Early Modern History MLitt

The modules in this programme have varying methods of delivery and assessment. For more details of each module, including weekly contact hours, teaching methods and assessment, please see the latest module catalogue which is for the 2018–2019 academic year; some elements may be subject to change for 2019 entry.

Complusory

• Themes and Debates in Early Modern History (1 and 2): introduces students to a variety of key debates in early modern history through studying different scholars’ approaches to the period.

and two of the following:

• Early Modern Documents and Sources: provides a wide-ranging introduction to the types of source material which researchers on the early modern period may encounter.
• Latin for Postgraduate Research: provides three tiers of Latin teaching (beginners, intermediate, and advanced) for students with earlier or no experience.
• Material Bibliography: covers the use of the book as historical evidence and practical aspects of cataloguing and Special Collections work.
• Paleography and Manuscript Studies: learn to read early modern handwriting and gain a sense of the nature of European handwriting in the early modern period.

Students choose one optional module from the following:

• The Creation of an Atlantic World: introduces students to the concept of the Atlantic World, a unit of analysis used by historians to understand the changes wrought in the western hemisphere by the British, French, and Iberian discovery and settlement of the Americas, and by Europe’s slave trade with Africa.
• Directed Reading: offers a specialised directed reading course based on the student's individual interests, and is designed to encourage the development of skills of historical analysis through concentrated study.
• The European Renaissance: compares and contrasts the Italian and Northern Renaissances, examining their mediaeval origins and exploring themes such as religion, humanism, court and urban life, in order to test this traditional interpretation.
• Political Thought and Intellectual History: an introduction to the political theory and intellectual history of the early modern period.
• Religion and Identity in Early Modern Britain: explores the significance of the Reformation in reshaping Scots and English self-definitions in the 16th and 17th centuries.
• Society and Religious Change in Sixteenth-Century France: examines how France faced the two major challenges of the age: the trend towards more centralised state-building, stimulated in part by the changing nature of warfare in the 16th century and the urge on the part of European monarchies to create a new monarchy; and the challenge posed by the divisions of European Christendom resulting from the Protestant Reformation.
• War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe and New Worlds: explores the transformations in the size, scale and scope of European warfare between the late 15th and late 18th centuries.

Students choose one optional module from the following:

• The Creation of an Atlantic World: introduces students to the concept of the Atlantic World, a unit of analysis used by historians to understand the changes wrought in the western hemisphere by the British, French, and Iberian discovery and settlement of the Americas, and by Europe’s slave trade with Africa.
• Directed Reading: offers a specialised directed reading course based on the student's individual interests, and is designed to encourage the development of skills of historical analysis through concentrated study.
• The European Renaissance: compares and contrasts the Italian and Northern Renaissances, examining their mediaeval origins and exploring themes such as religion, humanism, court and urban life, in order to test this traditional interpretation.
• Political Thought and Intellectual History: an introduction to the political theory and intellectual history of the early modern period.
• Religion and Identity in Early Modern Britain: explores the significance of the Reformation in reshaping Scots and English self-definitions in the 16th and 17th centuries.
• Society and Religious Change in Sixteenth-Century France: examines how France faced the two major challenges of the age: the trend towards more centralised state-building, stimulated in part by the changing nature of warfare in the 16th century and the urge on the part of European monarchies to create a new monarchy; and the challenge posed by the divisions of European Christendom resulting from the Protestant Reformation.
• War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe and New Worlds: explores the transformations in the size, scale and scope of European warfare between the late 15th and late 18th centuries.