The programme can be undertaken full-time (three years across three levels) or part-time (four to six years across three levels). You take 360 credits in total, 120 credits at each level.
Please note: The programme specification linked at the bottom of this page is for the 2020-21 academic year.
Year 1
For students entering in 2020
You take four compulsory modules, each of which run for 20 weeks across the autumn and spring terms.
| Year 1 Compulsory modules (2020) |
Module title |
Credits |
| |
Concepts and Methods in History
Concepts and Methods in History
30 credits
This core module introduces you to theories of history, methodologies and conceptual problems of advanced historical work from the ancient to the contemporary world. The module will help you acquire some of the fundamental skills involved in historical study – including writing at university level – as well as help you with online research, footnoting and compiling a bibliography. It consists of one lecture and seminar per week.
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30 credits |
| |
Dictators, War and Revolution
Dictators, War and Revolution
15 credits
This module has two broad aims: a) to introduce students to the discipline of political history, by analysing, in a comparative perspective, key modern political ideologies, developments and political leaders; and b) to provide, in addition to a theoretical foundation, a basic understanding of how the modern world has been shaped by dictators (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini), wars (e.g. First and Second World War) and revolutions (e.g. French, Russian). The module will be divided into two blocks of five weeks:
Block one: modern political ideologies
Block two: wars OR revolutions OR dictators
The topic for the thematic block and the particular lecture topics may vary from year to year, but the two-part structure will ensure that students are exposed to an array of methodological and empirical issues critical for the study of political history.
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15 credits |
| |
Religion, Peace and Conflict
Religion, Peace and Conflict
15 credits
This module explores the historical and contemporary role of religion in promoting peace and conflict through a case study drawn from a global context. The approach is interdisciplinary drawing on the fields of history, religious studies, and philosophy in an attempt to address the question of whether religion has been in the past - and remains today - primarily a cause of peace or conflict in society. The regions and periods chosen for study may vary from year to year but will normally include examples drawn from the West, the Middle East, and Asia.
The module is divided into two blocks of five weeks. The first block comprises an introduction to the nature of religious belief and its role as a catalyst in promoting peace and conflict and also explores ethical teachings on pacifism and 'just war' theory. The second block is devoted to a case study. Students taking the module should gain an introductory, but insightful, comprehension of religious belief and its role in promoting peace and conflict. They will also be exposed to methodological questions of the kind involved in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies and be equipped to take more advanced and specialised modules relating to religion in specific historical and contemporary contexts.
The module introduces students to the role played by religions in promoting peace and conflict in the past and their ongoing influence in this respect in the present. It contributes to the department's focus on cultural history in exposing students to the diversity of beliefs in different cultures and the way the interplay of religion and politics has shaped the evolution of societies in Asia and the West. It also makes a contribution to the department's work in the area of intellectual history and the history of ideas. Finally, it provides an initial trajectory for more advanced work on religious and philosophical themes in years two and three.
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15 credits |
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Self, Citizen and Nation
Self, Citizen and Nation
15 credits
Self, Citizen and Nation introduces students to the importance of intellectual and cultural history as a way of understanding themselves and the world around them. It contributes to the department’s core strengths in the history of ideas, philosophy, ethics, culture and sexuality. The course contributes to the department’s core strengths in intellectual and cultural history and provides an introduction to a number of topics that are explored in second/third-year options.
The course consists of two thematic blocks, each focusing on the relationship between human beings and their surroundings. These blocks may alter on a year-to-year basis but will generally include two of the following topics:
- Humans and the natural world (the human body, the human mind, animals and birds, the rural and urban environments)
- Sex and sexualities (socio-economic, political and legal, religious and cultural, individual, and global dimensions)
- Early modern identities (emotions and the soul, the self, religion and identity, ethnicity and nationality, gender and sexuality)
- Emotions and bonds (love, anger, fear and wonder). Throughout students will engage with a wide variety of primary source material, including images, philosophical and literary texts, letters and works of self-reflection.
|
15 credits |
For students entering from 2021 onward
You take the following compulsory modules in across the autumn and spring terms. In the spring term, you will also choose two 10-week option modules from a list approved annually by the Department of History.
See the full list of year 1 option modules (2021 entry onward).
| Year 1 Compulsory Modules (2021) |
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
|
15 credits |
Year 2
You have a free choice of modules from a list approved annually by the Department of History. Some modules, worth 30 credits, run for 20 weeks across the autumn and spring terms and other modules, worth 15 credits, run for 10 weeks, some running in the autumn term and others in the spring term.
Up to 30 credits can be a ‘related studies’ module taken in another Goldsmiths department and up to 30 credits can be a University of London Intercollegiate Group II module from a list approved annually by our partner institutions. Partners include: Birkbeck; King’s College London; Queen Mary; Royal Holloway; University College London.
See the full list of Year 2 modules.
Year 3
You undertake a Special Subject module, worth 60 credits, that includes a dissertation and runs for 20 weeks across the autumn and spring terms. You can choose to undertake your Special Subject module at Goldsmiths or you can choose a University of London Intercollegiate Group III Special Subject module from a list approved annually by our partner institutions. Partners include: Birkbeck, King’s College London, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway, University College London.
You also have a free choice of modules to the value of 60 credits which can include both 30-credit and 15-credit modules. Up to 30 credits can be a ‘related studies’ module taken in another Goldsmiths department.
See the list of third year modules and Special Subjects.
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 understanding 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 - 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 - 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 2018/19. 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.