The programme can be undertaken full-time (three years across three levels) or part-time (four to six years across three levels). You take a total of 360 credits, 120 credits at each level.
Year 1
In your first year, you will take the following compulsory modules, as well as two optional modules from a list published annually by the department.
Compulsory modules
| Module title |
Credits |
Global Connections: the violence and exchanges that shaped the modern world
Global Connections: the violence and exchanges that shaped the modern world
30 credits
This module explores the multiplicity of contacts which have shaped the last half millennium of global history. Empire and religion, commerce and colonialism, race and space, and disease and healing all drove and moulded the encounters between distant cultures that created our modern world. This module explores some of these global connections, from trade and the exchange of goods and ideas, to practices of violence and resistance. The module will introduce students to core and emerging debates and approaches within the field of global history.
The module will contain five four-week blocks on various topics within modern global history. The History department will publish a list of five blocks each year, from at least the following:
- Germany’s African Road to the Holocaust
- Global Sports and the African Diaspora
- The Ottoman Empire in European History
- (De)Colonising Enlightenment Political Thought
- Mosquitos, Microbes and Empire
- Travellers, Stories, Materials and Knowledges across Eurasia
- Balkan Migrations and Diasporas
- African encounters: European travellers and slavers in Africa, c. 1490 – c. 1775
|
30 credits |
Identity, Agency & Environment 1
Identity, Agency & Environment 1
15 credits
This is the first of two modules delivered in collaboration between our Centre for Academic Language and Literacies (CALL) and your academic department. Learning will be comprised of a lecture series coordinated by CALL and available online via your virtual learning environment or face-to-face if you want to come to campus. Weekly seminar series will be delivered by your home academic department and together you’ll work through the course activities and tailor them to your subject.
These modules are designed to allow you to understand your own identity and how this has been constructed, take agency over your learning and development and understand how the environment around is changing and developing in the future. These are some of the core elements of a Goldsmiths’ education and reflect the 8 strategic principles which all of our degrees have been designed to reflect and include.
At the end of the modules, you’ll have learnt how to read critically, evidence your arguments and relate ideas and practices to individual career interests. In the second term, you’ll learn how to formulate research goals, identify themes, concepts and theories relevant to addressing research questions, conduct effective investigations to establish and defend focused, persuasive arguments, and locate and fill gaps in logic.
These are all key building blocks to allow you to make the most of your time at Goldsmiths academically, socially and allow you to begin planning your learning and career development.
|
15 credits |
Identity, Agency & Environment 2
Identity, Agency & Environment 2
15 credits
This is the second of two modules to be delivered in collaboration between our Centre for Academic Language and Literacies (CALL) and your academic department. Learning will be comprised of a lecture series coordinated by CALL and available online via your virtual learning environment or face-to-face if you want to come to campus. Weekly seminar series will be delivered by your home academic department and together you’ll work through the course activities and tailor them to your subject.
These modules are designed to allow you to understand your own identity and how this has been constructed, take agency over your learning and development and understand how the environment around is changing and developing in the future. These are some of the core elements of a Goldsmiths’ education and reflect the 8 strategic principles which all of our degrees have been designed to reflect and include.
At the end of the modules, you’ll have learnt how to read critically, evidence your arguments and relate ideas and practices to individual career interests. In the second term, you’ll learn how to formulate research goals, identify themes, concepts and theories relevant to addressing research questions, conduct effective investigations to establish and defend focused, persuasive arguments, and locate and fill gaps in logic.
These are all key building blocks to allow you to make the most of your time at Goldsmiths academically, socially and allow you to begin planning your learning and career development.
|
15 credits |
Reading and Writing History
Reading and Writing History
15 Credits
This module provides guidance on how to develop and perfect the skills that you need to write an undergraduate-level history essay. We'll emphasise the centrality of problem-solving and critical thinking, demonstrating how essays should be used to explore academic debates.
You'll learn skills specific to the discipline of history, such as identifying primary and secondary sources, evaluating their suitability and analysing them to answer historical questions. You'll also gain the necessary skills for academic work in other disciplines and for employment, including relevant referencing techniques, planning to meet deadlines, analyzing data, making a clear argument, using relevant technologies in research and presentation of data, working in groups and making oral presentations.
For deep learning to take place, you'll practice the skills you've learnt by completing a series of structured tasks that contribute to a summative essay engaging with a specific historical problem. You'll receive feedback on each stage of the process, enabling you to develop and improve your skills.
The module is taught with a narrow focus on the lived experience of a defined group of people during a specified historical period (for example the working life of South and East Londoners in the mid-Nineteenth Century) depending on the expertise of the member of staff running the module. Some sessions concentrate on the knowledge required, others on how to apply this knowledge to solve a given historical question. The module also provides specific guidance on the preparation for history examinations.
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15 Credits |
Historical Controversies
Historical Controversies
15 credits
This module introduces you to a range of historical controversies in order to engage you in a critical manner with competing perspectives on a range of different issues and events. The module will contain six, three-week blocks on various sub-disciplines within history, including, social, cultural and political history, across different periods and geographic areas.
Throughout, it will focus on work on historiography, considering issues such as the influence of issues contemporary to authors on their writing; the impact of authors’ politics and/or wider values system on their work; the evolution of controversies over time; and theoretical explanations of controversies.
In addition, it will take a comparative approach to controversies, with assessment including an option to compare two historical controversies or to analyse one controversy in more depth. Lectures and seminars at the beginning and end of the module, and at the point of handover from one block to another, will discuss comparative themes. The History Department will publish a list of six blocks each year, from at least the following:
- Acts, Identities and the Origins of Homosexuality
- The Greatest Whodunit in History: Who Caused the First World War?
- The Decline of the Liberal Party in the UK and the Rise of Labour
- Guilty Men? British Appeasement Policy and the Causes of the Second World War in Europe.
- Fire in Babylon: The New Cross Fire and the Black People’s Day of Action
- The Unnatural Disaster of Hurricane Katrina
- Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-23
- The English Revolution, 1641–1660
- Nations and Nationalism
|
15 credits |
You will also select two 15 credit modules from a list approved annually by the Department of History.
Year 2
In your second year, you will have more freedom to shape your curriculum and broaden your intellectual horizons with 90 credits of optional modules, and 30 credits of compulsory modules.
You will choose 60 credits from the list offered by the History department, up to 30 credits of which can be a University of London intercollegiate group II module.
The additional 30 credits will be from a list provided annually by the Department of Politics and International Relations.
Compulsory modules
| Module title |
Credits |
The Goldsmiths Elective
The Goldsmiths Elective
15 credits
Our academic departments are developing exciting elective ideas to allow you to broaden your education, either to develop vocationally orientated experiences or to learn more about contemporary society, culture and politics. You’ll be able to choose safe in the knowledge that these modules have been designed for non-subject specialists and to bring students from different disciplines together. For example, you may want to take introductions to areas such as Law, Education, the digital industries, the creative industries,think like a designer or understand the history and politics behind our current affairs.
|
15 credits |
Goldsmiths’ Social Change Module
Goldsmiths’ Social Change Module
15 credits
Lots of students join Goldsmiths because they want to make a difference in society, to bring about positive change and develop skills and experiences which will allow them to access exciting careers. Goldsmiths’ Social Change module will allow you to do work on group projects with students from other departments to bring about change. You’ll be introduced to the UN’s Sustainable Development goals and core project management theories and practices allow you to work across a number of weeks towards a final Festival of Ideas where you’ll report work back to the academic and local community.
|
15 credits |
Year 3
In your final year, you will develop your specialist interests and knowledge.
You will take a special subject module from the Department of History or the University of London Intercollegiate Group III. This will be combined with a dissertation linked to your special subject, to make 60 credits.
You will also choose 45 credits of optional modules offered by the Department of Politics, and 15 credits offered by the Department of History.
See the full list of year 3 and Special Subject History modules.
Teaching style
The programme is cumulative and progressive, with knowledge and skills building on previous years and growing year on year. Basic skills and competencies are delivered in the first year which sets the broad agenda for the programme as a whole. In the second year, the modules contain increasingly challenging and demanding material which provides the foundations for the significant independent scholarly work required and undertaken in the final year.
Teaching may be delivered in the form of lectures and seminars or other forms of contact time such as extended seminars, workshops, field trips, and film screenings. Lectures introduce subject specific skills and understandings and provide the basis for discussions, activities, group work, and debates. Seminars linked to lectures provide a space for further exploration of the lecture topics and materials and they reinforce the knowledge gained from the lectures and from independent reading and studying. Seminars also involve field-trips and site visits to relevant places including museums, galleries, archives, and sites of historical interest.
Throughout the programme students are taught to critically engage with the inter-relationship between history and Politics. In the final year, this interdisciplinary knowledge, understanding, skill, and experience is tested through the compulsory dissertation project. The variety of theoretical and empirical material throughout the programme, covering a wide range of topics, periods and regions, provides students with the opportunity to pursue their own interests while examining and interrogating the linkages between the two disciplines. Under close co-supervision, students develop a substantial and sustained individual project in which they form and present their own critical arguments in an extended format. In the context of this joint degree, students are required to produce a genuinely interdisciplinary piece of work that reflects their abilities to analyse and assess historical evidence, their awareness of political ideas, methods, and concepts, and a knowledge of relevant empirical work and debates in each discipline.
Lecturers also make themselves available for tutorials either during their Consultation and Feedback hours or by appointment. These provide opportunities to ask questions about modules and their content, to receive support and guidance on independent work, and to receive feedback on submitted work.
The following information gives an indication of the typical proportions of learning and teaching for each year of this programme*:
- Year 1 - 13% scheduled learning, 87% independent learning
- Year 2 - 13% scheduled learning, 87% independent learning
- Year 3 - 13% scheduled learning, 87% independent learning
How you’ll be assessed
A wide and innovative variety of different methods are used to assess learning, these include essays, reviews, source analyses, blogs, videos, walks, presentations, exams, and dissertations. Some modules are assessed by portfolios of coursework, or by a combination of coursework and an examination. Others are assessed by long essays or dissertations on topics approved with the tutor. Assessments vary in length according to the type of assessment and/or level of module.
Assessment supports student progression across the programme, as assessments in the first year aim to measure a set of baseline skills and competencies which are enhanced, deepened and broadened in subsequent years. Lecturers return assessments and provide useful and constructive feedback in a timely manner so as to ensure that students learn from the feedback and have the opportunity to improve subsequent work.
The following information gives an indication of how you can typically expect to be assessed on each year of this programme*:
- Year 1 - 69% coursework, 31% written exam
- Year 2 - 81% coursework, 19% written exam
- Year 3 - 100% coursework
*Please note that these are averages are based on enrolments for 2020/21. Each student’s time in teaching, learning and assessment activities will differ based on individual module choices. Find out more about how this information is calculated.
Credits and levels of learning
An undergraduate honours degree is made up of 360 credits – 120 at Level 4, 120 at Level 5 and 120 at Level 6. If you are a full-time student, you will usually take Level 4 modules in the first year, Level 5 in the second, and Level 6 modules in your final year. A standard module is worth 30 credits. Some programmes also contain 15-credit half modules or can be made up of higher-value parts, such as a dissertation or a Major Project.
Download the programme specification. If you would like an earlier version of the programme specification, please contact the Quality Office.
Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.
For 2021-22 and 2020–21, we have made some changes to how the teaching and assessment of certain programmes are delivered. To check what changes affect this programme, please visit the programme changes page.
