Year 1
In your first year, you will take a number of compulsory modules, and two 15 credit modules offered by the Department of History.
Year 1 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
- 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
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30 credits |
|
Historical Controversies
Historical Controversies
30 credits
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:
- Acts, Identities and the Origins of Homosexuality
- The Causes of the Russian Revolution
- 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.
- The Ballot or the Bullet? Civil Disobedience in 1960s Protest Movements
- Revolutionary Movements in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s
- Fire in Babylon: The New Cross Fire and the Black People’s Day of Action
- The Unnatural Disaster of Hurricane Katrina
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30 credits |
|
Reading and Writing History
Reading and Writing History
15 Credits
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.
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15 Credits |
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Historical Perspectives
Historical Perspectives
15 credits
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
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15 credits |
Year 2
In your second year, you will select 90 credits of year 2 modules approved annually by the Department of History, one of which may be a Special Subject or related studies module offered by another Goldsmiths Department.
You will also choose one of the following module combinations (see table below for module details).
History in Practice
OR
Making Black British History AND Public History Placement
Year 2 compulsory modules |
Module title |
Credits |
|
History in Practice
History in Practice
30 credits
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.
Ten 2-hr lecture/seminar blacks, held weekly in term 1, addressing various issues related to public history and how concepts of the past are constructed in the public sphere, including ‘what is public history?’; the role and nature of choices about how to represent and catalogue the past; differences between museums, archives and heritage sites; audiences and publics; presentation of the past.
Seminars also include input from Goldsmiths Careers and involve trips to important museums, walks, and archives in London.
Lectures and seminars in term 1 will take the form of a two-hour block. They will be held either at Goldsmiths or involve a trip to a museum or archive where students will experience different aspects of public history in practice and have the opportunity to learn from curators and archivists.
Term 1 Lecture/seminar schedule: 1. Introduction 2. Black History Month walk 3. CV workshop (careers) 4. Jewish Museum visit 5. Public history lecture/seminar 1 6. LMA visit 7. Public history lecture/seminar 2 8. Queer history visit (V&A/Bishopsgate?) 9. Preparing for your placement workshop (careers) 10. Public History conclusion
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30 credits |
|
Making Black British Histories: Community, Preservation and Public History
Making Black British Histories: Community, Preservation and Public History
15 Credit
Public history is active, reactive and connected to the present. It is an essential part of a historian’s toolkit; it means putting historical research and writings into dialogue with public understandings of the past to have the broadest possible impact. It also means learning about the past and shaping research agendas by engaging with communities and the public. It can be developed on a grass-roots level beyond the university, or it can mean taking academic research and making it accessible to the public.
Black British histories were developed, formed and shaped by activists, communities, and local archives before this field emerged as an academic discipline in universities. This module: 1) explored the community and activist roots of Black British history, and the ways organisations like the Black Cultural Archives, Institute of Race Relations and George Padmore Institute have preserved Black British pasts and histories of race in Britain; 2) examines the ways that Black British histories are created, developed and shared in the present. This includes: heritage projects, media, TV and film, digital resources, public commemoration, and the use of history to create public policy; 3) explores the historical roots of present-day actions taken to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ and the university, the ways Black British histories and histories of race have been made invisible in education and public memory, and what it means to create new systems of knowledge production and exchange.
The rise and popularity of public history has become so widespread that some scholars have called it a ‘public history turn’. This interdisciplinary and interactive module not only introduces students to the methods and ideas behind public history, it will also help students learn how to make Black British histories more accessible and build transferable skills in public engagement and communication. The module includes field trips, guest lectures and a walking tour. This module is suitable for all students; prior knowledge or experience in Black British history not required.
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15 Credit |
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Public History Placement
Public History Placement
15 credits
This 15 credit course will consist of 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.
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15 credits |
Year 3
In your third year, you will take the following 30 credit Special Subjects or a University of London Intercollegiate Group III module. You will complete a 30 credit dissertation in the form of a Public History Project alongside your chosen Special Subject.
You will also choose 60 credits of option modules from a list approved annually by the Department of History.
Year 3 compulsory module |
Module title |
Credits |
|
Public History Project
Public History Project
30 credits
This module is the culmination of the BA History with Public History pathway and is designed to showcase and synthesise the knowledge, understanding, practical skills, and experience acquired throughout the pathway in the previous three years.
In a co-requisite history special subject module, students undertake independent historical research on a particular topic of their choice related to that module. That research then forms the basis for this module and a piece of real-world public history practice in a history or heritage context. This might be an exhibition, a performance, an installation, an audio or video podcast, a walking tour, a film or another form of public interaction derived from the historical research. Opportunities for these projects include established Goldsmiths-based spaces and events, annual events staged in the local community around Goldsmiths (i.e. Telegraph Hill Festival, Lewisham People’s Day, Hilly Fields Midsummer Fayre) and partnerships with London-based history and heritage organisations established and maintained through the History in Practice module. Digital and online activities would also be options in the event of in-person activities not being possible at that time.
The autumn term consists of a series of workshops designed to refresh existing knowledge and understanding of public history concepts and practices and introduce the processes of scoping, designing and delivering a specific public history project. Alongside these workshops in the autumn term, there will be a parallel series of seminars in which students will discuss and draw up proposals for their own individual projects. These seminars will also provide opportunities for students to present their project to tutors and peers and receive feedback. The project proposal is further refined in the second half of the autumn term to produce a detailed and agreed project plan that outlines the content and methodology of the project, including the aims and key sources of the historical research, the approach and angle of the public history work, and addresses issues of location, management, implementation and audience. The deadline for this proposal is the end of the autumn term and it forms part of the overall project assessment.
In the spring term, students work on their individual projects under close supervision from staff. Students in this module will be individually supervised for their public history project by the module tutor. This supervision will work in tandem with the subject supervision they will receive from the special subject module tutor and at least one supervision meeting in each term should include both supervisors. Each student will be provided with a small budget (c. £75) which they will be expected to manage and account for. The final project itself will take place in either the spring or summer term depending upon the particular circumstances of the project. The first marker will assess the project in person and, where necessary, recordings will be made to facilitate second-marking and external examination. Following the project activity, students write a project report in which they reflect upon the activity and critically assess it.
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30 credits |
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.
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 - 14% scheduled learning, 86% 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 - 44% coursework, 56% written exam
- Year 2 - 100% coursework
- Year 3 - 74% coursework, 26% written exam
*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 .
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.