Poetry, (London: Penguin,
1996)
Sillars, Stuart, Art and survival in First World War Britain, (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1987)
Strachan, Hew (ed), The Oxford illustrated history of the First World War, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998)
Taylor, A. J. P., The First World War: an illustrated history, (Harmondsworth [etc]:
Penguin, 1966)
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Thomas, Gill, Life on all fronts: women in the First World War, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Todd, Selina, Young women, work, and family in England, 1918-1950, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005)
Van Emden, Richard, All quiet on the home front: an oral history of life in Britain
during the First World War, (London: Headline, 2004)
Williams, Ian (ed), Newspapers of the First World War, (Newton Abbot: David &
Charles, 1970)
Winter, J. M., Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural
history, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Winter, J. M., The Great War and the British People, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003)
Term Two
The core reading for the second term will be Calder’s The People’s War* and
Gardiner’s Wartime Britain* will be the new core texts.
*- Calder, Angus, The People’s War: Britain 1939-45, (Pimlico, 1997)
ISBN:712652841
*- Gardiner, Juliet, Wartime Britain 1939-1945, (Review, 2005) ISBN: 0755310284
- Pope, Rex, War and Society in Britain, 1899-1945, (Longman, 1991) ISBN:
0582035317
- Stevenson, John, British Society 1914-45, (Penguin, 1984) ISBN: 0140220844
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The supplementary reading for the second term is as follows:
Addison, Paul, The road to 1945 : British politics and the Second World War 2nd ed,
(Pimlico, 1994)
Aldgate, Anthony & Richards, Jeffrey, Best of British: cinema and society from 1930
to the present, (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999)
Bennett, G. H., Survivors: British merchant seamen in the Second World War,
(London: Hambledon, 1999)
Bourke, Joanna, The Second World War: a people's history, (Oxford : Oxford
University Press, 2001)
Coultass, Clive, Images for battle : British film and the Second World War, 19391945, (Newark: London : University of Delaware Press; Associated University
Presses, c1989)
Dear, I.C.B., The Oxford companion to the Second World War, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995)
Gilbert, Martin, Second World War, (London: Phoenix, 2000)
Hinton, James, Women, social leadership, and the Second World War : continuities
of class, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Lang, Caroline, Keep smiling through: women in the Second World War, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Lant, Antonia, Blackout: reinventing women for wartime British cinema, (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, c1991)
Mackay, Robert, Half the battle: civilian morale in Britain during the Second World
War, (Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, 2002)
McDonough, Frank, The origins of the First and Second World Wars, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997)
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Murphy, Robert, British cinema and the Second World War, (London: Continuum,
2000)
Summerfield, Penny, Women workers in the Second World War : production and
patriarchy in conflict, (London: Routledge, 1989, c1984)
Taylor, A. J. P., The origins of the Second World War, (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1964)
Taylor, A. J. P., The Second World War: an illustrated history, (London : Hamilton,
1975)
Taylor, Philip M. (ed), Britain and the cinema in the Second World War, (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1988)
Thomas, Donald, An underworld at war: spivs, deserters, racketeers & civilians in the
Second World War, (London: John Murray, 2003)
Tiratsoo, Nick, From Blitz to Blair: a new history of Britain since 1939, (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
Yass, Marion, This is your war: home front propaganda in the Second World War,
(London: H.M.S.O., 1983)
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WebCT
War, Culture and Society in the 20th Century will have a designated e-learning area
which you are all invited to use to supplement your studies. You will be able to
access this through the student portal.
The Internet
Generally speaking the internet is not something you should rely upon when studying
History at degree level. It needs to be treated with great caution and should only ever
be used in addition to printed sources. Websites can be set up by anyone and are
not often validated by professional historians. However, it can be useful if you are
incredibly discerning about the sites that you do use and reference in your work. If
you do want to use the internet for this course here are some of the best sites to use:
General
BUBL Catalogue of Internet Resources
http://bubl.ac.uk/
Internet Modern History Sourcebook
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html
BBC History
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/
Channel 4 History
http://www.channel4.com/history/
Subject-specific
Centre for First World War Studies
http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
http://www.cwgc.org/
Imperial War Museum
http://www.iwm.org.uk/
National Army Museum
http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/
Western Front Association
http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/
First World War.com
http://www.firstworldwar.com/
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Assessment
- Two 10-minute class presentations
- Two 1500 word essays
- One document commentary
- One written exam
Essay Questions
Term One (choose one from the following list)
1. What kinds of propaganda were used during the First World War and to what
effect?
2. What was the significance of women’s participation in the First World War?
3. What impact did the First World War have on the Home Front?
4. What kind of opposition was there to the First World War in Britain and what
effect did it have?
5. With reference to two paintings or poems from the First World War, critically
analyse the role of the war artist/poet in contributing to the historical record.
Term two essay titles will be made available in January.
Essay deadlines
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Essay one – Thursday 22nd November 2007
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Essay two – Thursday 28th February 2008
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Document Commentary – Thursday 10th April 2008
ALL students must hand in work by the deadline. Exceptions will only be made
with documented evidence such as a doctor’s note.
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