BA (Hons) History with Politics

Historical Perspectives introduces and explores ‘historiography’, this being the history of the study of the past and the writing of history. Spanning a period from the Renaissance to the present day, the module examines key methods, theories, approaches, and writers so as to provide an introduction and orientation to the development and evolution of academic history.

As academic history continues to develop, topics on the module will be updated in line with new perspectives. Core topics will be from a selection of the following:

• Antiquarian and Humanist approaches to history
• Leopold Ranke and ‘Rankean’ ideas about history
• Historical Materialism and Marxist interpretations of history
• Annales school techniques such as ‘Total History’ and ‘Microhistory’
• Gender as a category of historical analysis
• Sexualities as an area of historical research
• Post-colonial and non-colonial histories
• Global History and challenges to Eurocentricity
• Postmodernism and ‘truth’ in history
• The History of Medicine and Medical Humanities
• The History of Emotions
• Black British History

This module provides guidance on how to develop and perfect the skills students need to write an undergraduate-level history essay. An emphasis is put on the centrality of problem solving and critical thinking, demonstrating how essays should be used as vehicles to explore academic debates.  Students learn skills specific to the discipline of history, such as identifying primary and secondary sources, evaluating their suitability and analyzing them to answer historical questions, as well as those necessary 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, students practice the skills they have learnt by completing a series of structured tasks that contribute to a summative essay engaging with a specific historical problem. They will receive feedback on each stage of the process, enabling them to develop and improve their 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.

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
• Latin America and the World Market
• Travellers, Stories, Materials and Knowledges across Eurasia
• Colonialism, Anti-colonialism and Resistance in the Middle East and North Africa

This module introduces students to a range of historical controversies in order to engage them 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 student 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:

1. Acts, Identities and the Origins of Homosexuality
2. The Causes of the Russian Revolution
3. The Greatest Whodunit in History: Who Caused the First World War?
4. The Decline of the Liberal Party in the UK and the Rise of Labour
5. Guilty Men? British Appeasement Policy and the Causes of the Second World War in Europe.
6. The Ballot or the Bullet? Civil Disobedience in 1960s Protest Movements
7. Revolutionary Movements in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s
8. Fire in Babylon: The New Cross Fire and the Black People’s Day of Action
9. The Unnatural Disaster of Hurricane Katrina

This module addresses a number of themes that relate to questions of nationalism, imperialism, identity and gender, focusing on Japan’s emergence as a modern nation state, its imperial project and its catastrophic defeat, culminating in the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its occupation by Allied forces. The historical perspective, which the module seeks to offer, is central to an understanding of Japan’s troubled relationship with its Asian neighbours, and of its claims of uniqueness, which have their legacy in its position as both coloniser and colonised. The module approaches questions of politics through a very expansive definition of the term, treating cinema, animation, manga, and other popular cultural forms as important sites for the articulation of political anxieties and concerns, which are not necessarily reflected in more conventional forms of political activity, such as political debates, deliberations of the Diet and so on.

This module introduces you to various attempts to clarify and understand the links between economic and political processes which come under the banner of ‘political economy’. As a whole, the module is intended to draw out the links between the broad “school”-level approaches (such as Marxism, economic sociology, methodological individualism and institutional economics) and contemporary issues and analyses (concerning questions of resource scarcity, predation, coordination failures and trust).

To this end, the module is split into two broad parts. The first part guides you through the main thematic approaches to political economy in order to examine the principle concepts theorists have used to understand and explain economic processes. The second part seeks to apply these concepts to contemporary economic issues and questions.

It seeks to both clarify and examine the various understandings of the market and the state which have shaped the direction of economic research, so that you can finish the module with a clear understanding of the various ideas, concerns and beliefs which motivate real-world political economic arguments.

The module brings an historical perspective to key issues in British politics from 1979 to the present day.

It does that by examining themes such as rise of Thatcherism, the divisions in the main political parties, the rise and fall of New Labour, and the politics of the 2010 Coalition.

To gain a more sophisticated (and less prejudiced) knowledge of “rough politics” is particularly vital today, as the age of globalisation seems to be framed by the conflict between the rule of law represented by western democracies, and the violent disorder embodied by the Global South.

In studying this shadowy territory we will touch upon fundamental issues for today's social sciences: the afterlives of Twentieth Century revolutionary politics, the connections between political violence and religion, the nature of informal and illegal economies, the current debates on globalisation from below, the prospects for social rebellion, the construction of new political subjectivities and novel ways of representing the “other”.

We will do all of this by studying the political significance of guerrilla warfare in shaping global politics; the language of martyrdom in religious based terrorism; Al Qaeda´s dependence on mass-murder to advance a populist theology, Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea reinventing the fascination and fear caused by pirates from a bygone age, Colombian paramilitaries enforcing order and disregarding at the very same time the Rule of Law, The Mara Salvatrucha street gang dominating neighbourhoods in El Salvador and Los Angeles, and hackers disturbing the otherwise unalterable profitmaking arrangements of the Internet.

Since the end of the Cold War, both the theory and practice of international security have undergone radical changes. In the era of globalisation, security is no longer confined to questions of interstate conflict and cooperation but embraces a plethora of new concerns.

Most significant among these is the prevalence of new wars fought within rather than between states and the range of phenomena such as environmental destruction, transnational criminal activity, development and insecurity, and migration and disease, that these conflicts generate.

Furthermore, the terms by which the institutions of international society engage with these security threats has been rearticulated within a discourse of liberal humanitarianism in which human rather than state security has become the main referent.

This module explores this transformation of the ‘new security agenda’ by means of:

• an exploration of the theoretical and conceptual reframing of security
• analysis of a selection of important challenges framed as security threats.

The module is in two parts. The first part examines and debates a range of competing theories and concepts of security. It considers different meanings of the term ‘security’ and whose security we can talk about. The second part examines some contemporary security threats with implications for international politics.

These will include, among other subjects: inter and intra-state conflict; the role and future of international and regional security institutions; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; international terrorism and the war on terror; cyber-warfare and transnational crime; and development, resources and conflict.

This unit focuses on the history, politics and ideology of anarchism chiefly from its origins in the nineteenth century to 1939.

There will be a discussion of anarchism in the post-1945 period but the main aim of the unit is to trace the origins and development of anarchist ideology (Godwin, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Goldman etc) and the associated social and labour movements in Europe and the Americas (from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the Spanish Civil, 1936-1939, and from the Haymarket Riot of Chicago in 1886 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 to the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917-1921).

There will also be a substantial time devoted to anarchist-type movements and ideas which developed throughout the world before 1800 and as well as a discussion of anarchism, its reception and interchange with thinkers, ideas, and movements in Asia and Africa. 

This module will provide students with an understanding of key issues in the field of contemporary radical political economy.

It will outline and critically evaluate orthodox economic approaches to globalisation as well as challenges from the anti-capitalist movement. Marxist, autonomist and green economics will be examined and criticised.

You'll look at the effects of global capitalism on poverty, equality and environmental sustainability. Alternatives to the market and state regulation of economic activity such as commons regimes, open source and social sharing will also be put under the microscope. 

The module considers the development of feminism as a political ideology and a social movement through history and explores how feminist theory, policy and activism have developed in relation to each other to address pressing contemporary issues around the world. The module analyses empirical and theoretical aspects of feminist politics, drawing upon a range of feminist theorists and using examples from various world regions and time periods.

By examining the conceptual and empirical impact of feminism upon the study of politics this module introduces students to the complex ways in which gender relations permeate both formal institutions and societal relations. Feminist theory has provided a radical and challenging critique of mainstream political ideology and the module will consider the various contributions of thinkers such as bell hooks, Judith Butler and Andrea Dworkin, alongside the recent turn towards intersectionality.

The module considers specific substantive topics, such as reproductive justice, violence against women and pornography, as a means of exploring the application of feminist theory, the development of legislation, and the mobilisation of activism and campaigns. Underpinning this analysis, we will be reflecting upon the wide range of protest repertoires activists use to further the goals of the feminist movement. 

International Relations has traditionally been occupied with questions of war and peace. This module zooms into the places in between: places of protracted armed conflict, many of which don’t classify as zones of war but are also far from peaceful.

It investigates the emergence of violent political and social orders that need be understood in order to engage in meaningful conflict transformation. The conceptually-driven module draws on interdisciplinary scholarship to equip students with a wide range on concepts, theories and methods that help with analysing armed politics and political violence in a variety of empirical contexts around the world.

Structured in three parts, the module looks at 1) the actors of violent social and political orders, including non-state armed groups in their inter- and transnational context, 2) dynamics of conflict and violence, including cultural spheres of contestation and the transformation of societal relations, and 3) the institutional landscape that emerges in situations of protracted armed conflict, including governance by armed groups and violent economies.

This course explores the intersection between popular music and politics. It starts from the premise that ‘the political’ is a site of contestation whose parameters are constantly being rearticulated by multiple cultural practices, including music.

Three limitations provide the course with a coherent focus. First, while the historical relationship of music and politics extends back to (at least) ancient Greek tragedy, the subject matter is limited to contemporary, i.e. post-World War Two music. Second, while many late 20th century classical, avant-garde and jazz artists have engaged with politics, the course focuses on ‘popular’ music, broadly defined. Third, while music has often been deployed in the service of state power, the onus is on music associated with political movements that have sought to challenge established orders.

The course, then, explores popular music as a conduit for, expression by which, and manifestation of political struggle, protest and contestation.

Whereas it is standard to focus on the popular music/politics nexus exclusively with respect to US and UK experiences this course has a broader purview, exploring this dynamic within and between societies and cultures across the world.

The course also explores the music/politics relationship beyond the obvious messaging of political lyrics. It assumes that the politics of music are communicated through (and limited by) a complex of cultural systems – song structures, album artwork, music videos, fanzines, fashion, concert rituals, the music press, the recording industry, social media etc. which can reinforce, rearticulate and importantly distort or undermine intended political gestures or meanings.

In terms of material to be studied, while academic literature is important, students will be encouraged to listen to and think critically about songs, albums and videos as texts which either implicitly or explicitly engage or challenge the political.

Some of the substantive themes the course will address include: the contribution of folk and soul music to the US Civil Rights Movement; the struggles of Tropicália and Afrobeat with military dictatorships in Brazil and Nigeria; black consciousness in US Hip-Hop and Rap; class and race in Punk and post-punk in the UK and Europe; the feminist politics of the Riot Grrrl movement; transnational anti-globalisation music activism in Latin America and the US; the spatial politics of Electronic Dance Music; the postcolonial iterations of European Rap and Heavy Metal in the Middle East; xi K-Pop and the political economy of hybridity.