Art History and History | BA (Hons) | University of Lincoln

An Introduction to Your Modules

† Some courses may offer optional modules. The availability of optional modules may vary from year to year and will be subject to minimum student numbers being achieved. This means that the availability of specific optional modules cannot be guaranteed. Optional module selection may also be affected by staff availability.

A World History of Art and Architecture 1: from Antiquity to the Revivals. 2023-24AHS1004MLevel 42023-24This is a survey module that covers the development of art, architecture and design from ancient times through to the nineteenth century revivals in order to develop students' understanding of the history of the creative disciplines. It is composed of three elements: it offers an historical and theoretical overview in which to study art, architecture and design; it examines major trends in Western Art, and; it is geographically expansive and responds to theories of global and transregional research and teaching of art, architecture and design. The module will examine paintings, sculpture, architecture and a wide variety of media and their theoretical understandings. It will also investigate how political and social structures fostered the creation of art, architecture and design. In addition to Western art, students will have the opportunity to learn about artistic and architectural production in a wide variety of regions in the world, including Latin America, Africa and Asia.CoreA World History of Art and Architecture 2: Tradition, Change and Modernity 2023-24AHS1005MLevel 42023-24This survey module examines art, architecture and design in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The module introduces artistic and architectural developments in the nineteenth century and how they evolved into Modernism and its cultural transformation into Postmodernism and contemporary artistic practice. During the development of the module, students will focus on historic revivals, Art Nouveau, Abstract ion, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual Art, and British Art at the end of the twentieth centuryCoreCritical Thinking and Writing 2023-24HST1033MLevel 42023-24This module aims to equip students with the skills necessary to communicate their learning in an academic environment, and also supports students in adjusting to the demands of higher education. The core objective of the module is to develop students critical thinking and writing skills.CoreForging the Modern State 2023-24HST1036MLevel 42023-24This module provides a thematic survey of European and Atlantic history from the mid-eighteenth century to the final decades of the twentieth century, structured around the research interests of members of the module teaching team. This survey provides an overview of key moments in modern history from 1750-1979, and addresses the complex development of states primarily in western Europe but with attention to the growing influence of the United States and Russia.CoreIntroduction to Visual and Material Culture 2023-24HST1038MLevel 42023-24This module is designed as an introduction to visual and material culture, embracing the history of art and architecture, historical archaeology, and the conservation of historical buildings. It aims to enable students to interrogate visual and material objects throughout the past and to understand their functions and possible meanings of visual and material objects as primary sources.CoreMaterials, Techniques, Technologies in the History of Art 2023-24AHS1001MLevel 42023-24This module explores the relevance of materials and artistic techniques in the understanding and analysis of art and material culture. The concept of materiality has an increasing prominence in the intellectual discourse of Art History, and this module will allow students to engage with this theoretical framework by exploring the relevance of materials and techniques, the processes through which artefacts are constructed. The last part of the module will introduce students to a selection of technologies (especially digital technologies) that assist scholars in the investigation of the past, such as photography, digital mapping and virtual heritage visualisation. In this way, students will be exposed to these technologies not only as investigation tools that they might use, but also as potential career pathways.CoreThe Historians Craft 2023-24HST1035MLevel 42023-24This module is designed to enable students to develop their research skills in history and their understanding of research as a process of inquiry. Students have the opportunity to deepen skills developed in the first term, such as essay writing in history and information literacy, by working alongside staff from the School in analysing primary and secondary sources relating to specific approaches to History.CoreThe Medieval World 2023-24HST1031MLevel 42023-24This module offers an introduction to the sources, approaches and methods necessary for the study of the medieval world. Lectures provide a survey of key moments in medieval history from 300-1500, structured around the research specialisms of the module teaching team. The module focuses on issues of religion and power in the Middle Ages, while there is a strong methodological focus on the materiality of the medieval period.CoreAlexander the Great and his Legacy: the Hellenistic World 2024-25CLS2009MLevel 52024-25This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.CoreDissertations and Beyond 2024-25HST2020MLevel 52024-25This module aims to prepare students for designing their dissertation (independent study) proposals and for applying to jobs and postgraduate programmes. Students will explore how to prepare for and ensure success in their dissertations, employment, and study/research by identifying and articulating their transferable skills, breadth of knowledge, expertise, and interests. The module will provide information on how to become aware of opportunities, to plan and prepare for the future, and to build on their undergraduate careers.CoreNeoclassicism to Cubism: Art in Transition 1750-1914 2024-25AHS2010MLevel 52024-25This module will concentrate on fine art (painting and sculpture) within Western Europe c.1750- c.1914. The module will explore the hegemony of Neoclassicism in the second half of the long eighteenth century through the seminal transformations of Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Cubism in the nineteenth century.CoreNew Directions in Art History and Historiography 2024-25AHS2006MLevel 52024-25This module aims to introduce students to the different approaches to the study of art history and history which have developed, with a particular focus on twentieth-century ideas and innovations, such as iconography, iconology, gender theory, global art history, materiality, the sensorial experience of art. Students will be encouraged to think critically and creatively about how art history and history have developed within the academy.CoreThe Emperor in the Roman World 2024-25CLS2020MLevel 52024-25This module surveys the history of the Roman Empire not as a succession of emperors and achievements, victories and defeats, but as a complex of experiments in government and of attitudes to governance. Beginning with the transition from representative republican rule to the domination of an imperial dynasty and its network of élite dependants in the early first century, and concluding with the incipient takeover of this system by a newly Christianised ruling class in the early fourth century, students can explore the role of the emperor in the Roman world and the patterns of communication between him and his subjects.Core100 Years of Photography: Images, History and Impact 1839-1939 2024-25AHS2008MLevel 52024-25This module will explore the development and cultural impact of the first 100 years of photography. Initially driven by the commercial viability of portraiture, photography soon inspired a range of professional, artistic and amateur practitioners in the nineteenth century. Photographic innovation in the early twentieth century exerted a significant influence on the way that modernists sought to represent the world. Street photography emerged as a new insistent type of realism and represented urban experience in new ways. The social power of photography was spread through increasingly affordable cameras and propagated through print media. Students will learn to analyse images and explore how photographs functioned to produce and exert power.Optional1968: The Year of Revolt 2024-25HST2080MLevel 52024-25OptionalAccessing Ordinary Lives: Interpreting and Understanding Voices from the Past, 1880 present 2024-25HST2052MLevel 52024-25This module provides students with the opportunity to resurrect and understand the ordinary lives of people like themselves and their forebears from the sources available to us. The course picks up on both well-established and recent trends in historical research that have sought to give voice to ordinary people and promote from the historical records the lives of marginalised people such as homosexuals, women, children, the working classes, ethnic minorities alongside more familiar narratives of the great and the good.OptionalAesthetics 2024-25PHL2002MLevel 52024-25This module introduces students to philosophical questions about the nature of art and beauty. For example: What is art? Can anything be a work of art? Can a pile of elephant dung be art? Is beauty objectively real or only in the eye of the beholder? Can aesthetic judgements be right or wrong? Is Beethoven better than Beyoncé? Is Shakespeare better than Eastenders? Or are aesthetic disputes like deciding between the merits of different flavours of ice cream? Students can also consider questions that arise in relation to specific artforms: How is it possible to respond emotionally towards the plight of fictional characters that are known not to exist? Do rock/pop music and classical music require different aesthetic criteria for their appreciation and evaluation? Why do we take pleasure in the aesthetic representation of tragic events? Students will be guided through their reading of various classical and contemporary works on such issues, and encouraged to think for themselves about the problems addressed.OptionalArt and Power: Projecting Authority in the Renaissance World 2024-25AHS2007MLevel 52024-25Renaissance monarchs often employed artistic display to project royal authority. Ruling elites commissioned pieces of art not only for the embellishment of their residences, but also as a suitable vehicle to display authority. Kings and Queens commissioned tapestries, sculptures, royal palaces, or lavishly decorated printed books that narrated their achievements and omitted their failures. This module examines the diverse ways rulers and their entourage imagined and created an image of kingship through the visual arts.OptionalBritons and Romans, 100 BC-AD 450 2024-25CLS2019MLevel 52024-25This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of foreign ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed Roman.OptionalClassical Reception: from Medieval to Modern 2024-25CLS2022MLevel 52024-25Students can gain an introduction to the historical and archaeological sources, approaches and methods necessary for the study of the ancient world. Lectures provide a survey of key moments in history, 1000 BC-AD 400, structured around the research specialisms of the module teaching team.OptionalClassics in Context 2024-25CLS2003MLevel 52024-25This module gives students the opportunity to read one text (in translation) closely and discuss sections each week with a tutor. It offers the opportunity to develop skills in textual analysis, including researching an author; assessing the intended audience; and considering the social/political context, the significance of genre and style, and other factors in how we interpret and understand a text. Students also compare and critique research that has used the text and explore the possibilities it has to serve as primary evidence for the study of the ancient world.OptionalDecolonising the Past 2024-25HST2089MLevel 52024-25Beginning with the Royal Historical Societys Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report (published in 2018), which raises urgent questions on the diversity of staff, students and curricula at History departments in UK universities, the module analyses live debates on Decolonising the Curriculum in higher education. We critique how histories of Empire, colonialism and slavery have been taught in Anglo-American settings, and introduce postcolonial analysis on archives, as well as the Global South and indigenous knowledge that have often been marginalised in Eurocentric historiographies. Turning towards the University as a key apparatus of power in the contemporary world, the module then reveals the complex legacies of slavery in the making of a number of UK and US institutions including Liverpool, Bristol, Oxford (#RhodesMustFall), SOAS, University of Virginia and others. Introducing the new field of Critical University Studies (CUS), students will learn about the emergence of universities in former colonies including India and South Africa, as well as the phenomenon of transnational education that entails the establishment, by prestigious European and American institutions, of satellite campuses around the world. The module then unpacks public understandings of colonial history via recent scholarship on nationalism, patriotism, museums and memories, and ends with a hopeful reflection on pedagogies that will be more inclusive and intersectional in terms of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. This module will be particularly suited to students who intend to develop careers in education.OptionalDestroying Art: Iconoclasm through History 2024-25HST2060MLevel 52024-25OptionalDigital Heritage 2024-25CON2054MLevel 52024-25The cultural heritage sector increasingly offers opportunities for the application of digital technologies as communication, research and recording tools. This module enables students to become familiar with some of these advanced recording techniques for the study and recording of objects.OptionalDisease, Health, and the Body in Early Modern Europe 2024-25HST2044MLevel 52024-25This module examines how physicians, other practitioners, and the public understood the body, disease, and health in the early modern period. Although the medical system of Galen (2nd century AD) and humoral medicine guided Western medicine until the 1800s, between 1500-1700 there were major challenges to this traditional system. The work of elites such as Paracelsus and Van Helmont (chemical medicine), Vesalius (anatomy), Harvey (circulation and respiratory physiology) will be placed in a greater religious, social, and cultural context.OptionalEarly Modern Family: Households in England c.1500-1750 2024-25HST2038MLevel 52024-25The module looks at a number of ways in which historians have studied the family in Britain between c.1500 and 1800. It will examine a range of historical approaches from the demographic to the more qualitative and anthropological. Close attention is paid to the problems historians of the pre-industrial family confront in their examination of the surviving primary sources.OptionalExistentialism and Phenomenology 2024-25PHL2006MLevel 52024-25The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith. The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.OptionalExperiencing and Remembering Civil War in Britain 2024-25HST2066MLevel 52024-25The civil wars that raged across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century were among the most turbulent and exhilarating times in British history. This module explores the diverse ways in which the wars were explained, experienced and remembered by those who lived through them. Students can consider the extent to which this period, often described as one of 'revolution', left a lasting impression on British society, culture, religion and politics.OptionalFighting for Peace? Politics, Society and War in the Modern Era 2024-25HST2086MLevel 52024-25The modern period has often been understood as a time when peace was considered the natural state of societies, where states and non-governmental groups have been concerned with achieving a lasting peace and avoiding repetitions of bloody conflict. Wars, however, have not become a thing of the past, and today we live in a condition of seemingly permanent war where civilians are often the primary targets. This module will look at how ideas and practices of war have altered in the last few hundred years, and how these notions have been contested and challenged. The module asks where these ideas came from, and how concepts of war and peace, and violence and non-violence have been reframed in various ways. The course is focussed on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and moves chronologically from the Napoleonic wars, to contemporary conflicts through a series of case studies that cover wars, diplomacy, the aftermath of wars, and peace movements. Each case study will draw on key themes which run throughout the module, including pacifism, militarism, imperialism, culture, race, gender and nationalism.OptionalFrom Bright Young Things to Brexit: British media and society since 1919 2024-25HST2079MLevel 52024-25This module examines British media and society in Britain from the end of World War I, through World War II, and into the uncertain waters of the postwar period and the 21st century. A range of domestic and international factors that shaped modern Britain will be investigated throughout the module, including the interwar slump, World War II, decolonisation, increased immigration, the decline of the welfare state, the Troubles in Ireland, the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, and Britains unsteady relationship with Europe. These events not only shaped Britain itself but also occurred in dialogue with the increasingly powerful role of media in the 20th and 21st centuries. This module will bring specific attention to the ways in which the press, cinema, radio, television, music, and also the web reflected, engaged with, and sometimes shaped popular understandings of society, culture, and politics in the period. We will examine this history of media in conjunction with a history of British society in order to investigate claims by historians that a democratic culture emerged in 20th century Britain.OptionalFrom Caesar to Arthur: The Rise and Fall of Roman Britain 2024-25HST2043MLevel 52024-25This module seeks to understand the history of Roman involvement in Britain on its own terms and enable students to grasp the importance of local responses to Roman cultural and political influence in the rise and fall of Roman Britain, through exploration of key themes such as: conquest and imperialism; ethnography and the other; religion; cities on the edge of empire; frontiers; military resistance and cooperation; Romanization. Particular focus will be placed on providing students the opportunity to develop a critical appreciation of the usefulness of archaeology to our understanding of the period.OptionalGender and Sexuality in Britain 1700-1950 2024-25HST2076MLevel 52024-25This module will interrogate aspects of the history of gender and sexuality in Britain over a 250-year span, coinciding with the arrival of modernity. It will introduce students to debates over the relationship between gender, sexuality, and structural changes in society, economy and politics, as well as thinking about gender and sexuality as discourse and subjectivity. Further, it will introduce students to a wide range of source material for the social and cultural history of early modern and modern Britain and seek to develop their confidence in using such diverse sources skillfully. The module takes a thematic approach, although within each theme, specific chronological examples will be examined. Thus continuity and change can be highlighted, and it is intended to resist a narrative of progress towards modern liberal views of gender and sexuality. However, a clear chronological framework will also be developed through examples which will help students gain a clear understanding of context.OptionalGender in Nineteenth-Century Britain 2024-25HST2045MLevel 52024-25This module aims to introduce students to key theoretical and historiographical debates, and to the study of a wide range of source materials of use in modern British social and cultural history, while also exploring topics which shed light on the development of gendered ideals and practices in the nineteenth century. The module covers a roughly chronological series of case studies which pick up on the experiences of different groups in society and also offer a range of different types of source material.OptionalGrand Expectations? America during the Cold War 2024-25HST2042MLevel 52024-25The United States emerged from the Second World War a superpower, with, to an extent, a belief that it could remake the world. The challenges of the Cold War years were to demonstrate how limited was that power. This module explores the key social, political, economic and cultural developments in the United States between 1945 and 1990.OptionalHistory and Literature in the C18th and C19th 2024-25HST2077MLevel 52024-25Works of fiction are not just a source of entertainment. They are a crucial and exciting route into understanding the past. Novels, short stories and poems allow us to understand how debates and ideas about society and identity circulated and how writers attempted to reinforce or change the way that readers looked at the world. This module will examine how a wide range of fiction produced in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries addressed the key themes of class, politics and gender. Students will have the opportunity to examine the treatment of these concepts in genres as varied as crime fiction, popular romance, childrens literature, science fiction, war writing and feminist fiction.OptionalHistory of Medicine from Antiquity to the Present 2024-25HST2088MLevel 52024-25This module analyzes how physicians, other practitioners, and the public understood the body, disease, and health from antiquity to the modern era. The first part of the module will delineate how the medical system of Galen (2nd century AD) and humoral medicine guided Western medicine from antiquity until the 1800s. Students will then analyze the major challenges to this system from physicians such as Paracelsus, Vesalius, and William Harvey, as well as with the discovery of the germ theory of disease. Students will also explore the evolving role of states and local governments for public health, the development of the medical marketplace, changing understandings of the body, disease, and mental illness, and gender and medicine. The history of medicine will thus be placed in a greater religious, social, and cultural context, with a consideration of the role of medicine in popular culture. The module will therefore embody a cultural and intellectual approach to history and introduce students to the major historiographic debates in the history of medicine. Seminars will be primarily devoted to student-led case studies on specific themes, such as: Galenic case studies; Vesalius and anatomy, quackery in England; childbirth and midwifery; the rise of the medical profession; anatomy and the Anatomy Act; disease control and public health; madness and society; sexual health and the patient narrative.OptionalIntroduction to Exhibitions, Curatorship and Curatorial Practices 2024-25AHS2009MLevel 52024-25This module introduces students to the understanding of exhibitions and curatorial practices. Following an introduction on the history of collections and museums, the course will explore the many issues related to the display of art and objects. It combines the study of theoretical approaches and the analysis of relevant case studies, and considers topics related to audiences for museums and exhibitions, the presentation and explanation of artefacts and artworks, and the new opportunities offered by digital technologies.OptionalItaly, a Contested Nation 2024-25HST2032MLevel 52024-25Italy is a highly-politicised and ideologically-divided country. Divisions and internal conflicts, which have reached dramatic peaks, are a permanent feature in Italian history. They mirror unsolved social and political contradictions that many historians consider to be the result of the process of the Italian Risorgimento. National unification was prompted by republicans, but it was the Monarchy that achieved it.OptionalLatin Literature in the Late Republic and the Augustan Age 2024-25CLS2010MLevel 52024-25This module explores a broad sampling of major genres and authors, and aims to provide a basis for further study and enjoyment of Latin literature. Focusing on writers active between 90 BC and AD 14, often referred to as the Golden Age, we shall examine how the literature of this period bears witness to contemporary social, political and cultural transformations. All texts will be read in English translation, though opportunities to read or translate from the original Latin will be available for interested students. This module is intended as a successor to the core first-year survey of Classical Literature.OptionalLiving and dying in the middle ages, 800-1400 2024-25HST2087MLevel 52024-25How did people live and die in the middle ages? Drawing on the research expertise of the medievalists in the School, the module seeks to answer this question by addressing key themes relating to the life cycles of medieval people, from their childhood and education, via the roles that they took on in life (within families and in public; peaceful and violent), to their deaths. We will address primary sources that provide intimate insights into the everyday lives of medieval people: letters and autobiographies. Such sources will be contrasted with those that offer a more 'top-down' vision of how medieval society should function, such as rulebooks and conduct manuals. Finally, we will explore how people in the medieval period managed their material and spiritual interests through transactions recorded in documents such as charters and wills. A key aim of the module is to develop your research and writing skills by providing you with an opportunity to produce an extended piece of research. This, coupled with the intensive work with primary sources, will equip you to tackle a final year independent study in a wide range of medieval topics.OptionalMadness and the Asylum in Modern Britain 2024-25HST2068MLevel 52024-25This module explores the relationship between madness and British society from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Students can examine how institutional approaches to the treatment of insanity have changed, from the eighteenth-century madhouse, to the Victorian asylum, to care in the community in the twentieth century. They will assess changing medical, legal and lay responses to insanity, including the role that class, gender, family and community played in defining insanity and its treatment.OptionalMaterial Histories: Objects, Interpretation, Display 2024-25CON2055MLevel 52024-25This module will give students a unique opportunity to develop their practical skills for studying objects while developing their understanding of the relationship between history and material culture. Students can explore how object-based study can enhance their practice as conservators and historians and how material culture studies can lead to insights that cannot be reached through other approaches.OptionalMedia, Controversy and Moral Panic 2024-25HST2069MLevel 52024-25This module explores the history of media controversy and moral panic during the twentieth century. It is designed to introduce students to media texts (especially films and television programmes) that have sparked debate and extreme differences of opinion among audiences in Britain and America. Students will be expected to engage with a range of films, television programmes and primary source material, which may include newspapers and television news broadcasts from the Media Archive of Central England (MACE).OptionalMedicine, Sexuality and Modernity 2023-24HST2073MLevel 52023-24This is a general introductory module on the history of medicine and sexuality from 1850 to 2000. It aims to give an overview of some of the major themes within the modern history of medicine and sexuality. It focuses on how our understanding of the human body, reproduction and sexuality in a socio-cultural and political context evolved from the advent of evolutionary thought to present day debates about enhancement and reproductive medicine. Sexual behaviour and reproduction became major concerns in medicine and politics in the modern period. Sexuality became an object of scientific enquiry and governments developed new policies to regulate sexual behaviour. This module will give students an excellent grounding in modern and contemporary history that will complement further modules at level 2 and 3 that deal with sexuality, gender, race, science and medicine.OptionalMigration in British Art, 1933 to the Present 2024-25AHS2011MLevel 52024-25This module will examine art in Britain from 1933 onwards in relation to migration. Beginning with the mass exile of artists, photographers, and designers from Nazi-occupied Europe in 1933, it will investigate how art and visual culture in Britain spanning the past ninety years has been shaped by migrants and refugees, and their descendants. We will look at the generation of artists who came to Britain from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s; the British Black arts movement of the 1980s; identity politics and art institutions in the 1990s; second-generation Jewish artists and Holocaust memory, as well as new generations of younger artists exploring heritage today. The module will examine how artists have dealt with experiences of migration and the associated experiences of displacement, dislocation, loss, and otherness, and in relation to constructions of class, gender and race. As well as focusing on the reception and changing status of émigrés in Britain, it will consider iconographies of exile, and how notions of memory and heritage have been explored and represented. The module will involve close engagement with a range of primary sources (oral histories, letters, exhibition catalogues and reviews) and theoretical writings (e.g. Edward Said, Marianne Hirsch, Stuart Hall).OptionalPeople on the move: migration, identity and mobility in the modern world 2024-25HST2081MLevel 52024-25People have migrated as long as the human race has existed and this module places this fundamental aspect of human experience at its heart. Issues surrounding migration and the movement of peoples are central to contemporary politics and society, as the management of people seeking refuge and better prospects preoccupies governments around the world. This situation makes ever more urgent our need to understand the history of migration and how it has shaped cultures across time and space. People on the move focuses upon the movement of people at particular points in modern history, considering the forces that propel people to risk their own lives and possibly those of their families, uproot from home and enter the potentially perilous and peripatetic life of a migrant. We will discuss the prospects and challenges of migration, and subsequently how diasporic cultures develop and the benefits and tensions surrounding integration. We will consider what happens when communities come into contact due to migration and the subsequent influences upon culture, religion, politics and identity. Through a series of in-depth case studies from the modern period, from the forced movement of the colonial era to twentieth century migration across the Atlantic, we will encounter a variety of geographical regions and processes of migration. A variety of historical sources will be interrogated to access the stories of migrants and about migrants, including texts (such legal and government documents, letters, memoirs and oral histories), images, objects and architecture. Addressing themes such as empire, economics, identity and religion in different contexts allows us to make meaningful comparisons between migrations across time and space.OptionalPhilosophy of Science 2024-25PHL2007MLevel 52024-25This module explores a range of philosophical questions relating to the nature of science. How are scientific theories developed? Are scientific theories discovered through a flash of genius or is something more methodical involved? How much of scientific discovery is down to careful observation? Do scientific theories tell us how the world really is? Do the entities scientific theories postulate atoms, electromagnetic waves, and so on really exist? Or are scientific theories merely useful models of reality? Is science independent of its social context? To what extent is scientific inquiry affected by gender, race or politics? Is there such a thing as truth that is not relative to a particular culture, social class or historical era? Drawing on accessible examples from a variety of scientific fields and by answering these and related questions, we shall try to reach an understanding of how science works.OptionalPower and the Presidency in the United States 2024-25HST2082MLevel 52024-25This module introduces students to history of the US presidency by investigating selected past presidents from Washington to Trump. By reading and analysing the biographies of various presidents, key historical discussions as well as primary sources, including presidential addresses, campaign speeches, policy documents, and internal White House documents, and media accounts, students will be able to discuss and evaluate the major themes associated with the Office of the President. The main question students will be asked to engage with through this course is what makes an effective president? In answering this question students will discuss themes ranging from the establishment of the office during the American Revolution, the ability of presidents to pass civil rights reform, the rise and fall of the imperial presidency, the decline and restoration of presidential influence, hidden illness in the oval office, the growth of partisanship, the impact of the media and presidential communication strategies, and the changing presidential electorate. By exploring these themes as well as the achievements, scandals and the legacies of various presidents, students will be able to determine how individual presidents have coped with the pressures of the office and what influence they have exerted on the office.OptionalPowerful Bodies: Saints and Relics during the Middle Ages 2024-25HST2059MLevel 52024-25This module investigates the matter of sanctity during the middle ages, focusing in particular on two different aspects: the construction of the memory of saints, through texts, images and architecture, and the crucial role of their mortal remains. Spanning from the fourth to the fourteenth Century, this module offers not only a general approach to the phenomenon of sanctity, but also detailed analysis of different case studies, from early Christian saints and their commemoration in martyria to Romanesque shrines in France and Italy. The module then considers the phenomenon of new saints, through discussion of the celebrated site of Saint Franciss burial, San Francesco, in Assisi. Students can explore the case of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, discussing how his memory was preserved in the text of his life and how his canonization was mirrored in the very fabric of Lincoln Cathedral.OptionalPreventive Conservation 2024-25CON2059MLevel 52024-25This module looks to provide an introduction to the preventive conservation skills needed to set out as a practicing conservator. Students have the chance to develop an understanding of practical preventive conservation and collections management procedures, and can gain experience in environmental monitoring and surveying. Topics such as integrated pest management and emergency planning are also discussed.OptionalQueering the Past 2024-25HST2090MLevel 52024-25OptionalRenaissances 2024-25AHS2004MLevel 52024-25This module explores cultural renaissances in Europe and beyond. Students can examine the survival, imitation and revival of classical models from ancient Greece and Rome from late antiquity to the modern period. We engage with historical debates on the issue of periodisation and ask how and why cycles of decline and renewal continue to shape our understanding of the past.OptionalRussia: Building a Utopia 2024-25HST2084MLevel 52024-25OptionalSalvation and Damnation in medieval and early modern England 2024-25HST2075MLevel 52024-25Concern with, and ideas about, the supernatural influenced all areas of life for medieval and early modern men and women, and cut across all levels of society. In an age where religion was a state concern, many of these concerns were articulated or shaped within the context of the Church, all across Western Europe, yet throughout our period religious life was characterised by its great diversity. This module examines changing religious practices and beliefs in Europe, although with a particular focus on England, from the early Middle Ages until the seventeenth century, charting continuity and change in peoples thinking about their relationship both individually and collectively - with the divine. The module is divided into three blocks: (1) early medieval, in which we explore the adoption of Christianity as a state religion, the slow emergence of an institutional church, missionary and conversion activities, and campaigns against heresy; (2) high to late medieval where we examine the tension between the theology of the church and the beliefs of the individual in a time of increased attempts at centralisation by the Western Church; (3) early modern, from the Reformation, via the Civil War, to early eighteenth-century rational religion and alternative versions of spirituality, and their impact on attitudes to religious and other minority groups.OptionalScrambling for Africa? Cultures of Empire and Resistance in East Africa, 1850-1965 2024-25HST2062MLevel 52024-25East Africa became a significant theatre of empire from the mid-nineteenth century, when David Livingstone championed European intervention to bring Christianity, commerce and civilisation to the region. This module will explore the expansion of the British Empire into East Africa from the late nineteenth-century era of high imperialism until decolonisation in the 1960s. This region provides rich opportunities to deepen an understanding of imperialism and offers key themes in the history of empire, including exploration, slavery, race, identity, gender, imperial networks, cultural representation and indigenous agency.OptionalStudy Period Abroad: History 2024-25HST2048MLevel 52024-25This module provides an opportunity for History students to spend a term studying at one of the Universitys partner institutions in North America or Europe. Students will be expected to cover their own transport, accommodation and living costs.OptionalTeaching History: designing and delivering learning in theory and practice 2024-25HST2074MLevel 52024-25Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.OptionalThe Age of Improvement: the Atlantic World in the long eighteenth century 2024-25HST2070MLevel 52024-25The period from 1700 to 1850 was one of transition and change in the British Isles and North America, marking an ideological and material shift away from the legacy of medieval Europe and the period of initial colonial contact. This module challenges students to engage with historical, cartographical, and material evidence. Students are introduced to the landscapes, streetscapes, and social make-up of the long eighteenth century, and can discuss in seminars how broad events impacted everyday lives, the urban, and rural landscape.OptionalThe Birth of the Modern Age? British Politics, 1885-1914 2024-25HST2037MLevel 52024-25This module tests the claim that the period from the 1880s to the First World War was an Age of Transition, which witnessed the birth of modern British politics. Through an analysis of this argument, students are introduced to some of the major developments in British political history in the period 1885-1914, including the birth of the welfare state, the creation of the Labour Party, the conflict over Votes for Women and British foreign policy before World War One.OptionalThe Forgotten Revolution? The Emergence of Feudal Europe 2024-25HST2054MLevel 52024-25Almost all historians share the view that the social, economic and political structures of Europe in 1000 A.D. were significantly different to those that characterised the western superpower of Late Antiquity, the Roman Empire. In this challenging module, students will be encouraged to engage with a range of source material that will allow them to come to their own conclusions. Given this wide focus, students will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the fascinating story of post-Carolingian Europe in such a way that they enhance their abilities to think comparatively, a crucial weapon in the historians armoury.OptionalThe World of Late Antiquity, 150-750 2024-25CLS2021MLevel 52024-25This module aims to develop students' understanding of the political, social and cultural history of Late Antiquity (150-750), with a particular focus on two world-changing religious developments: the rise of Christianity and Islam. Although the geographical focus of our studies will be on eastern Mediterranean lands of an empire ruled from Constantinople, known to later scholars as the Byzantine Empire, the geographical range of the module will be wide and include western Europe, including the western Mediterranean, Persia, Arabia, and barbarian territories beyond the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube.OptionalThemes in American Cultural History 2024-25HST2046MLevel 52024-25This module aims to introduce students to some of the key interdisciplinary themes in American cultural history in the first half of the twentieth century as well as to theoretical works that have shaped American cultural studies since the 1950s. The module will investigate and evaluate academic argument relating to the study of American cultural history from a variety of theoretical, philosophical and methodological perspectives including feminism, social theory, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.OptionalThemes in Modern and Contemporary Art 2024-25AHS2005MLevel 52024-25OptionalUnderstanding Exhibitions: History on Display 2024-25HST2085MLevel 52024-25This module will introduce students to the principles of understanding, evaluating and constructing exhibitions. It will focus on exhibiting in art, history and archaeology and will include both theoretical approaches to the understanding and critique of exhibitions and practical aspects of mounting an exhibition. The module will include visiting museums, galleries and other exhibition spaces to examine and analyse exhibitions in situ, as well as talks from museum professionals on aspects of exhibition development. Students will be assessed through the production of plans for a small temporary exhibition they develop individually.OptionalUnderstanding Practical Making 2024-25CON2057MLevel 52024-25This module is designed to introduce the basic skills of working with glass, ceramic and fine metalwork. It provides an opportunity to investigate the potential and limitations of working with various materials, processes and techniques, associated with the practice of object manufacture against a relevant historical background.OptionalUrban Life and Society in the Middle Ages 2024-25HST2049MLevel 52024-25Between the 11th and the 12th centuries Europe went through some radical changes. This module will focus on case studies, such as Lincoln, London and Paris, among others. Students will have the opportunity to study how and why such centres grew from small towns to some of the greatest and most vibrant metropolis of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. For a comparative study, a range of primary sources will be taken into account, including contemporary descriptions of these cities and their inhabitants, historical records, art and architecture.OptionalVillage detectives: Unearthing new histories 2024-25HST2004MLevel 52024-25The typical image of a rural village, whether a chocolate box idyll prettily nestled around its church or a commuter dormitory boringly empty of anything fun to do, rarely shows much evidence for anything dramatic. However, these places were created by people who lived through events which are almost unimaginable to us today including the Norman Conquest and the Black Death, and for whom a perpetual challenge was simply surviving in a period where barely half of those born lived to adulthood. In this module students will have the opportunity to learn how to critically analyse and interpret historical and archaeological evidence and to use their knowledge and skills to write a new history of any rural settlement of their choice.OptionalWomen in Ancient Rome 2024-25CLS2011MLevel 52024-25This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient world. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual and written evidence, students can investigate both the real historical circumstances of womens lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented and perceived. The focus of this module is on the Roman world, and the material considered ranges in date from the Republican period to the end of the second Century AD. Material from Greece, especially where it affects Roman art, literature and ideas, will also be considered.OptionalWorld Heritage Management 2024-25CON2058MLevel 52024-25This module is designed to explore ideas of heritage protection, management and conservation from around the world. It will consider United Nations' efforts in the field and consider how this international perspective shapes local and national actions.OptionalArt History and History Independent Study Part 2 2025-26AHS3003MLevel 62025-26Students at level three have to undertake an Independent Study project. This is an extended piece of work that gives them the opportunity to demonstrate they have acquired the skills to undertake art historical and historical inquiry and analysis.CoreArt History and History Independent Study Part I 2025-26 AHS3008MLevel 62025-26In their final year, every student on the BA (Hons) Art History and History degree programme at the University of Lincoln must produce an independent study. This is an extended piece of work which gives them the opportunity to demonstrate they have acquired the skills to undertake detailed and substantial subject-specific research and writing founded on critical inquiry and analysis.Core'O Bella Ciao' Fascism and Anti-fascism in Italy 2025-26HST3061MLevel 62025-26This module will aim to introduce students to the history of Italian Fascism and the opposition to the regime: the Resistance. It will cover the history of Italy from the beginning of the 20th Century until the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the Republic in 1946. Historical interpretations of these key events in Italian and European history have always been very contentious and have aroused heated debates due to their ongoing political implications.OptionalA Tale of Two Cities in Medieval Spain: From Toledo to Córdoba 2025-26HST3072MLevel 62025-26In this module, students will have the opportunity to take a vivid and intellectually exciting journey through primary and secondary sources in order to understand the historical trajectory of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the sixth century to the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031. The aim of the module is to provide an introduction to two major medieval cities, Toledo and Córdoba, via acquaintance with and discussion of material that allows us to reflect upon a fascinating complex of problems.OptionalAir War and Society from Zeppelins to Drones 2025-26HST3084MLevel 62025-26In the Twentieth Century new aviation technologies transformed understandings of war, peace, civilian and military. The module considers how ideas about air power developed, what informed this understanding of war, and what the consequences were. This is not a traditional military history concerned with narrative accounts of battles or armies, but one that asks questions about the relationship between military and civilian in society and culture in the twentieth century.OptionalAlexander the Great and his Legacy: the Hellenistic World (Third Year) 2025-26CLS3025MLevel 62025-26This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.OptionalAmerican Dreams, American Nightmares: The Fiction of American History, 1850-1906 2025-26HST3054MLevel 62025-26OptionalAncient Graffiti 2025-26CLS3011MLevel 62025-26This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in standard documentary, literary and material sourcesOptionalAncient Philosophy 2025-26PHL3013MLevel 62025-26This module will give students an opportunity to engage in close philosophical study of texts by the most influential ancient philosophers. Texts will be studied in English translation. They will include works by Plato and Aristotle, as well as by less familiar philosophers of the ancient world (c. 500 BC-500 AD Greece and Rome). The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical: students will be expected assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by Plato, Aristotle and others and to develop their own views in dialogue with these thinkers.OptionalArabia in Antiquity: Religion, Culture, and Warfare from the Bronze Age to the Umayyads 2025-26CLS3031MLevel 62025-26The victories of Arab armies over the forces of the Byzantine and Persian Empires in the seventh century were of monumental importance. Not only did they signal the decline of the two great superpowers of the late ancient world but they were accompanied, some scholars would argue caused, by the rise of a new monotheistic world religion: Islam. The first half of the module seeks to understand the conquests of the Arab armies and the emergence of Islam historically and culturally, in two specific contexts: (1) political conflict between the Persian and Byzantine Empires, during which Arabia often acted as a military frontier and different Arab groups as allies to one side or another; (2) contact and competition between Christianity, Judaism and other religious traditions in Arabia. The second half of the module explores how, after the initial victories over the Byzantine and Persian Empires, the new Islamic polity renewed itself, rolled forward further conquests, and focuses in particular on how an Islamic culture was formed.OptionalArt Cinemas 2025-26FTV3020MLevel 62025-26OptionalAnarchy is order. Anarchism and social movements in Modern Europe 2025-26HST3055MLevel 62025-26This module will explore the different schools of thought and the political activities of the various groups and individuals that comprised the anarchist movement. Anarchism is a political doctrine based on freedom, egalitarianism and social justice and that developed in Europe as a political movement in the mid-XIX century. Anarchism never reached the ascendancy achieved by liberalism or communism; however, it had a significant influence on the political ideas, social movements, culture, and education of the international labour movement.OptionalBritons And Romans, 100 BC-AD 450 (third year) 2025-26CLS3023MLevel 62025-26This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of foreign ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed Roman.OptionalChivalry in Medieval Europe 2025-26HST3063MLevel 62025-26This module examines both the birth and development of the concept of chivalry in the Middle Ages. Students can use a wide range of primary sources, as well as medieval and contemporary historiography, to explore how the role, image and function of medieval knights evolved over time.OptionalClassics in Context II 2025-26CLS3001MLevel 62025-26This module gives students the opportunity to analyse one text or author; object, assemblage or collection; structure or site, according to their own research interests (the evidence chosen will be agreed at the start of the term). Paired with a tutor, each student can examine the evidence closely, find and read related research publications, and discuss each week. This builds on the skills developed at Level 2 and provides students with the opportunity to direct their own learning, engage closely with primary sources, develop skills in analysis and critical thinking, and broaden their knowledge of the evidence and methods of studying the ancient world.OptionalClio's Children: Walking along the Path of Greek Historiography 2025-26CLS3020MLevel 62025-26Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.OptionalConsuming Societies: Western Europe 1600-1800 2025-26HST3065MLevel 62025-26The module will examine consumption in many of its forms in early modern Western Europe. Focusing on a number of areas, such as food, clothing, furnishings, houses and other goods increasingly accessible to people at all levels of society, the module will encourage students to consider how and why these were available.OptionalCuratorial Practice 2025-26AHS3006MLevel 62025-26This module will enable students to engage in the research and development of displays through the process of curating an exhibition for the museum or heritage sector. Students will select objects and structure this selection through an appropriate narrative. They will propose modes and examples of interpretation such as gallery text, audio or visual aids. The emphasis will be on developing knowledge and understanding of the role and responsibilities of the curator, and the project will enable students to evidence a focused and critically rigorous curatorial rationale.OptionalEarly Modern Cultural and Artistic Encounters: Hybridity and Globalisation 2025-26HST3074MLevel 62025-26This module considers early modern imperialism and its impact on artistic production at a global scale. Students will have the opportunity to examine Iberia and its world as a point for cultural encounter and cross-fertilization. The module aims to explore how local communities conflated their symbols of identity within transnational artistic trends and through a number of carefully selected case studies, will analyse the way in which communities artists, patrons, collectors and audiences negotiated these cultural encounters in the production and assimilation of the arts.OptionalEnglish Landscape Painting: A Social and Cultural History 2025-26AHS3005MLevel 62025-26This module explores the legacy of English landscape painting, for instance in the work of John Constable, Paul Nash and others, which has played a fundamental part in perpetuating such imagery within our national consciousness. It will encourage a critical appreciation of artistic influences, the personal feelings, cultural attitudes and ideological perspectives in relation to the varied depictions of the English countryside. The close relationship between these depictions and the social and economic history of English rural society during the period c.1690 to present will be stressed throughout the module. Students will also critically identify, from a wider range of images and texts such as literature, film and advertising, the subjectivity of evidence that encourages popular impressions of the English countryside.OptionalEugenics, Race and Reproduction across the Atlantic, 1800-1945 2025-26HST3095MLevel 62025-26This module explores the history of science, sexuality and politics in the UK, Continental Europe, the US and Latin America from 1850 to 2000. It will give students an excellent grounding in modern and contemporary history that will complement further modules at level 3 that deal with sexuality, gender, race, science and medicine. It module examines the controversial rise of eugenics movements as a global phenomenon. The purpose of this module is to sustain a balanced and informed discussion about how race, reproduction, and the improvement of human heredity have acquired great political relevance in the modern period. It explores how scientists and different governments became preoccupied with hereditary theories, race, reproduction and sexual behaviour. It examines how societies across the Atlantic developed government policies around areas such as family planning, pronatalism, sterilisation, and race, which culminated in the implementation of euthanasia programmes in Nazi Germany. This module looks at eugenics programmes and politics in a transnational context, exploring how, for example, Nazi Germanys sterilisation programmes were inspired by those already implemented in the US and how a number of Latin American countries adapted and transformed eugenics policies from Southern Europe and developed whitening policies.OptionalExhibiting the World in the Nineteenth Century 2025-26HST3066MLevel 62025-26This module explores the various ways in which the world was put on display in the nineteenth century, and with what aims and effects. The nineteenth century was a period during which museums, galleries, exhibitions, zoos and circuses all expanded in numbers and took on distinctive modern forms; it was also one where the freak show became both popular but also frowned upon, while optical toys and attractions reformed ways of seeing.OptionalFrom Revolution to New Republic: The United States 1760-1841 2025-26HST3067MLevel 62025-26This module explores the transformation of the United States from a set of thirteen colonies to an independent republic. Topics considered include: the causes of the Revolution, the governance of the new republic, the place of the new republic in the world, the experiences of excluded groups (loyalists, native Americans, African Americans).OptionalGender, Sexuality and the Early Modern Body 2025-26HST3096MLevel 62025-26OptionalGothic Visions: Stained Glass in Britain c. 1220-1960 2025-26AHS3004MLevel 62025-26This module will explore the development, decline and revival of stained glass from the early middle ages to the mid twentieth century. The focus will be on British stained glass with particular reference to windows that students can visit in person, particularly in Lincoln Cathedral and the parish churches of the region. Students will learn to analyse windows through a number of methodological frameworks in particular: production (design and manufacture), consumption (patronage, iconography and meaning) and aesthetics (style, drawing, manipulation of light).OptionalHeroes and Villains: The Reigns of Richard the Lionheart (d. 1199) and Bad King John (d. 1216) 2025-26HST3098MLevel 62025-26By the late twelfth century, Englands rulers the Angevin kings - were among the wealthiest and most powerful in Western Europe. At the time of his accession, King Richard the Lionheart ruled over a vast collection of territories (later known as the Angevin Empire), which stretched from the borders with Scotland in the North to the Pyrenees in the South. Yet, at the time of his brother King Johns death in 1216, most Angevin possessions on the continent had been lost and baronial rebels had overrun more than half of England. Using medieval records and chronicles in English translation, this module explores the dramatic reigns of King Richard and King John, and their reputations as rulers, asking whether the former really was a legend in his own lifetime, and whether the latter deserves to be remembered as one of our most disastrous medieval monarchs. Together we will consider King Richards participation in the Third Crusade, the impact of his absence on his English subjects, and his struggle to retain Angevin territories on the Continent. We will also analyse the loss of Normandy under King John, Johns violent quarrel with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, the growth of opposition to John in England, the birth of Magna Carta, and the outcome of the civil war that was still raging on Johns death (including the Battle of Lincoln of 1217).OptionalHistory at the End of the World 2025-26HST3064MLevel 62025-26Historian, journalist, political commentator and gossip columnist Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, wrote what is still one of our main sources for British history of the thirteenth century. This module looks at Matthew Pariss Great Chronicle, considering both Matthew himself and what he tells us about thirteenth-century English society. Students have the opportunity to think about what history was in the thirteenth-century and about attitudes to foreigners and national identity; power and poverty; propaganda and fiction; and time, space and the apocalypse.OptionalHistory of Chinese Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2025-26HST3100MLevel 62025-26This module covers the history and historiography of one of the most popular and sophisticated systems of medicine in the world: Chinese medicine. Starting from a comparison of the conceptualisation and representation of the body in early China versus ancient Greece, the module introduces students to key ideas in Chinese medicine such as Yin Yang, Five Processes, Qi, Meridians and Five Organs and Six Bowels. Diagnosis (including pulse-taking and tongue examination) and therapy (including moxibustion and acupuncture) are explored, alongside the Chinese tradition of self-cultivation and the various techniques that promote health and even immortality. Theories concerning food and drugs are dissected, and the tremendous plurality of practitioners throughout the history of Chinese medicine are analysed in detail. No prior knowledge on the history of medicine, Chinese history, or Chinese language is required.OptionalHistory Work Placement 2025-26HST3053MLevel 62025-26The module will give students practical experience of the workplace. Students will normally define, plan and undertake a specific project. In addition students will gain experience of a range of tasks appropriate to sector-specific professional skills.OptionalImperial Cities of the Early Modern World. 2025-26HST3097MLevel 62025-26One of the ways in which early modern monarchs and rulers legitimised their authority and projected their power was through architecture and urban design. In this period capital cities across Europe, America and Asia were embellished with architecture and urban design inspired by Renaissance ideals of social order. This module examines the ways rulers imagined and built a number of imperial capital cities across Europe, America and Asia.OptionalInto the Workhouse: Poverty and Society in England and Wales 1780-1929 2025-26HST3093MLevel 62025-26What was the workhouse? What was life like within its doors? Into the workhouse explores this infamous institution in England and Wales, from its beginnings as just one of a variety of methods of relieving poverty, through to its zenith in the Victorian era with the implementation of a harsh regime. We will trace this transition, from fairly ad hoc cottage through to purpose-built institution, throughout this module. We start the course by asking: who were the poor? And what help was available to them? We will learn what poor relief was, and how it was an important part of a broader economy of makeshifts - offering everything from money to bread, from shoes to tools, and from a bed to medical help. How poor relief operated varied from place to place until the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. This New poor law placed a Commission in charge of a compulsory workhouse system with which we are familiar from novels and films. Why and how this new system was created will be our next focus, before we embark on a field trip to a workhouse and museum to understand what life was like within its walls. While the Victorian workhouse is often portrayed as a static and dreary Dickensian place, full of helpless individuals, this module will uncover a fresh, dynamic perspective. We will find out how individuals navigated and used workhouses, and how they asserted their agency. We will understand how workhouses were protested against, and pulled into disrepute in a series of national scandals. Workhouses were also a site of immense social innovation, especially in medical care. The institution saw renewed attention in the late nineteenth-century but came to an end in 1929. What led to its demise and the lasting legacy will be studied in the final week. In this module you will critically analyse a wide range of sources, including official reports, parish registers, plans and maps and workhouse artefacts, as well as first-hand accounts of workhouse life in legal depositions, pauper letters, poems and diaries.OptionalIreland: the Politics of Home Rule 2025-26HST3026MLevel 62025-26OptionalLatin Letter-Writing from the Republic to Late Antiquity 2025-26CLS3012MLevel 62025-26This module explores the world of Latin epistolary culture from the late Republic to the early Patristic period of the fourth Century AD. The preservation of documentary letters on materials such as stone and papyrus offer a complementary perspective on the lives, experiences and concerns of ordinary men and women across the Mediterranean. Students can consider a wide range of letter types, including about trade and agriculture, introductions and recommendations (literary and otherwise), and epistolary poetry.OptionalMad or Bad? Criminal Lunacy in Britain, 1800 1900 2025-26HST3085MLevel 62025-26This module explores how criminal lunatics - criminals who developed insanity in prison and individuals who committed a crime whilst insane - were represented and treated in nineteenth century Britain. Students can examine why some criminals were deemed insane and others were not; how criminal lunacy was defined in medicine and in law; how and why the institutions, people and practices for treating the criminal and criminal lunatic changed over the period; the role gender and class played in crimes, trials, diagnoses and treatment; and how criminality and criminal insanity were represented by laymen.OptionalMaking Militants: Teaching violence in late antiquity 2025-26CLS3027MLevel 62025-26Making Militants explores the role of violent teaching practices of various sorts in the making of men and women in Late Antiquity. Focusing on the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, it addresses a pivotal period in the transition from the ancient to the medieval world, surveying the multiple small-scale arenas that made up the Late Antiquity the household, the schoolroom, the barracks and the monastery. By close reading of letters, biographical accounts, rulebooks, speeches and a wide range of other sources, we consider how violent educative practices made people who were capable of operating in a changing, unpredictable and often dangerous world. The men and women who were made in such spaces were the products of a society that was fundamentally violent, their own violence a product of long-established socialisation practices rather than acts of anti-social deviance.OptionalMedicalised Bodies in Art and Visual Culture, c. 1900 to the Present 2025-26AHS3009MLevel 62025-26This module will analyse how the medicalised body has been represented, exploited, challenged and reclaimed in art and visual culture. The themes, ideas, priorities and objects of medicine such as death, health, sexuality, taboo, trauma, bodily functions, and viscera have taken centre stage in art and visual culture since the end of the nineteenth century. This module will explore the manifold ways in which artists have engaged with subjects including medical technologies, disease, disability, blood, and pain, and we will do so in relation to constructions of gender, sexuality, race, class and ability. What significance do pathology, disease, and patient experience take on in art and visual culture? To what effects have artists portrayed and perhaps questioned modern therapies and medical technologies, and their subjects, practices and theories? We will focus on a range of media including painting, sculpture, performance art, conceptual art, film, and photography.OptionalMemory, Belief, and Power in the British Landscape: Late Iron Age to Early Medieval 2025-26CLS3019MLevel 62025-26This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world. Landscape will be discussed as material culture writ large whereby the features and meanings of the past confront and constitute the creation of landscape in any given present. The significance of, for example, Neolithic cursus monuments, Bronze Age barrows, Iron Age 'hillforts', and Romano-Celtic temples will be examined in how they endured and were (re)interpreted in later periods to create complex significances and communicate aspects of group identities. The module will challenge boundaries by encouraging students to consider the complexity of relationship between past, present, and future, as well as between different 'site types', periods, and types of material.OptionalMen, Sex and Work: Sexuality and Gender in 20th Century Britain 2025-26HST3073MLevel 62025-26The 20th century saw unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change in Britain. However, the equally dramatic shifts in how sexuality and masculinity were experienced and represented are often ignored. This module aims to enable students to study the history of 20th Century Britain while using the lens of gender and sexuality to understand how ordinary men lived their lives. Students will get the opportunity to work with a wide variety of primary sources such as: court records, newspapers, film (including use of the MACE archive), photographs, music, autobiographies, oral history and literature.OptionalNewton's Revolution 2025-26PHL3004MLevel 62025-26This module examines some of the philosophical issues raised by the Newtonian revolution in the natural sciences, such as: What is the nature of Newtons distinction between absolute and relative space? In what sense can forces be said to exist? What is the ontology of force? Is it sufficient to provide a mathematical definition of force (e.g., f=ma)? Is gravity a special kind of force with its own unique set of properties? What is the nature of action at a distance? Is Newtons view of space metaphysical? This is an interdisciplinary module that situates Newtonian science in its sociocultural context.OptionalObjects of Empire: the material worlds of British colonialism 2025-26HST3086MLevel 62025-26This module will investigate the history of imperial Britain through material culture. The objects of study will range from trophies looted in battle and a drum transported with slaves to Virginia, to African sculpture depicting Europeans. Historians increasingly recognise the fresh insights that objects offer to major themes in imperial history such as gender, race and class. This module responds to these new academic developments and will use objects and their biographies to study key phases and themes in the history of the British Empire. Tracing the long history of such objects can enable us to explore how objects change meanings as they move through various colonial and post-colonial contexts.OptionalPalace and Mosque: The Construction of an Imperial Image in the Ottoman Empire. 2025-26HST3090MLevel 62025-26OptionalPre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes: Progressive British Culture (1840-1898) 2025-26AHS3007MLevel 62025-26This module examines the emergence, development and legacy of Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism and how these movements influenced British culture. The module will explore how Pre-Raphaelite painters attempted to redefine the natural role of art and how Aesthetic artists went on to question their approach. The module will explore the work of the key protagonists of each movement and how their work crossed over into other media such as stained glass, painted furniture and book illustration.OptionalQueer Film and Television 2025-26FTV3287MLevel 62025-26Portrayals of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives on screen are under increasing scrutiny from audiences, activists and media scholars. But, for much of the history of film and television, non-normative sexual and gender identities have been marginalised or hidden. This module examines the history of queer representations in screen culture from the era of silent films to the present day. Students will have the opportunity to work with examples from a range of national contexts, including (but not limited to) Britain and America, as well as engaging with influential scholarship in queer theory and the history of gender and sexuality.OptionalQueering the Past - Level 3 2025-26HST3103MLevel 62025-26OptionalRace, Media, and Screen Culture in 20th Century Britain 2025-26HST3089MLevel 62025-26Media and screen culture were powerful means of defining Englishness as a racial construct in the 20th century. This module examines the complex relationship between race, media, and screen culture from World War I, when representations of the British empire were increasingly available to British audiences, up to the 1980s, when tensions over immigration were evident on film and television screens throughout the UK. Students will examine constructions of race across a variety of primary sources including empire films from the 1930s, documentaries, home-movies, and television, as well as media authored by Black and Asian Britons in the post-war period. Students will gain a critical in-depth understanding of the place of race within British screen culture, media, and society in the 20th Century.OptionalRepublicanism in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 2025-26HST3081MLevel 62025-26Although early modern England was a kingdom, governed by a monarch, many historians have claimed that there was a strong republican undercurrent to Tudor and Stuart political thought. This module introduces students to the key approaches and methodologies of the history of ideas by focusing upon the various ways in which scholars have studied and conceptualised republicanism in early modern England and the ongoing debate surrounding the origin, content and influence of republican ideas in the period 1500-1700.OptionalRoman Lincoln 2025-26CLS3010MLevel 62025-26This module explores the history, archaeology, visual and material culture of Roman Lincoln (Lindum Colonia), within the context of the provinces of Roman Britain. It is designed to provide students with the opportunity to handle and analyse objects from the Lincolnshire Archives and The Collection museum, to engage with the evidence that is visible in the modern city, to engage with excavation reports as primary evidence, and to consider how a military and urban centre was connected to rural sites, towns and the forts beyond.OptionalRome and Constantinople: Monuments and Memory, 200-1200 2025-26CLS3028MLevel 62025-26This module explores the political, social, economic, cultural, and religious history of two capitals of the Roman empire: Rome and Constantinople, or Old Rome and New Rome as they came to be called in the East. These were imperial cities where the most powerful figures - emperors and patriarchs, popes and saints - of Antiquity and the Middle Ages constructed and destroyed, appropriated and reorientated spaces, buildings, and structures. In this module we shall look at palaces and fortifications, hippodromes and churches, triumphal arches and mausolea, fora and harbours, discovering and discussing not only how and why they were built and maintained, but also their perception and remembrance over the centuries from 200 to 1200. Students will gain knowledge of the evolving configuration of Rome and Constantinople, and have the opportunity to prepare a cultural biography of a monument of their choice from one of these two cities of empire.OptionalRulers and Kings: Visualising Authority in Medieval Europe 2025-26HST3076MLevel 62025-26This module investigates the nature of rulership during the middle ages, exploring how images and architecture served to visually define and articulate the authority of kings and rulers during the Middle Ages. The module will discuss in depth three different case studies: Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire; the Norman rulers of Southern Italy; Louis IX and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.OptionalSexualities and Gender in Modern Britain and Europe: From the French Revolution to the Present 2025-26HST3099MLevel 62025-26This module introduces some of the major themes in the British and European history of sexuality. It employs comparative and transnational history to explore how, for example, Continental European sexual policies impacted Britain and the extent to which some attitudes to sexual behaviors were unique of specific national contexts. It explores how sexuality became central to British and European identities, culture and politics. It also considers official and unofficial discourses about sexuality and gender in law, the human sciences and culture, paying particular attention to the geographical contexts in which these discourses emerged and how they moved across countries.OptionalTeaching History: designing and delivering learning in theory and practice - level 3 2025-26HST3102MLevel 62025-26Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice in History. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.OptionalThe Armenians: Crafting Community, Communicating History 2025-26HST3075MLevel 62025-26OptionalThe City and the Citizen: urban space and the shaping of modern life, 1850 to present. 2025-26HST3071MLevel 62025-26This module aims to examine how living in cities shaped the ways our lives and society have developed since the 19th Century. In the early 19th Century the population of Europe largely lived in rural settlements, yet 100 years later the populations of Western Europe's cities had exploded. Cities produced new forms of social organisation: for the first time drag queens and prostitutes rubbed shoulders with housewives, the rich discovered the poor on their very doorsteps and the unregulated spaces of cities became havens for counter-cultures, deviant sexualities and radical politics.OptionalThe Emperor in the Roman World (Third Year) 2025-26CLS3022MLevel 62025-26This module surveys the history of the Roman Empire not as a succession of emperors and achievements, victories and defeats, but as a complex of experiments in government and of attitudes to governance. Beginning with the transition from representative republican rule to the domination of an imperial dynasty and its network of élite dependants in the early first century, and concluding with the incipient takeover of this system by a newly Christianised ruling class in the early fourth century, students can explore the role of the emperor in the Roman world and the patterns of communication between him and his subjects.OptionalThe European Union since 1945 2025-26HST3045MLevel 62025-26This module will focus on the process of economic and political integration, which has taken place in Western Europe since 1945. The emphasis will be placed on the global forces which have shaped, and are still shaping, this process of integration. The module will also investigate the impact of the Cold and Korean Wars, the European Recovery Programme and other factors from outside Europe.OptionalThe Making of a Tragedy: The United States and the Vietnam War (1945-1975) 2025-26HST3091MLevel 62025-26OptionalThe Medieval Mediterranean: Sites and Artefacts Coexistence and Conflict 2025-26HST3105MLevel 62025-26OptionalThe Philosophy and History of Colour 2025-26PHL3008MLevel 62025-26The world as we encounter it in visual perception is a world of coloured objects red buses, yellow daffodils, blue skies, and the like. Colour raises a variety of perplexing philosophical puzzles concerning the nature of physical reality and our epistemic to the mental states of others. This module serves as an introduction to these issues. Some of the questions to be explored include: Do objects really have the colours we ordinarily take them to possess? If so, what sort of property is colour? Are colours really just impressions that exist only in the mind? If so, what causes these impressions? Do such impressions have representational content? What is the relationship between philosophical and scientific theories of colour? This is an interdisciplinary module that also explores issues relating to colour in art history and the history of science.OptionalThe Roman City 2025-26CLS3029MLevel 62025-26To the citizens of the Roman world, civility (civilitas) right conduct of government, sound behaviour of individuals, citizenship itself was a function of the city (civitas), which constituted the centre of the Roman state and society. This module will take students on a guided tour of the Roman city, using each stop along the way as a point of entry into one or more aspects of the politics, society, economy, and culture of Rome and its empire. Students will be challenged to reimagine urban life via a detailed engagement with a representative array of written, material, and visual sources and the main lines of the secondary literature.OptionalThe Roman Countryside 2025-26CLS3030MLevel 62025-26Before the Roman invasion of AD 43, everyone in Britain lived in the countryside, for the simple reason that there were no cities or towns. Indeed, throughout the four centuries of Roman rule which followed, the vast majority of people still lived outside of urban and military centres. The core objective of this module is an archaeological exploration of the great diversity of evidence, analysing the significance of the changing nature of rural society and the creation of rural landscapes and identities, focusing on Britain from the late pre-Roman Iron Age, through the Roman period, to its sub-Roman aftermath (c. 100 BCAD 500).OptionalThe Vikings in the North Atlantic: Living at the Fringes of Medieval Europe 2025-26HST3082MLevel 62025-26The image of Vikings from the north plundering their way across Europe is firmly fixed in popular imagination. Few people stop to think that the same people were also farmers, the heads of families and had home lives. The historical sources for the Vikings in the North Atlantic are pitifully few a small number of sagas and a few other records. We often know more about the Vikings from those with whom they came into contact than from their own accounts. This module integrates the different lines of evidence historical, archaeological and environmental and evaluates whether the idea of a Viking world is a useful approach. Students can gain an introduction to texts in translation and archaeological reports, and explore the main limitations of our understanding of the North Atlantic regions in this period.OptionalThe World of Late Antiquity, 150-750 (Third Year) 2025-26CLS3024MLevel 62025-26This module aims to develop students' understanding of the political, social and cultural history of Late Antiquity (150-750), with a particular focus on two world-changing religious developments: the rise of Christianity and Islam. Although the geographical focus of our studies will be on eastern Mediterranean lands of an empire ruled from Constantinople, known to later scholars as the Byzantine Empire, the geographical range of the module will be wide and include western Europe, including the western Mediterranean, Persia, Arabia, and barbarian territories beyond the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube.OptionalThemes in Early Modern Art 2025-26AHS3002MLevel 62025-26OptionalWhat is the Renaissance? 2025-26HST3058MLevel 62025-26This module aims to explore the intellectual and cultural achievements of the Renaissance, as well as its historiographic context. The period of transition from 'medieval' to 'modern' society that the Renaissance represents (or has been characterised as representing) is one of the most challenging areas of historical study, profoundly influencing historiography. Students have the opportunity to examine in depth to what extent the historical periodisation of the 'Renaissance' has been a deliberate, although sometimes contentious, means to better understand events of the past, particularly in relation to cultural analysis.Optional

An Introduction to Your Modules

A World History of Art and Architecture 1: from Antiquity to the Revivals. 2022-23AHS1004MLevel 42022-23This is a survey module that covers the development of art, architecture and design from ancient times through to the nineteenth century revivals in order to develop students' understanding of the history of the creative disciplines. It is composed of three elements: it offers an historical and theoretical overview in which to study art, architecture and design; it examines major trends in Western Art, and; it is geographically expansive and responds to theories of global and transregional research and teaching of art, architecture and design. The module will examine paintings, sculpture, architecture and a wide variety of media and their theoretical understandings. It will also investigate how political and social structures fostered the creation of art, architecture and design. In addition to Western art, students will have the opportunity to learn about artistic and architectural production in a wide variety of regions in the world, including Latin America, Africa and Asia.CoreA World History of Art and Architecture 2: Tradition, Change and Modernity 2022-23AHS1005MLevel 42022-23This survey module examines art, architecture and design in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The module introduces artistic and architectural developments in the nineteenth century and how they evolved into Modernism and its cultural transformation into Postmodernism and contemporary artistic practice. During the development of the module, students will focus on historic revivals, Art Nouveau, Abstract ion, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual Art, and British Art at the end of the twentieth centuryCoreCritical Thinking and Writing 2022-23HST1033MLevel 42022-23This module aims to equip students with the skills necessary to communicate their learning in an academic environment, and also supports students in adjusting to the demands of higher education. The core objective of the module is to develop students critical thinking and writing skills.CoreForging the Modern State 2022-23HST1036MLevel 42022-23This module provides a thematic survey of European and Atlantic history from the mid-eighteenth century to the final decades of the twentieth century, structured around the research interests of members of the module teaching team. This survey provides an overview of key moments in modern history from 1750-1979, and addresses the complex development of states primarily in western Europe but with attention to the growing influence of the United States and Russia.CoreIntroduction to Visual and Material Culture 2022-23HST1038MLevel 42022-23This module is designed as an introduction to visual and material culture, embracing the history of art and architecture, historical archaeology, and the conservation of historical buildings. It aims to enable students to interrogate visual and material objects throughout the past and to understand their functions and possible meanings of visual and material objects as primary sources.CoreMaterials, Techniques, Technologies in the History of Art 2022-23AHS1001MLevel 42022-23This module explores the relevance of materials and artistic techniques in the understanding and analysis of art and material culture. The concept of materiality has an increasing prominence in the intellectual discourse of Art History, and this module will allow students to engage with this theoretical framework by exploring the relevance of materials and techniques, the processes through which artefacts are constructed. The last part of the module will introduce students to a selection of technologies (especially digital technologies) that assist scholars in the investigation of the past, such as photography, digital mapping and virtual heritage visualisation. In this way, students will be exposed to these technologies not only as investigation tools that they might use, but also as potential career pathways.CoreThe Historians Craft 2022-23HST1035MLevel 42022-23This module is designed to enable students to develop their research skills in history and their understanding of research as a process of inquiry. Students have the opportunity to deepen skills developed in the first term, such as essay writing in history and information literacy, by working alongside staff from the School in analysing primary and secondary sources relating to specific approaches to History.CoreThe Medieval World 2022-23HST1031MLevel 42022-23This module offers an introduction to the sources, approaches and methods necessary for the study of the medieval world. Lectures provide a survey of key moments in medieval history from 300-1500, structured around the research specialisms of the module teaching team. The module focuses on issues of religion and power in the Middle Ages, while there is a strong methodological focus on the materiality of the medieval period.CoreAlexander the Great and his Legacy: the Hellenistic World 2023-24CLS2009MLevel 52023-24This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.CoreDissertations and Beyond 2023-24HST2020MLevel 52023-24This module aims to prepare students for designing their dissertation (independent study) proposals and for applying for jobs and to postgraduate programmes. Students will explore how to prepare for and ensure success in their dissertations, employment, and study/research by identifying and articulating their transferable skills, breadth of knowledge, expertise, and interests. The module will provide information on how to become aware of employment opportunities, to plan and prepare for the future, and to build on ones undergraduate studies.CoreNeoclassicism to Cubism: Art in Transition 1750-1914 2023-24AHS2010MLevel 52023-24This module will concentrate on fine art (painting and sculpture) within Western Europe c.1750- c.1914. The module will explore the hegemony of Neoclassicism in the second half of the long eighteenth century through the seminal transformations of Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Cubism in the nineteenth century.CoreNew Directions in Art History and Historiography 2023-24AHS2006MLevel 52023-24This module aims to introduce students to the different approaches to the study of art history and history which have developed, with a particular focus on twentieth-century ideas and innovations, such as iconography, iconology, gender theory, global art history, materiality, the sensorial experience of art. Students will be encouraged to think critically and creatively about how art history and history have developed within the academy.CoreThe Emperor in the Roman World 2023-24CLS2020MLevel 52023-24This module surveys the history of the Roman Empire not as a succession of emperors and achievements, victories and defeats, but as a complex of experiments in government and of attitudes to governance. Beginning with the transition from representative republican rule to the domination of an imperial dynasty and its network of élite dependants in the early first century, and concluding with the incipient takeover of this system by a newly Christianised ruling class in the early fourth century, students can explore the role of the emperor in the Roman world and the patterns of communication between him and his subjects.Core100 Years of Photography: Images, History and Impact 1839-1939 2023-24AHS2008MLevel 52023-24This module will explore the development and cultural impact of the first 100 years of photography. Initially driven by the commercial viability of portraiture, photography soon inspired a range of professional, artistic and amateur practitioners in the nineteenth century. Photographic innovation in the early twentieth century exerted a significant influence on the way that modernists sought to represent the world. Street photography emerged as a new insistent type of realism and represented urban experience in new ways. The social power of photography was spread through increasingly affordable cameras and propagated through print media. Students will learn to analyse images and explore how photographs functioned to produce and exert power.Optional1968: The Year of Revolt 2023-24HST2080MLevel 52023-24OptionalAccessing Ordinary Lives: Interpreting and Understanding Voices from the Past, 1880 present 2023-24HST2052MLevel 52023-24This module provides students with the opportunity to resurrect and understand the ordinary lives of people like themselves and their forebears from the sources available to us. The course picks up on both well-established and recent trends in historical research that have sought to give voice to ordinary people and promote from the historical records the lives of marginalised people such as homosexuals, women, children, the working classes, ethnic minorities alongside more familiar narratives of the great and the good.OptionalAesthetics 2023-24PHL2002MLevel 52023-24This module introduces students to philosophical questions about the nature of art and beauty. For example: What is art? Can anything be a work of art? Can a pile of elephant dung be art? Is beauty objectively real or only in the eye of the beholder? Can aesthetic judgements be right or wrong? Is Beethoven better than Beyoncé? Is Shakespeare better than Eastenders? Or are aesthetic disputes like deciding between the merits of different flavours of ice cream? Students can also consider questions that arise in relation to specific artforms: How is it possible to respond emotionally towards the plight of fictional characters that are known not to exist? Do rock/pop music and classical music require different aesthetic criteria for their appreciation and evaluation? Why do we take pleasure in the aesthetic representation of tragic events? Students will be guided through their reading of various classical and contemporary works on such issues, and encouraged to think for themselves about the problems addressed.OptionalArt and Power: Projecting Authority in the Renaissance World 2023-24AHS2007MLevel 52023-24Renaissance monarchs often employed artistic display to project royal authority. Ruling elites commissioned pieces of art not only for the embellishment of their residences, but also as a suitable vehicle to display authority. Kings and Queens commissioned tapestries, sculptures, royal palaces, or lavishly decorated printed books that narrated their achievements and omitted their failures. This module examines the diverse ways rulers and their entourage imagined and created an image of kingship through the visual arts.OptionalBritons and Romans, 100 BC-AD 450 2023-24CLS2019MLevel 52023-24This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of foreign ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed Roman.OptionalClassical Reception: from Medieval to Modern 2023-24CLS2022MLevel 52023-24Students can gain an introduction to the historical and archaeological sources, approaches and methods necessary for the study of the ancient world. Lectures provide a survey of key moments in history, 1000 BC-AD 400, structured around the research specialisms of the module teaching team.OptionalClassics in Context 2023-24CLS2003MLevel 52023-24This module gives students the opportunity to read one text (in translation) closely and discuss sections each week with a tutor. It offers the opportunity to develop skills in textual analysis, including researching an author; assessing the intended audience; and considering the social/political context, the significance of genre and style, and other factors in how we interpret and understand a text. Students also compare and critique research that has used the text and explore the possibilities it has to serve as primary evidence for the study of the ancient world.OptionalDecolonising the Past 2023-24HST2089MLevel 52023-24Beginning with the Royal Historical Societys Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report (published in 2018), which raises urgent questions on the diversity of staff, students and curricula at History departments in UK universities, the module analyses live debates on Decolonising the Curriculum in higher education. We critique how histories of Empire, colonialism and slavery have been taught in Anglo-American settings, and introduce postcolonial analysis on archives, as well as the Global South and indigenous knowledge that have often been marginalised in Eurocentric historiographies. Turning towards the University as a key apparatus of power in the contemporary world, the module then reveals the complex legacies of slavery in the making of a number of UK and US institutions including Liverpool, Bristol, Oxford (#RhodesMustFall), SOAS, University of Virginia and others. Introducing the new field of Critical University Studies (CUS), students will learn about the emergence of universities in former colonies including India and South Africa, as well as the phenomenon of transnational education that entails the establishment, by prestigious European and American institutions, of satellite campuses around the world. The module then unpacks public understandings of colonial history via recent scholarship on nationalism, patriotism, museums and memories, and ends with a hopeful reflection on pedagogies that will be more inclusive and intersectional in terms of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. This module will be particularly suited to students who intend to develop careers in education.OptionalDestroying Art: Iconoclasm through History 2023-24HST2060MLevel 52023-24OptionalDigital Heritage 2023-24CON2054MLevel 52023-24The cultural heritage sector increasingly offers opportunities for the application of digital technologies as communication, research and recording tools. This module enables students to become familiar with some of these advanced recording techniques for the study and recording of objects.OptionalDisease, Health, and the Body in Early Modern Europe 2023-24HST2044MLevel 52023-24This module examines how physicians, other practitioners, and the public understood the body, disease, and health in the early modern period. Although the medical system of Galen (2nd century AD) and humoral medicine guided Western medicine until the 1800s, between 1500-1700 there were major challenges to this traditional system. The work of elites such as Paracelsus and Van Helmont (chemical medicine), Vesalius (anatomy), Harvey (circulation and respiratory physiology) will be placed in a greater religious, social, and cultural context.OptionalEarly Modern Family: Households in England c.1500-1750 2023-24HST2038MLevel 52023-24The module looks at a number of ways in which historians have studied the family in Britain between c.1500 and 1800. It will examine a range of historical approaches from the demographic to the more qualitative and anthropological. Close attention is paid to the problems historians of the pre-industrial family confront in their examination of the surviving primary sources.OptionalExistentialism and Phenomenology 2023-24PHL2006MLevel 52023-24The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith. The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.OptionalExperiencing and Remembering Civil War in Britain 2023-24HST2066MLevel 52023-24The civil wars that raged across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century were among the most turbulent and exhilarating times in British history. This module explores the diverse ways in which the wars were explained, experienced and remembered by those who lived through them. Students can consider the extent to which this period, often described as one of 'revolution', left a lasting impression on British society, culture, religion and politics.OptionalFighting for Peace? Politics, Society and War in the Modern Era 2023-24HST2086MLevel 52023-24The modern period has often been understood as a time when peace was considered the natural state of societies, where states and non-governmental groups have been concerned with achieving a lasting peace and avoiding repetitions of bloody conflict. Wars, however, have not become a thing of the past, and today we live in a condition of seemingly permanent war where civilians are often the primary targets. This module will look at how ideas and practices of war have altered in the last few hundred years, and how these notions have been contested and challenged. The module asks where these ideas came from, and how concepts of war and peace, and violence and non-violence have been reframed in various ways. The course is focussed on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and moves chronologically from the Napoleonic wars, to contemporary conflicts through a series of case studies that cover wars, diplomacy, the aftermath of wars, and peace movements. Each case study will draw on key themes which run throughout the module, including pacifism, militarism, imperialism, culture, race, gender and nationalism.OptionalFrom Bright Young Things to Brexit: British media and society since 1919 2023-24HST2079MLevel 52023-24This module examines British media and society in Britain from the end of World War I, through World War II, and into the uncertain waters of the postwar period and the 21st century. A range of domestic and international factors that shaped modern Britain will be investigated throughout the module, including the interwar slump, World War II, decolonisation, increased immigration, the decline of the welfare state, the Troubles in Ireland, the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, and Britains unsteady relationship with Europe. These events not only shaped Britain itself but also occurred in dialogue with the increasingly powerful role of media in the 20th and 21st centuries. This module will bring specific attention to the ways in which the press, cinema, radio, television, music, and also the web reflected, engaged with, and sometimes shaped popular understandings of society, culture, and politics in the period. We will examine this history of media in conjunction with a history of British society in order to investigate claims by historians that a democratic culture emerged in 20th century Britain.OptionalFrom Caesar to Arthur: The Rise and Fall of Roman Britain 2023-24HST2043MLevel 52023-24This module seeks to understand the history of Roman involvement in Britain on its own terms and enable students to grasp the importance of local responses to Roman cultural and political influence in the rise and fall of Roman Britain, through exploration of key themes such as: conquest and imperialism; ethnography and the other; religion; cities on the edge of empire; frontiers; military resistance and cooperation; Romanization. Particular focus will be placed on providing students the opportunity to develop a critical appreciation of the usefulness of archaeology to our understanding of the period.OptionalGender and Sexuality in Britain 1700-1950 2023-24HST2076MLevel 52023-24This module will interrogate aspects of the history of gender and sexuality in Britain over a 250-year span, coinciding with the arrival of modernity. It will introduce students to debates over the relationship between gender, sexuality, and structural changes in society, economy and politics, as well as thinking about gender and sexuality as discourse and subjectivity. Further, it will introduce students to a wide range of source material for the social and cultural history of early modern and modern Britain and seek to develop their confidence in using such diverse sources skillfully. The module takes a thematic approach, although within each theme, specific chronological examples will be examined. Thus continuity and change can be highlighted, and it is intended to resist a narrative of progress towards modern liberal views of gender and sexuality. However, a clear chronological framework will also be developed through examples which will help students gain a clear understanding of context.OptionalGender in Nineteenth-Century Britain 2023-24HST2045MLevel 52023-24This module aims to introduce students to key theoretical and historiographical debates, and to the study of a wide range of source materials of use in modern British social and cultural history, while also exploring topics which shed light on the development of gendered ideals and practices in the nineteenth century. The module covers a roughly chronological series of case studies which pick up on the experiences of different groups in society and also offer a range of different types of source material.OptionalGrand Expectations? America during the Cold War 2023-24HST2042MLevel 52023-24The United States emerged from the Second World War a superpower, with, to an extent, a belief that it could remake the world. The challenges of the Cold War years were to demonstrate how limited was that power. This module explores the key social, political, economic and cultural developments in the United States between 1945 and 1990.OptionalHistory and Literature in the C18th and C19th 2023-24HST2077MLevel 52023-24Works of fiction are not just a source of entertainment. They are a crucial and exciting route into understanding the past. Novels, short stories and poems allow us to understand how debates and ideas about society and identity circulated and how writers attempted to reinforce or change the way that readers looked at the world. This module will examine how a wide range of fiction produced in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries addressed the key themes of class, politics and gender. Students will have the opportunity to examine the treatment of these concepts in genres as varied as crime fiction, popular romance, childrens literature, science fiction, war writing and feminist fiction.OptionalHistory of Medicine from Antiquity to the Present 2023-24HST2088MLevel 52023-24This module analyzes how physicians, other practitioners, and the public understood the body, disease, and health from antiquity to the modern era. The first part of the module will delineate how the medical system of Galen (2nd century AD) and humoral medicine guided Western medicine from antiquity until the 1800s. Students will then analyze the major challenges to this system from physicians such as Paracelsus, Vesalius, and William Harvey, as well as with the discovery of the germ theory of disease. Students will also explore the evolving role of states and local governments for public health, the development of the medical marketplace, changing understandings of the body, disease, and mental illness, and gender and medicine. The history of medicine will thus be placed in a greater religious, social, and cultural context, with a consideration of the role of medicine in popular culture. The module will therefore embody a cultural and intellectual approach to history and introduce students to the major historiographic debates in the history of medicine. Seminars will be primarily devoted to student-led case studies on specific themes, such as: Galenic case studies; Vesalius and anatomy, quackery in England; childbirth and midwifery; the rise of the medical profession; anatomy and the Anatomy Act; disease control and public health; madness and society; sexual health and the patient narrative.OptionalIntroduction to Exhibitions, Curatorship and Curatorial Practices 2023-24AHS2009MLevel 52023-24This module introduces students to the understanding of exhibitions and curatorial practices. Following an introduction on the history of collections and museums, the course will explore the many issues related to the display of art and objects. It combines the study of theoretical approaches and the analysis of relevant case studies, and considers topics related to audiences for museums and exhibitions, the presentation and explanation of artefacts and artworks, and the new opportunities offered by digital technologies.OptionalItaly, a Contested Nation 2023-24HST2032MLevel 52023-24Italy is a highly-politicised and ideologically-divided country. Divisions and internal conflicts, which have reached dramatic peaks, are a permanent feature in Italian history. They mirror unsolved social and political contradictions that many historians consider to be the result of the process of the Italian Risorgimento. National unification was prompted by republicans, but it was the Monarchy that achieved it.OptionalLatin Literature in the Late Republic and the Augustan Age 2023-24CLS2010MLevel 52023-24This module explores a broad sampling of major genres and authors, and aims to provide a basis for further study and enjoyment of Latin literature. Focusing on writers active between 90 BC and AD 14, often referred to as the Golden Age, we shall examine how the literature of this period bears witness to contemporary social, political and cultural transformations. All texts will be read in English translation, though opportunities to read or translate from the original Latin will be available for interested students. This module is intended as a successor to the core first-year survey of Classical Literature.OptionalLiving and dying in the middle ages, 800-1400 2023-24HST2087MLevel 52023-24How did people live and die in the middle ages? Drawing on the research expertise of the medievalists in the School, the module seeks to answer this question by addressing key themes relating to the life cycles of medieval people, from their childhood and education, via the roles that they took on in life (within families and in public; peaceful and violent), to their deaths. We will address primary sources that provide intimate insights into the everyday lives of medieval people: letters and autobiographies. Such sources will be contrasted with those that offer a more 'top-down' vision of how medieval society should function, such as rulebooks and conduct manuals. Finally, we will explore how people in the medieval period managed their material and spiritual interests through transactions recorded in documents such as charters and wills. A key aim of the module is to develop your research and writing skills by providing you with an opportunity to produce an extended piece of research. This, coupled with the intensive work with primary sources, will equip you to tackle a final year independent study in a wide range of medieval topics.OptionalMadness and the Asylum in Modern Britain 2023-24HST2068MLevel 52023-24This module explores the relationship between madness and British society from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Students can examine how institutional approaches to the treatment of insanity have changed, from the eighteenth-century madhouse, to the Victorian asylum, to care in the community in the twentieth century. They will assess changing medical, legal and lay responses to insanity, including the role that class, gender, family and community played in defining insanity and its treatment.OptionalMaterial Histories: Objects, Interpretation, Display 2023-24CON2055MLevel 52023-24This module will give students a unique opportunity to develop their practical skills for studying objects while developing their understanding of the relationship between history and material culture. Students can explore how object-based study can enhance their practice as conservators and historians and how material culture studies can lead to insights that cannot be reached through other approaches.OptionalMedia, Controversy and Moral Panic 2023-24HST2069MLevel 52023-24This module explores the history of media controversy and moral panic during the twentieth century. It is designed to introduce students to media texts (especially films and television programmes) that have sparked debate and extreme differences of opinion among audiences in Britain and America. Students will be expected to engage with a range of films, television programmes and primary source material, which may include newspapers and television news broadcasts from the Media Archive of Central England (MACE).OptionalMedicine, Sexuality and Modernity 2022-23HST2073MLevel 52022-23This is a general introductory module on the history of medicine and sexuality from 1850 to 2000. It aims to give an overview of some of the major themes within the modern history of medicine and sexuality. It focuses on how our understanding of the human body, reproduction and sexuality in a socio-cultural and political context evolved from the advent of evolutionary thought to present day debates about enhancement and reproductive medicine. Sexual behaviour and reproduction became major concerns in medicine and politics in the modern period. Sexuality became an object of scientific enquiry and governments developed new policies to regulate sexual behaviour. This module will give students an excellent grounding in modern and contemporary history that will complement further modules at level 2 and 3 that deal with sexuality, gender, race, science and medicine.OptionalMigration in British Art, 1933 to the Present 2023-24AHS2011MLevel 52023-24OptionalPeople on the move: migration, identity and mobility in the modern world 2023-24HST2081MLevel 52023-24People have migrated as long as the human race has existed and this module places this fundamental aspect of human experience at its heart. Issues surrounding migration and the movement of peoples are central to contemporary politics and society, as the management of people seeking refuge and better prospects preoccupies governments around the world. This situation makes ever more urgent our need to understand the history of migration and how it has shaped cultures across time and space. People on the move focuses upon the movement of people at particular points in modern history, considering the forces that propel people to risk their own lives and possibly those of their families, uproot from home and enter the potentially perilous and peripatetic life of a migrant. We will discuss the prospects and challenges of migration, and subsequently how diasporic cultures develop and the benefits and tensions surrounding integration. We will consider what happens when communities come into contact due to migration and the subsequent influences upon culture, religion, politics and identity. Through a series of in-depth case studies from the modern period, from the forced movement of the colonial era to twentieth century migration across the Atlantic, we will encounter a variety of geographical regions and processes of migration. A variety of historical sources will be interrogated to access the stories of migrants and about migrants, including texts (such legal and government documents, letters, memoirs and oral histories), images, objects and architecture. Addressing themes such as empire, economics, identity and religion in different contexts allows us to make meaningful comparisons between migrations across time and space.OptionalPhilosophy of Science 2023-24PHL2007MLevel 52023-24This module explores a range of philosophical questions relating to the nature of science. How are scientific theories developed? Are scientific theories discovered through a flash of genius or is something more methodical involved? How much of scientific discovery is down to careful observation? Do scientific theories tell us how the world really is? Do the entities scientific theories postulate (atoms, electromagnetic waves, and so on) really exist? Or are scientific theories merely useful models of reality? Is science independent of its social context? To what extent is scientific inquiry affected by gender, race, or politics? Is there such a thing as truth that is not relative to a particular culture, social class, or historical era? Drawing on accessible examples from a variety of scientific fields and by answering these and related questions, we shall try to reach an understanding of how science works.OptionalPower and the Presidency in the United States 2023-24HST2082MLevel 52023-24This module introduces students to history of the US presidency by investigating selected past presidents from Washington to Trump. By reading and analysing the biographies of various presidents, key historical discussions as well as primary sources, including presidential addresses, campaign speeches, policy documents, and internal White House documents, and media accounts, students will be able to discuss and evaluate the major themes associated with the Office of the President. The main question students will be asked to engage with through this course is what makes an effective president? In answering this question students will discuss themes ranging from the establishment of the office during the American Revolution, the ability of presidents to pass civil rights reform, the rise and fall of the imperial presidency, the decline and restoration of presidential influence, hidden illness in the oval office, the growth of partisanship, the impact of the media and presidential communication strategies, and the changing presidential electorate. By exploring these themes as well as the achievements, scandals and the legacies of various presidents, students will be able to determine how individual presidents have coped with the pressures of the office and what influence they have exerted on the office.OptionalPowerful Bodies: Saints and Relics during the Middle Ages 2023-24HST2059MLevel 52023-24This module investigates the matter of sanctity during the middle ages, focusing in particular on two different aspects: the construction of the memory of saints, through texts, images and architecture, and the crucial role of their mortal remains. Spanning from the fourth to the fourteenth Century, this module offers not only a general approach to the phenomenon of sanctity, but also detailed analysis of different case studies, from early Christian saints and their commemoration in martyria to Romanesque shrines in France and Italy. The module then considers the phenomenon of new saints, through discussion of the celebrated site of Saint Franciss burial, San Francesco, in Assisi. Students can explore the case of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, discussing how his memory was preserved in the text of his life and how his canonization was mirrored in the very fabric of Lincoln Cathedral.OptionalPreventive Conservation 2023-24CON2059MLevel 52023-24This module looks to provide an introduction to the preventive conservation skills needed to set out as a practicing conservator. Students have the chance to develop an understanding of practical preventive conservation and collections management procedures, and can gain experience in environmental monitoring and surveying. Topics such as integrated pest management and emergency planning are also discussed.OptionalQueering the Past 2023-24HST2090MLevel 52023-24OptionalRenaissances 2023-24AHS2004MLevel 52023-24This module explores cultural renaissances in Europe and beyond. Students can examine the survival, imitation and revival of classical models from ancient Greece and Rome from late antiquity to the modern period. We engage with historical debates on the issue of periodisation and ask how and why cycles of decline and renewal continue to shape our understanding of the past.OptionalRussia: Building a Utopia 2023-24HST2084MLevel 52023-24OptionalSalvation and Damnation in medieval and early modern England 2023-24HST2075MLevel 52023-24Concern with, and ideas about, the supernatural influenced all areas of life for medieval and early modern men and women, and cut across all levels of society. In an age where religion was a state concern, many of these concerns were articulated or shaped within the context of the Church, all across Western Europe, yet throughout our period religious life was characterised by its great diversity. This module examines changing religious practices and beliefs in Europe, although with a particular focus on England, from the early Middle Ages until the seventeenth century, charting continuity and change in peoples thinking about their relationship both individually and collectively - with the divine. The module is divided into three blocks: (1) early medieval, in which we explore the adoption of Christianity as a state religion, the slow emergence of an institutional church, missionary and conversion activities, and campaigns against heresy; (2) high to late medieval where we examine the tension between the theology of the church and the beliefs of the individual in a time of increased attempts at centralisation by the Western Church; (3) early modern, from the Reformation, via the Civil War, to early eighteenth-century rational religion and alternative versions of spirituality, and their impact on attitudes to religious and other minority groups.OptionalScrambling for Africa? Cultures of Empire and Resistance in East Africa, 1850-1965 2023-24HST2062MLevel 52023-24East Africa became a significant theatre of empire from the mid-nineteenth century, when David Livingstone championed European intervention to bring Christianity, commerce and civilisation to the region. This module will explore the expansion of the British Empire into East Africa from the late nineteenth-century era of high imperialism until decolonisation in the 1960s. This region provides rich opportunities to deepen an understanding of imperialism and offers key themes in the history of empire, including exploration, slavery, race, identity, gender, imperial networks, cultural representation and indigenous agency.OptionalStudy Period Abroad: History 2023-24HST2048MLevel 52023-24This module provides an opportunity for Philosophy students to spend a term studying at one of the Universitys partner institutions in North America or Europe. Students will be expected to cover their own transport, accommodation, and living costs.OptionalTeaching History: designing and delivering learning in theory and practice 2023-24HST2074MLevel 52023-24Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.OptionalThe Age of Improvement: the Atlantic World in the long eighteenth century 2023-24HST2070MLevel 52023-24The period from 1700 to 1850 was one of transition and change in the British Isles and North America, marking an ideological and material shift away from the legacy of medieval Europe and the period of initial colonial contact. This module challenges students to engage with historical, cartographical, and material evidence. Students are introduced to the landscapes, streetscapes, and social make-up of the long eighteenth century, and can discuss in seminars how broad events impacted everyday lives, the urban, and rural landscape.OptionalThe Birth of the Modern Age? British Politics, 1885-1914 2023-24HST2037MLevel 52023-24This module tests the claim that the period from the 1880s to the First World War was an Age of Transition, which witnessed the birth of modern British politics. Through an analysis of this argument, students are introduced to some of the major developments in British political history in the period 1885-1914, including the birth of the welfare state, the creation of the Labour Party, the conflict over Votes for Women and British foreign policy before World War One.OptionalThe Forgotten Revolution? The Emergence of Feudal Europe 2023-24HST2054MLevel 52023-24Almost all historians share the view that the social, economic and political structures of Europe in 1000 A.D. were significantly different to those that characterised the western superpower of Late Antiquity, the Roman Empire. In this challenging module, students will be encouraged to engage with a range of source material that will allow them to come to their own conclusions. Given this wide focus, students will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the fascinating story of post-Carolingian Europe in such a way that they enhance their abilities to think comparatively, a crucial weapon in the historians armoury.OptionalThe World of Late Antiquity, 150-750 2023-24CLS2021MLevel 52023-24This module aims to develop students' understanding of the political, social and cultural history of Late Antiquity (150-750), with a particular focus on two world-changing religious developments: the rise of Christianity and Islam. Although the geographical focus of our studies will be on eastern Mediterranean lands of an empire ruled from Constantinople, known to later scholars as the Byzantine Empire, the geographical range of the module will be wide and include western Europe, including the western Mediterranean, Persia, Arabia, and barbarian territories beyond the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube.OptionalThemes in American Cultural History 2023-24HST2046MLevel 52023-24This module aims to introduce students to some of the key interdisciplinary themes in American cultural history in the first half of the twentieth century as well as to theoretical works that have shaped American cultural studies since the 1950s. The module will investigate and evaluate academic argument relating to the study of American cultural history from a variety of theoretical, philosophical and methodological perspectives including feminism, social theory, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.OptionalThemes in Modern and Contemporary Art 2023-24AHS2005MLevel 52023-24OptionalUnderstanding Exhibitions: History on Display 2023-24HST2085MLevel 52023-24This module will introduce students to the principles of understanding, evaluating and constructing exhibitions. It will focus on exhibiting in art, history and archaeology and will include both theoretical approaches to the understanding and critique of exhibitions and practical aspects of mounting an exhibition. The module will include visiting museums, galleries and other exhibition spaces to examine and analyse exhibitions in situ, as well as talks from museum professionals on aspects of exhibition development. Students will be assessed through the production of plans for a small temporary exhibition they develop individually.OptionalUnderstanding Practical Making 2023-24CON2057MLevel 52023-24This module is designed to introduce the basic skills of working with glass, ceramic and fine metalwork. It provides an opportunity to investigate the potential and limitations of working with various materials, processes and techniques, associated with the practice of object manufacture against a relevant historical background.OptionalUrban Life and Society in the Middle Ages 2023-24HST2049MLevel 52023-24Between the 11th and the 12th centuries Europe went through some radical changes. This module will focus on case studies, such as Lincoln, London and Paris, among others. Students will have the opportunity to study how and why such centres grew from small towns to some of the greatest and most vibrant metropolis of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. For a comparative study, a range of primary sources will be taken into account, including contemporary descriptions of these cities and their inhabitants, historical records, art and architecture.OptionalVillage detectives: Unearthing new histories 2023-24HST2004MLevel 52023-24The typical image of a rural village, whether a chocolate box idyll prettily nestled around its church or a commuter dormitory boringly empty of anything fun to do, rarely shows much evidence for anything dramatic. However, these places were created by people who lived through events which are almost unimaginable to us today including the Norman Conquest and the Black Death, and for whom a perpetual challenge was simply surviving in a period where barely half of those born lived to adulthood. In this module students will have the opportunity to learn how to critically analyse and interpret historical and archaeological evidence and to use their knowledge and skills to write a new history of any rural settlement of their choice.OptionalWomen in Ancient Rome 2023-24CLS2011MLevel 52023-24This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient world. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual and written evidence, students can investigate both the real historical circumstances of womens lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented and perceived. The focus of this module is on the Roman world, and the material considered ranges in date from the Republican period to the end of the second Century AD. Material from Greece, especially where it affects Roman art, literature and ideas, will also be considered.OptionalWorld Heritage Management 2023-24CON2058MLevel 52023-24This module is designed to explore ideas of heritage protection, management and conservation from around the world. It will consider United Nations' efforts in the field and consider how this international perspective shapes local and national actions.OptionalArt History and History Independent Study Part 2 2024-25AHS3003MLevel 62024-25Students at level three have to undertake an Independent Study project. This is an extended piece of work that gives them the opportunity to demonstrate they have acquired the skills to undertake art historical and historical inquiry and analysis.CoreArt History and History Independent Study Part I 2024-25 AHS3008MLevel 62024-25In their final year, every student on the BA (Hons) Art History and History degree programme at the University of Lincoln must produce an independent study. This is an extended piece of work which gives them the opportunity to demonstrate they have acquired the skills to undertake detailed and substantial subject-specific research and writing founded on critical inquiry and analysis.Core'O Bella Ciao' Fascism and Anti-fascism in Italy 2024-25HST3061MLevel 62024-25This module will aim to introduce students to the history of Italian Fascism and the opposition to the regime: the Resistance. It will cover the history of Italy from the beginning of the 20th Century until the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the Republic in 1946. Historical interpretations of these key events in Italian and European history have always been very contentious and have aroused heated debates due to their ongoing political implications.OptionalA Tale of Two Cities in Medieval Spain: From Toledo to Córdoba 2024-25HST3072MLevel 62024-25In this module, students will have the opportunity to take a vivid and intellectually exciting journey through primary and secondary sources in order to understand the historical trajectory of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the sixth century to the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031. The aim of the module is to provide an introduction to two major medieval cities, Toledo and Córdoba, via acquaintance with and discussion of material that allows us to reflect upon a fascinating complex of problems.OptionalAir War and Society from Zeppelins to Drones 2024-25HST3084MLevel 62024-25In the Twentieth Century new aviation technologies transformed understandings of war, peace, civilian and military. The module considers how ideas about air power developed, what informed this understanding of war, and what the consequences were. This is not a traditional military history concerned with narrative accounts of battles or armies, but one that asks questions about the relationship between military and civilian in society and culture in the twentieth century.OptionalAlexander the Great and his Legacy: the Hellenistic World (Third Year) 2024-25CLS3025MLevel 62024-25This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.OptionalAmerican Dreams, American Nightmares: The Fiction of American History, 1850-1906 2024-25HST3054MLevel 62024-25OptionalAncient Graffiti 2024-25CLS3011MLevel 62024-25This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in standard documentary, literary and material sourcesOptionalAncient Philosophy 2024-25PHL3013MLevel 62024-25This module will give students an opportunity to engage in close philosophical study of texts by the most influential ancient philosophers. Texts will be studied in English translation. They will include works by Plato and Aristotle, as well as by less familiar philosophers of the ancient world (c. 500 BC-500 AD Greece and Rome). The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical: students will be expected to assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by Plato, Aristotle, and others and to develop their own views in dialogue with these thinkers.OptionalArabia in Antiquity: Religion, Culture, and Warfare from the Bronze Age to the Umayyads 2024-25CLS3031MLevel 62024-25The victories of Arab armies over the forces of the Byzantine and Persian Empires in the seventh century were of monumental importance. Not only did they signal the decline of the two great superpowers of the late ancient world but they were accompanied, some scholars would argue caused, by the rise of a new monotheistic world religion: Islam. The first half of the module seeks to understand the conquests of the Arab armies and the emergence of Islam historically and culturally, in two specific contexts: (1) political conflict between the Persian and Byzantine Empires, during which Arabia often acted as a military frontier and different Arab groups as allies to one side or another; (2) contact and competition between Christianity, Judaism and other religious traditions in Arabia. The second half of the module explores how, after the initial victories over the Byzantine and Persian Empires, the new Islamic polity renewed itself, rolled forward further conquests, and focuses in particular on how an Islamic culture was formed.OptionalArt Cinemas 2024-25FTV3020MLevel 62024-25OptionalAnarchy is order. Anarchism and social movements in Modern Europe 2024-25HST3055MLevel 62024-25This module will explore the different schools of thought and the political activities of the various groups and individuals that comprised the anarchist movement. Anarchism is a political doctrine based on freedom, egalitarianism and social justice and that developed in Europe as a political movement in the mid-XIX century. Anarchism never reached the ascendancy achieved by liberalism or communism; however, it had a significant influence on the political ideas, social movements, culture, and education of the international labour movement.OptionalBritons And Romans, 100 BC-AD 450 (third year) 2024-25CLS3023MLevel 62024-25This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of foreign ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed Roman.OptionalChivalry in Medieval Europe 2024-25HST3063MLevel 62024-25This module examines both the birth and development of the concept of chivalry in the Middle Ages. Students can use a wide range of primary sources, as well as medieval and contemporary historiography, to explore how the role, image and function of medieval knights evolved over time.OptionalClassics in Context II 2024-25CLS3001MLevel 62024-25This module gives students the opportunity to analyse one text or author; object, assemblage or collection; structure or site, according to their own research interests (the evidence chosen will be agreed at the start of the term). Paired with a tutor, each student can examine the evidence closely, find and read related research publications, and discuss each week. This builds on the skills developed at Level 2 and provides students with the opportunity to direct their own learning, engage closely with primary sources, develop skills in analysis and critical thinking, and broaden their knowledge of the evidence and methods of studying the ancient world.OptionalClio's Children: Walking along the Path of Greek Historiography 2024-25CLS3020MLevel 62024-25Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.OptionalConsuming Societies: Western Europe 1600-1800 2024-25HST3065MLevel 62024-25The module will examine consumption in many of its forms in early modern Western Europe. Focusing on a number of areas, such as food, clothing, furnishings, houses and other goods increasingly accessible to people at all levels of society, the module will encourage students to consider how and why these were available.OptionalCuratorial Practice 2024-25AHS3006MLevel 62024-25This module will enable students to engage in the research and development of displays through the process of curating an exhibition for the museum or heritage sector. Students will select objects and structure this selection through an appropriate narrative. They will propose modes and examples of interpretation such as gallery text, audio or visual aids. The emphasis will be on developing knowledge and understanding of the role and responsibilities of the curator, and the project will enable students to evidence a focused and critically rigorous curatorial rationale.OptionalEarly Modern Cultural and Artistic Encounters: Hybridity and Globalisation 2024-25HST3074MLevel 62024-25This module considers early modern imperialism and its impact on artistic production at a global scale. Students will have the opportunity to examine Iberia and its world as a point for cultural encounter and cross-fertilization. The module aims to explore how local communities conflated their symbols of identity within transnational artistic trends and through a number of carefully selected case studies, will analyse the way in which communities artists, patrons, collectors and audiences negotiated these cultural encounters in the production and assimilation of the arts.OptionalEnglish Landscape Painting: A Social and Cultural History 2024-25AHS3005MLevel 62024-25This module explores the legacy of English landscape painting, for instance in the work of John Constable, Paul Nash and others, which has played a fundamental part in perpetuating such imagery within our national consciousness. It will encourage a critical appreciation of artistic influences, the personal feelings, cultural attitudes and ideological perspectives in relation to the varied depictions of the English countryside. The close relationship between these depictions and the social and economic history of English rural society during the period c.1690 to present will be stressed throughout the module. Students will also critically identify, from a wider range of images and texts such as literature, film and advertising, the subjectivity of evidence that encourages popular impressions of the English countryside.OptionalEugenics, Race and Reproduction across the Atlantic, 1800-1945 2024-25HST3095MLevel 62024-25This module explores the history of science, sexuality and politics in the UK, Continental Europe, the US and Latin America from 1850 to 2000. It will give students an excellent grounding in modern and contemporary history that will complement further modules at level 3 that deal with sexuality, gender, race, science and medicine. It module examines the controversial rise of eugenics movements as a global phenomenon. The purpose of this module is to sustain a balanced and informed discussion about how race, reproduction, and the improvement of human heredity have acquired great political relevance in the modern period. It explores how scientists and different governments became preoccupied with hereditary theories, race, reproduction and sexual behaviour. It examines how societies across the Atlantic developed government policies around areas such as family planning, pronatalism, sterilisation, and race, which culminated in the implementation of euthanasia programmes in Nazi Germany. This module looks at eugenics programmes and politics in a transnational context, exploring how, for example, Nazi Germanys sterilisation programmes were inspired by those already implemented in the US and how a number of Latin American countries adapted and transformed eugenics policies from Southern Europe and developed whitening policies.OptionalExhibiting the World in the Nineteenth Century 2024-25HST3066MLevel 62024-25This module explores the various ways in which the world was put on display in the nineteenth century, and with what aims and effects. The nineteenth century was a period during which museums, galleries, exhibitions, zoos and circuses all expanded in numbers and took on distinctive modern forms; it was also one where the freak show became both popular but also frowned upon, while optical toys and attractions reformed ways of seeing.OptionalFrom Revolution to New Republic: The United States 1760-1841 2024-25HST3067MLevel 62024-25This module explores the transformation of the United States from a set of thirteen colonies to an independent republic. Topics considered include: the causes of the Revolution, the governance of the new republic, the place of the new republic in the world, the experiences of excluded groups (loyalists, native Americans, African Americans).OptionalGender, Sexuality and the Early Modern Body 2024-25HST3096MLevel 62024-25OptionalGothic Visions: Stained Glass in Britain c. 1220-1960 2024-25AHS3004MLevel 62024-25This module will explore the development, decline and revival of stained glass from the early middle ages to the mid twentieth century. The focus will be on British stained glass with particular reference to windows that students can visit in person, particularly in Lincoln Cathedral and the parish churches of the region. Students will learn to analyse windows through a number of methodological frameworks in particular: production (design and manufacture), consumption (patronage, iconography and meaning) and aesthetics (style, drawing, manipulation of light).OptionalHeroes and Villains: The Reigns of Richard the Lionheart (d. 1199) and Bad King John (d. 1216) 2024-25HST3098MLevel 62024-25By the late twelfth century, Englands rulers the Angevin kings - were among the wealthiest and most powerful in Western Europe. At the time of his accession, King Richard the Lionheart ruled over a vast collection of territories (later known as the Angevin Empire), which stretched from the borders with Scotland in the North to the Pyrenees in the South. Yet, at the time of his brother King Johns death in 1216, most Angevin possessions on the continent had been lost and baronial rebels had overrun more than half of England. Using medieval records and chronicles in English translation, this module explores the dramatic reigns of King Richard and King John, and their reputations as rulers, asking whether the former really was a legend in his own lifetime, and whether the latter deserves to be remembered as one of our most disastrous medieval monarchs. Together we will consider King Richards participation in the Third Crusade, the impact of his absence on his English subjects, and his struggle to retain Angevin territories on the Continent. We will also analyse the loss of Normandy under King John, Johns violent quarrel with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, the growth of opposition to John in England, the birth of Magna Carta, and the outcome of the civil war that was still raging on Johns death (including the Battle of Lincoln of 1217).OptionalHistory at the End of the World 2024-25HST3064MLevel 62024-25Historian, journalist, political commentator and gossip columnist Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, wrote what is still one of our main sources for British history of the thirteenth century. This module looks at Matthew Pariss Great Chronicle, considering both Matthew himself and what he tells us about thirteenth-century English society. Students have the opportunity to think about what history was in the thirteenth-century and about attitudes to foreigners and national identity; power and poverty; propaganda and fiction; and time, space and the apocalypse.OptionalHistory of Chinese Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2024-25HST3100MLevel 62024-25This module covers the history and historiography of one of the most popular and sophisticated systems of medicine in the world: Chinese medicine. Starting from a comparison of the conceptualisation and representation of the body in early China versus ancient Greece, the module introduces students to key ideas in Chinese medicine such as Yin Yang, Five Processes, Qi, Meridians and Five Organs and Six Bowels. Diagnosis (including pulse-taking and tongue examination) and therapy (including moxibustion and acupuncture) are explored, alongside the Chinese tradition of self-cultivation and the various techniques that promote health and even immortality. Theories concerning food and drugs are dissected, and the tremendous plurality of practitioners throughout the history of Chinese medicine are analysed in detail. No prior knowledge on the history of medicine, Chinese history, or Chinese language is required.OptionalHistory Work Placement 2024-25HST3053MLevel 62024-25The module will give students practical experience of the workplace. Students will normally define, plan and undertake a specific project. In addition students will gain experience of a range of tasks appropriate to sector-specific professional skills.OptionalImperial Cities of the Early Modern World. 2024-25HST3097MLevel 62024-25One of the ways in which early modern monarchs and rulers legitimised their authority and projected their power was through architecture and urban design. In this period capital cities across Europe, America and Asia were embellished with architecture and urban design inspired by Renaissance ideals of social order. This module examines the ways rulers imagined and built a number of imperial capital cities across Europe, America and Asia.OptionalInto the Workhouse: Poverty and Society in England and Wales 1780-1929 2024-25HST3093MLevel 62024-25What was the workhouse? What was life like within its doors? Into the workhouse explores this infamous institution in England and Wales, from its beginnings as just one of a variety of methods of relieving poverty, through to its zenith in the Victorian era with the implementation of a harsh regime. We will trace this transition, from fairly ad hoc cottage through to purpose-built institution, throughout this module. We start the course by asking: who were the poor? And what help was available to them? We will learn what poor relief was, and how it was an important part of a broader economy of makeshifts - offering everything from money to bread, from shoes to tools, and from a bed to medical help. How poor relief operated varied from place to place until the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. This New poor law placed a Commission in charge of a compulsory workhouse system with which we are familiar from novels and films. Why and how this new system was created will be our next focus, before we embark on a field trip to a workhouse and museum to understand what life was like within its walls. While the Victorian workhouse is often portrayed as a static and dreary Dickensian place, full of helpless individuals, this module will uncover a fresh, dynamic perspective. We will find out how individuals navigated and used workhouses, and how they asserted their agency. We will understand how workhouses were protested against, and pulled into disrepute in a series of national scandals. Workhouses were also a site of immense social innovation, especially in medical care. The institution saw renewed attention in the late nineteenth-century but came to an end in 1929. What led to its demise and the lasting legacy will be studied in the final week. In this module you will critically analyse a wide range of sources, including official reports, parish registers, plans and maps and workhouse artefacts, as well as first-hand accounts of workhouse life in legal depositions, pauper letters, poems and diaries.OptionalIreland: the Politics of Home Rule 2024-25HST3026MLevel 62024-25OptionalLatin Letter-Writing from the Republic to Late Antiquity 2024-25CLS3012MLevel 62024-25This module explores the world of Latin epistolary culture from the late Republic to the early Patristic period of the fourth Century AD. The preservation of documentary letters on materials such as stone and papyrus offer a complementary perspective on the lives, experiences and concerns of ordinary men and women across the Mediterranean. Students can consider a wide range of letter types, including about trade and agriculture, introductions and recommendations (literary and otherwise), and epistolary poetry.OptionalMad or Bad? Criminal Lunacy in Britain, 1800 1900 2024-25HST3085MLevel 62024-25This module explores how criminal lunatics - criminals who developed insanity in prison and individuals who committed a crime whilst insane - were represented and treated in nineteenth century Britain. Students can examine why some criminals were deemed insane and others were not; how criminal lunacy was defined in medicine and in law; how and why the institutions, people and practices for treating the criminal and criminal lunatic changed over the period; the role gender and class played in crimes, trials, diagnoses and treatment; and how criminality and criminal insanity were represented by laymen.OptionalMaking Militants: Teaching violence in late antiquity 2024-25CLS3027MLevel 62024-25Making Militants explores the role of violent teaching practices of various sorts in the making of men and women in Late Antiquity. Focusing on the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, it addresses a pivotal period in the transition from the ancient to the medieval world, surveying the multiple small-scale arenas that made up the Late Antiquity the household, the schoolroom, the barracks and the monastery. By close reading of letters, biographical accounts, rulebooks, speeches and a wide range of other sources, we consider how violent educative practices made people who were capable of operating in a changing, unpredictable and often dangerous world. The men and women who were made in such spaces were the products of a society that was fundamentally violent, their own violence a product of long-established socialisation practices rather than acts of anti-social deviance.OptionalMedicalised Bodies in Art and Visual Culture, c. 1900 to the Present 2024-25AHS3009MLevel 62024-25 This module will analyse how the medicalised body has been represented, exploited, challenged and reclaimed in art and visual culture. The themes, ideas, priorities and objects of medicine such as death, health, sexuality, taboo, trauma, bodily functions, and viscera have taken centre stage in art and visual culture since the end of the nineteenth century. This module will explore the manifold ways in which artists have engaged with subjects including medical technologies, disease, disability, blood, and pain, and we will do so in relation to constructions of gender, sexuality, race, class and ability. What significance do pathology, disease, and patient experience take on in art and visual culture? To what effects have artists portrayed and perhaps questioned modern therapies and medical technologies, and their subjects, practices and theories? We will focus on a range of media including painting, sculpture, performance art, conceptual art, film, and photography.OptionalMemory, Belief, and Power in the British Landscape: Late Iron Age to Early Medieval 2024-25CLS3019MLevel 62024-25This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world. Landscape will be discussed as material culture writ large whereby the features and meanings of the past confront and constitute the creation of landscape in any given present. The significance of, for example, Neolithic cursus monuments, Bronze Age barrows, Iron Age 'hillforts', and Romano-Celtic temples will be examined in how they endured and were (re)interpreted in later periods to create complex significances and communicate aspects of group identities. The module will challenge boundaries by encouraging students to consider the complexity of relationship between past, present, and future, as well as between different 'site types', periods, and types of material.OptionalMen, Sex and Work: Sexuality and Gender in 20th Century Britain 2024-25HST3073MLevel 62024-25The 20th century saw unprecedented social, economic, political and cultural change in Britain. However, the equally dramatic shifts in how sexuality and masculinity were experienced and represented are often ignored. This module aims to enable students to study the history of 20th Century Britain while using the lens of gender and sexuality to understand how ordinary men lived their lives. Students will get the opportunity to work with a wide variety of primary sources such as: court records, newspapers, film (including use of the MACE archive), photographs, music, autobiographies, oral history and literature.OptionalNewton's Revolution 2024-25PHL3004MLevel 62024-25This module examines some of the philosophical issues raised by the Newtonian revolution in the natural sciences, such as: What is the nature of Newtons distinction between absolute and relative space? In what sense can forces be said to exist? What is the ontology of force? Is it sufficient to provide a mathematical definition of force (e.g., f=ma)? Is gravity a special kind of force with its own unique set of properties? What is the nature of action at a distance? Is Newtons view of space metaphysical? This is an interdisciplinary module that situates Newtonian science in its sociocultural context.OptionalObjects of Empire: the material worlds of British colonialism 2024-25HST3086MLevel 62024-25This module will investigate the history of imperial Britain through material culture. The objects of study will range from trophies looted in battle and a drum transported with slaves to Virginia, to African sculpture depicting Europeans. Historians increasingly recognise the fresh insights that objects offer to major themes in imperial history such as gender, race and class. This module responds to these new academic developments and will use objects and their biographies to study key phases and themes in the history of the British Empire. Tracing the long history of such objects can enable us to explore how objects change meanings as they move through various colonial and post-colonial contexts.OptionalPalace and Mosque: The Construction of an Imperial Image in the Ottoman Empire. 2024-25HST3090MLevel 62024-25OptionalPre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes: Progressive British Culture (1840-1898) 2024-25AHS3007MLevel 62024-25This module examines the emergence, development and legacy of Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism and how these movements influenced British culture. The module will explore how Pre-Raphaelite painters attempted to redefine the natural role of art and how Aesthetic artists went on to question their approach. The module will explore the work of the key protagonists of each movement and how their work crossed over into other media such as stained glass, painted furniture and book illustration.OptionalQueer Film and Television 2024-25FTV3287MLevel 62024-25Portrayals of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives on screen are under increasing scrutiny from audiences, activists and media scholars. But, for much of the history of film and television, non-normative sexual and gender identities have been marginalised or hidden. This module examines the history of queer representations in screen culture from the era of silent films to the present day. Students will have the opportunity to work with examples from a range of national contexts, including (but not limited to) Britain and America, as well as engaging with influential scholarship in queer theory and the history of gender and sexuality.OptionalQueering the Past - Level 3 2024-25HST3103MLevel 62024-25OptionalRace, Media, and Screen Culture in 20th Century Britain 2024-25HST3089MLevel 62024-25Media and screen culture were powerful means of defining Englishness as a racial construct in the 20th century. This module examines the complex relationship between race, media, and screen culture from World War I, when representations of the British empire were increasingly available to British audiences, up to the 1980s, when tensions over immigration were evident on film and television screens throughout the UK. Students will examine constructions of race across a variety of primary sources including empire films from the 1930s, documentaries, home-movies, and television, as well as media authored by Black and Asian Britons in the post-war period. Students will gain a critical in-depth understanding of the place of race within British screen culture, media, and society in the 20th Century.OptionalRepublicanism in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 2024-25HST3081MLevel 62024-25Although early modern England was a kingdom, governed by a monarch, many historians have claimed that there was a strong republican undercurrent to Tudor and Stuart political thought. This module introduces students to the key approaches and methodologies of the history of ideas by focusing upon the various ways in which scholars have studied and conceptualised republicanism in early modern England and the ongoing debate surrounding the origin, content and influence of republican ideas in the period 1500-1700.OptionalRoman Lincoln 2024-25CLS3010MLevel 62024-25This module explores the history, archaeology, visual and material culture of Roman Lincoln (Lindum Colonia), within the context of the provinces of Roman Britain. It is designed to provide students with the opportunity to handle and analyse objects from the Lincolnshire Archives and The Collection museum, to engage with the evidence that is visible in the modern city, to engage with excavation reports as primary evidence, and to consider how a military and urban centre was connected to rural sites, towns and the forts beyond.OptionalRome and Constantinople: Monuments and Memory, 200-1200 2024-25CLS3028MLevel 62024-25This module explores the political, social, economic, cultural, and religious history of two capitals of the Roman empire: Rome and Constantinople, or Old Rome and New Rome as they came to be called in the East. These were imperial cities where the most powerful figures - emperors and patriarchs, popes and saints - of Antiquity and the Middle Ages constructed and destroyed, appropriated and reorientated spaces, buildings, and structures. In this module we shall look at palaces and fortifications, hippodromes and churches, triumphal arches and mausolea, fora and harbours, discovering and discussing not only how and why they were built and maintained, but also their perception and remembrance over the centuries from 200 to 1200. Students will gain knowledge of the evolving configuration of Rome and Constantinople, and have the opportunity to prepare a cultural biography of a monument of their choice from one of these two cities of empire.OptionalRulers and Kings: Visualising Authority in Medieval Europe 2024-25HST3076MLevel 62024-25This module investigates the nature of rulership during the middle ages, exploring how images and architecture served to visually define and articulate the authority of kings and rulers during the Middle Ages. The module will discuss in depth three different case studies: Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire; the Norman rulers of Southern Italy; Louis IX and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.OptionalSexualities and Gender in Modern Britain and Europe: From the French Revolution to the Present 2024-25HST3099MLevel 62024-25This module introduces some of the major themes in the British and European history of sexuality. It employs comparative and transnational history to explore how, for example, Continental European sexual policies impacted Britain and the extent to which some attitudes to sexual behaviors were unique of specific national contexts. It explores how sexuality became central to British and European identities, culture and politics. It also considers official and unofficial discourses about sexuality and gender in law, the human sciences and culture, paying particular attention to the geographical contexts in which these discourses emerged and how they moved across countries.OptionalTeaching History: designing and delivering learning in theory and practice - level 3 2024-25HST3102MLevel 62024-25Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice in History. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.OptionalThe Armenians: Crafting Community, Communicating History 2024-25HST3075MLevel 62024-25OptionalThe City and the Citizen: urban space and the shaping of modern life, 1850 to present. 2024-25HST3071MLevel 62024-25This module aims to examine how living in cities shaped the ways our lives and society have developed since the 19th Century. In the early 19th Century the population of Europe largely lived in rural settlements, yet 100 years later the populations of Western Europe's cities had exploded. Cities produced new forms of social organisation: for the first time drag queens and prostitutes rubbed shoulders with housewives, the rich discovered the poor on their very doorsteps and the unregulated spaces of cities became havens for counter-cultures, deviant sexualities and radical politics.OptionalThe Emperor in the Roman World (Third Year) 2024-25CLS3022MLevel 62024-25This module surveys the history of the Roman Empire not as a succession of emperors and achievements, victories and defeats, but as a complex of experiments in government and of attitudes to governance. Beginning with the transition from representative republican rule to the domination of an imperial dynasty and its network of élite dependants in the early first century, and concluding with the incipient takeover of this system by a newly Christianised ruling class in the early fourth century, students can explore the role of the emperor in the Roman world and the patterns of communication between him and his subjects.OptionalThe European Union since 1945 2024-25HST3045MLevel 62024-25This module will focus on the process of economic and political integration, which has taken place in Western Europe since 1945. The emphasis will be placed on the global forces which have shaped, and are still shaping, this process of integration. The module will also investigate the impact of the Cold and Korean Wars, the European Recovery Programme and other factors from outside Europe.OptionalThe Making of a Tragedy: The United States and the Vietnam War (1945-1975) 2024-25HST3091MLevel 62024-25OptionalThe Medieval Mediterranean: Sites and Artefacts Coexistence and Conflict 2024-25HST3105MLevel 62024-25OptionalThe Philosophy and History of Colour 2024-25PHL3008MLevel 62024-25The world as we encounter it in visual perception is a world of coloured objects red buses, yellow daffodils, blue skies, and the like. Colour raises a variety of perplexing philosophical puzzles concerning the nature of physical reality and our epistemic to the mental states of others. This module serves as an introduction to these issues. Some of the questions to be explored include: Do objects really have the colours we ordinarily take them to possess? If so, what sort of property is colour? Are colours really just impressions that exist only in the mind? If so, what causes these impressions? Do such impressions have representational content? What is the relationship between philosophical and scientific theories of colour? This is an interdisciplinary module that also explores issues relating to colour in art history and the history of science.OptionalThe Roman City 2024-25CLS3029MLevel 62024-25To the citizens of the Roman world, civility (civilitas) right conduct of government, sound behaviour of individuals, citizenship itself was a function of the city (civitas), which constituted the centre of the Roman state and society. This module will take students on a guided tour of the Roman city, using each stop along the way as a point of entry into one or more aspects of the politics, society, economy, and culture of Rome and its empire. Students will be challenged to reimagine urban life via a detailed engagement with a representative array of written, material, and visual sources and the main lines of the secondary literature.OptionalThe Roman Countryside 2024-25CLS3030MLevel 62024-25Before the Roman invasion of AD 43, everyone in Britain lived in the countryside, for the simple reason that there were no cities or towns. Indeed, throughout the four centuries of Roman rule which followed, the vast majority of people still lived outside of urban and military centres. The core objective of this module is an archaeological exploration of the great diversity of evidence, analysing the significance of the changing nature of rural society and the creation of rural landscapes and identities, focusing on Britain from the late pre-Roman Iron Age, through the Roman period, to its sub-Roman aftermath (c. 100 BCAD 500).OptionalThe Vikings in the North Atlantic: Living at the Fringes of Medieval Europe 2024-25HST3082MLevel 62024-25The image of Vikings from the north plundering their way across Europe is firmly fixed in popular imagination. Few people stop to think that the same people were also farmers, the heads of families and had home lives. The historical sources for the Vikings in the North Atlantic are pitifully few a small number of sagas and a few other records. We often know more about the Vikings from those with whom they came into contact than from their own accounts. This module integrates the different lines of evidence historical, archaeological and environmental and evaluates whether the idea of a Viking world is a useful approach. Students can gain an introduction to texts in translation and archaeological reports, and explore the main limitations of our understanding of the North Atlantic regions in this period.OptionalThe World of Late Antiquity, 150-750 (Third Year) 2024-25CLS3024MLevel 62024-25This module aims to develop students' understanding of the political, social and cultural history of Late Antiquity (150-750), with a particular focus on two world-changing religious developments: the rise of Christianity and Islam. Although the geographical focus of our studies will be on eastern Mediterranean lands of an empire ruled from Constantinople, known to later scholars as the Byzantine Empire, the geographical range of the module will be wide and include western Europe, including the western Mediterranean, Persia, Arabia, and barbarian territories beyond the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube.OptionalThemes in Early Modern Art 2024-25AHS3002MLevel 62024-25OptionalWhat is the Renaissance? 2024-25HST3058MLevel 62024-25This module aims to explore the intellectual and cultural achievements of the Renaissance, as well as its historiographic context. The period of transition from 'medieval' to 'modern' society that the Renaissance represents (or has been characterised as representing) is one of the most challenging areas of historical study, profoundly influencing historiography. Students have the opportunity to examine in depth to what extent the historical periodisation of the 'Renaissance' has been a deliberate, although sometimes contentious, means to better understand events of the past, particularly in relation to cultural analysis.Optional

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