History Postgraduate Taught modules

This module explores the history and historiography of violence, focusing especially, but not exclusively, on Europe between the medieval period and the present day. It has two principal themes. First, it examines the recent, important debate on whether and why violence has declined in the past half millennium. Domestic violence and crime, terrorism, war and genocide will all be discussed. The role of religion and secular ideologies, concepts such as honour, and the growth of state power will be among the issues covered. Second, the module investigates the methodologies that scholars have used to explain the causes of violence, the different forms in which it has been practised and its incidence in history. Students will study cultural histories of violence and will explore how disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and more recently behavioural sciences such as psychology and neuroscience have contributed to understanding of human violence in history.

While history of medicine is usually taught focusing primarily on either ‘western’ or ‘eastern’ traditions, this course will focus on transmissions of knowledge along the Silk Roads. More than just routes on which missionaries, travellers and merchants moved between east and west Asia, the Silk Roads has become a metaphor of east-west connections. This module will analyse the term “Silk Road”; look at how knowledge moved along the Silk Roads; discuss some narratives of medical history; look at what led to the archaeological expeditions of the Silk Roads; and deal with a few case studies of interactions between “east” and “west”: during the Mongol era, in the court of the Russian Tsar and current day uses of mindfulness.

The module will include a visit to the British Library to see some of the Dunhuang manuscripts and meet with some of the International Dunhuang Project staff.

This module explores the dialectical relationship between culture and empire in early modern Venice. Drawing on the history of information, visual culture, and critical imperial studies, it examines how Venetian colonial expansion in the Mediterranean shaped popular culture and communication at home and how, in turn, metropolitan media fuelled empire-building overseas. Addressing a blind spot in comparative imperial history, the module goes beyond standard images of Venice as ‘the most serene republic’ of merchants to highlight the constitutive impact of empire on Venetian politics, society, and culture.

It considers how ordinary Venetians consumed empire in their daily lives and how different institutional forces, social practices and sites of knowledge influenced how they thought, felt, and talked about their city’s distant dominions.

The module brings alive the entangled histories of Venetian colonialism and domestic politics and culture via a rich array of primary sources, including archival documents, newsletters, printed maps, histories, novels, poems, travel accounts, paintings, and antiquities.

Ireland’s engagement with the First World War was profoundly connected with the politics of the day and the development of the Irish Revolution.

Memory of the conflict remains live in today’s politics, with the war playing a central role in unionist identity formation and expression, and nationalist attitudes continuing to change. Meanwhile, the history of Ireland’s First World War is intimately connected to the wider context of the United Kingdom’s war and the way that is remembered through the influence of popular culture.

This module is focused on the day-to-day experiences of Irish soldiers in the British army. It also considers connections between the war and wider Irish politics, including the Easter Rising. Battalion war diaries are the core sources, recording the detailed movements of battalions once they had finished training. They provide both much detail and often, vivid description with the main focus being on eleven Irish battalions (1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th & 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 1st, 2nd and 9th Royal Irish Rifles, 6thConnaught Rangers, and 7th Leinsters) which are central to the module convenor’s books Belfast Boysand Dublin’s Great Wars.

A wide range of other sources are used including historical artefacts, poetry, and individual letters/diaries.

An optional visit to the National Archive at Kew is arranged to support research, while there is strong academic support and encouragement for research in other archives. An optional residential visit to key Western Front sites takes place at the end of the term following the module. You make a contribution to the cost of that visit, with the rate published alongside the publication of options each year.

An innovative, exciting, and dynamic body of work continues to grow within the field of Queer History. Going beyond the Anglo-Euro-American context and academy, much research and publication is being undertaken in other parts of the world.

This module will critically examine recent work, sometimes beside earlier examples of work in Queer History, to gain insights into the new directions, innovations, and emphases of Queer History in a global context. How, for example, does recent scholarship build on or depart from more foundational pieces, which students will also read, or have read in the Explorations and Debates in Queer History module? How are queer identities and communities differently inflected and experienced in non-Anglo-Euro-American contexts and regions?

This module will ‘queer’ queer history even further through the use of global scholarship and contexts to break down familiar categories, binaries, and labels.

This module explores different spatial dimensions of queer history ranging from issues around imperial formations, across migration and diaspora, to queer lives between urban and rural settings, and to enquiries into spaces where LGBT people met. By highlighting how such spatial configurations changed across time and what these changes entailed for queer communities and societies at large, the module brings new vistas to debates about queer history. Geographically the course is transnational in outlook, while historically it focuses on the 20th century.

Some of the most exciting work in queer history is done outside the academy. LGBTQ community groups, museums, archives, galleries, and heritage bodies engage with wide publics in their efforts to uncover, share and celebrate the histories of LGBTQ lives and experiences. These efforts are not only about the past, but have incredible impact in the present, highlighting long histories of gender and sexual diversity, struggle, oppression and community building. Sharing these histories with both LGBTQ people and the wider public today is both important and urgent. In this module students apply their knowledge of queer history and public history in professional settings through targeted placements at heritage, community, and policy organisations around London. In these placements students hone and develop transferable skills related to queer history to better prepare them both for future academic work and also opportunities beyond the academy.

Other information:

You will undergo a 60-hour placement, normally one 6-hr day a week for 10 weeks, in a partner institution from the museums, archives or heritage sector or a community-based organisation with a commitment to queer histories and queer communities.

There are five two-hour seminars/workshops, scheduled throughout the term. These will include various issues related to public history and how concepts of the queer past are constructed in the public sphere. An introductory seminar will also include input from a Goldsmiths placement officer (or Careers Office staff) regarding how to make the best use of a work placement; how to reflect on, identify and describe the skills and competencies acquired; and how to use the experience to help to identify suitable types of career for the student’s personality and preferences. Students will also be asked to (formatively) present to colleagues what they have done in their placement, and collectively reflect/discuss its relationship to queer public history.

History surrounds us, but most people engage with history through the mass media, exhibitions, historic sites, online blogs and journalism. Public history has, therefore, become a key site for making history accessible to the widest audiences. Queer history is no different, and so this module explores the diverse ways in which queer history is brought to the public.

Through the critical examination of queer public history as well as real-world examples of queer history project and products created for the wider public, students will develop an appreciation for the unique skills, voice, and methods employed by public historians of the queer past.

This module will further prepare students to engage in and make use of history and historical debates in queer history outside the academy in areas such as media, policy and planning, heritage, etc. Participation from expert speakers from these fields will also expose students to the widest application of queer history beyond the academy, and help them build connections and networks in contexts outside the university.

This module explores the presence, perceptions and experiences of people of African origin and descent in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly the period 1850-1950. The module provides an overview understanding of black British history in this period and focuses on selected and timely case-studies relating to particular social, cultural, religious and political themes. This approach provides students with a developed understanding of the black presence and influence in Britain at this time as well as offering potential focus points for further development into dissertation topics.

The remit of the module is especially broad for that reason and it should be considered as much a primer for developing areas of study as it is an in-depth analysis of particular case studies. This period in history offers numerous opportunities for case studies: black radicals and Chartism; employment and organised labour; the Morant Bay Rebellion; the influence of religion; Pan-Africanism; and the First and Second World Wars.

This module examines the social, cultural and political history of postcolonial London, from the interwar era to the recent past. It explores histories of migration, citizenship and the politics of race, as well as shifting Black political formations, diasporas and identities. You will explore the interaction between the local and the global, and the reverberating impacts of British imperialism and decolonisation within the British metropolis. You will not only examine the postcolonial as an era of time, but also learn about postcolonial theory and intellectual traditions, and postcolonial approaches to writing British history.

The module has three major strands within it: 1) examining the meanings of postcolonialism, and interrogating shifting ideas of multiculturalism in London; 2) unpacking the history of Black London, and the politics of Black citizenship and race in the twentieth century; 3) exploring how ‘the postcolonial city’ has been represented, constructed and perceived in music, film, heritage and education, as well as processes of Black British community formation in London. Interdisciplinarity is a key feature of this module, and the intersections between history and sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, politics, visual cultures, literary studies and music will be explored. London is the focus, but the module will situate postcolonial London in the wider historical and historiographical contexts of post-war, global Britain.

This module combines concepts and methods from media history and public history. You will critically examine, investigate and explore the ways Black British history and experience and has been represented in British mass media in the 20th century to the present day, in newspapers, radio, art, film, television, music and photography. It will also examine the ways Black British writers, directors, producers, artists, and community or political organisations have created media to document, disseminate and depict aspects of Black British experience in Britain, or themes connected to migration, identity, and belonging. You will learn about the development of media technologies through the course of the twentieth century, and learn how to use media as a primary source in historical research and analysis. This module will also examine the ways public historians use film, television, radio and art in the present day to share research on Black British history with various publics. This module is a practical and interdisciplinary one: you will engage directly with historical media, and learn about ways to share Black British history research through media in the present. You will also learn critical concepts from cultural studies, race critical studies, film studies, visual culture, art, music and media studies, as well as the historiographical contexts of Black British history and media history in the twentieth century.

How can historians write Black histories of Britain that explicitly acknowledge that the United Kingdom is a regionally complex nation? This is the question that this module considers. Its starting point is the fact that the United Kingdom is a country of countries. Moreover, within each of the four constituent countries are distinct regions that have had historically specific trajectories influenced by a combination of environmental, cultural, and social factors. This module examines the possibilities of doing regional histories of Black Britain in at least two ways: 1) histories that take region and country seriously by historicizing them; and 2) histories of Black people who lived across Britain and the United Kingdom. By putting Black British history in conversation with the methods of regional and local histories, the module also situates the field within an important debate within British historiography: the extent to which historians should avoid treating England or London as representative of the entire country. Bringing this question to Black British history allows the module to challenge popular conceptions of Black British history as mainly London-centered and postwar history. The module will approach this task methodologically, analytically, and practically: How does one do regional histories of Black Britain? Are such histories possible archivally? How should historians creatively approach the challenges they pose? What do we gain from these histories? And how does the field of Black British history change with greater attention to region and locale? The module will include scholarship about the early Black communities that formed in Britain’s port towns, migration experiences of newcomers to cities in the Midlands and the North of England, and histories of Black people in Wales and Scotland. It will also explore scholarship that rejects cultural ideas of rural Britain as an exclusively white space. It will be interdisciplinary in its approach, considering how historians can draw on the insights of disciplines like sociology, anthropology, and geography, which have theorized space, place, and culture and which have given considerable attention to Black communities across Britain since the 1990s. Finally, we will learn directly from some of the community historians who have been at the forefront of writing and preserving regional histories, since in large part what we know about histories of Black people outside of London and outside of England has been discovered by historians working outside of the academy and in their own communities.