Global History MA

You will study 4 core modules and 2 optional modules before completing your programme with a 15,000 word dissertation.

You will take two core modules focused on global history:

This Autumn core module offers an introductory survey of global history arranged in a chronological manner. It draws on chronological depth unique in the UK and considerable regional breadth in order to present you with a truly global perspective. Depending on staff availability, content will range from the decline and fall of ancient empires through the spread of new religions across the multiple shifting political formations in Afro-Eurasia, to early modern voyages of exploration and intellectual movements, and the age of revolutions which gave birth to nations in the midst of global political ruptures. The emphasis is on providing points of cross-cultural, cross-regional ‎comparison and to develop your awareness of key connections, such ‎as trade networks, cultural flows and exchanges, forms of migration, shifting political structures and ‎the emergence of modern states, nations and empires.

Seminar topics will typically include (subject to staff availability): Decline and Fall of Ancient Empires; Empire and its Holy Cities: Caliphate and the East; The Silk Routes; The Long Fourteenth Century: The Rise and Eclipse of a Pre-Western World System; Age of Exploration; India from Colony to Empire; Empire, Development and Decolonisation; Neoliberal Globalisation.
Assessment: Written assignment

This Spring core module is conceived around some of the major processes that shaped history and the key concepts that historians use to make sense of the past. Using case studies of considerable regional breadth and chronological depth, you will familiarise yourself with the building blocks of past and present societies. These key processes and themes include: the importance of the environment in human history; issues of space, geography and the formation of border regions; time and temporality; religion and notions of value; and historically and culturally diverse constructions of subjectivity and social order including gender, sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity.

Seminar topics will typically include (subject to staff availability): Boundaries and Geographical Space in Global History; Environmental Humanities: Energy and Politics in the Age of the Anthropocene; Religion and the Market: Ideas of Value in the Pre-Modern World; Race, Ethnicity and Social Hierarchy; Gender and Sexuality in Global History; Material Cultures; Temporality, Empire and Globe.
Assessment: Written assignment

You will also study two core modules focused on developing your research skills:

This module introduces you to the major developments in historical approaches since the Second World War and to some of the major schools of, or tendencies in, historical research such as the Annales School, the English historians’ response to Marxism, cultural history, the linguistic turn, gender, history of science and critical social theory (Geertz and Foucault). The focus is on the application of the ideas to historical practice then and now.
Assessment: 4,000-word essay

This module prepares you for your dissertation research. You will be expected to produce a short dissertation proposal and you will choose a tutor who will supervise your dissertation preparation work (for a list of tutors, see above). You will have one-to-one meetings with your supervisor, but you will also attend general sessions on research skills.
Assessment: 4,000-word essay

You will also choose two optional modules from a range which may include (subject to staff availability):

• After the Mongols: Political Authority in Islamic Lands, 1200-1600
• China in Revolution: China under Mao (1949-1976)
• From Empire to Colony: Indian Society, Politics and Economy, c. 1757-1885
• Globalisation since 1945
• Mass Society and Modernity
• Slavery and Freedom in Twentieth Century Africa

Alternatively, you may wish to choose a double special subject module. Topics available in recent years have included:

• Britain, the Slave Trade and Anti-Slavery in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
• British Women and Internationalism in the Twentieth Century
• Empire-wallahs: India in the British Imagination
• The History of Grand Strategy
• The Lure of the Modern: China Between Tradition and Modernity (1839 to the Present Day)

It is also possible to choose options from other relevant programmes in the School of History and Cultures - Classics and Ancient History, African Studies and Anthropology, other History programmes - with the approval of the Programme Director. See an indicative list of options.

In addition to your taught modules, you will conduct a piece of independent research with the support of a supervisor, culminating in a 15,000-word dissertation.