Language And/With History With International Experience (Ba): 4-Year, Full-Time

COURSE STRUCTURE

You will acquire 420 credits over four years, including 60 during your study year abroad. The modules you take will be dependent both on your interests and your language level, so your course structure will be tailored to meet your personal requirements.

There is a minimum language entry requirement for French, German, Italian and Spanish of CEFR level A2 (GCSE or equivalent). Beginners are welcome in Japanese only.

At Birkbeck you complete the equivalent of 12 full (30-credit) modules, normally taking six history modules and six culture and language modules. Depending on entry level, a maximum of three of these will be from one of the languages on offer, forming a language pathway. A typical set of modules, divided by year, might look like this:

MODULE GROUPS

YEAR 1

• Approaching the Past
• Cultural Perspectives on German History
• Transformation, Transgression and Tradition: German language Culture across the Centuries (Level 5)

YEAR 2

• Contested Nation: Germany, 1871-1918 (level 5)
• European History from 1800
• German 4
• The Politics of Gender and Modern German Culture

YEAR 4

• German 5
• The Family: A Theme in German Culture
• The Third Reich
• Writing the Past: Dissertation

HISTORY LEVEL 4 MODULE

• Discovering Archaeology: From Field to Finds Room

HISTORY LEVEL 5 MODULES

• Beginnings: The Archaeology of Prehistory
• Between God and Rome: the Byzantine Empire 307-1453 (level 5)
• Contested Nation: Germany, 1871-1918 (level 5)
• Cultural Interaction in the Archaic Greek World (level 5)
• From Ancient to Medieval Societies, Third to Eleventh Centuries
• Journeys to the Underworld in Classical Literature and Culture
• Popular Culture in American History, 1870 to the Present (level 5)
• The Ottoman Empire (level 5)
• Under the Volcano - the First and Last Days of Pompeii (level 5)
• Work and Play in Early Modern Britain (level 5)

HISTORY LEVEL 6 MODULES

• Body Politics: Health, Illness and Death in Britain
• Crime, Poverty and Protest in England and Beyond, 1500-1800
• Intimate Britain: Family, Society and Culture, 1832-1918
• Late Medieval and Early Modern London: Community, Politics and Religion
• Literature, Culture and Society 1914-1945
• Sexuality, Society and the State in Britain, 1914-2000
• The Athenian Empire
• The Colonial Gaze: Western Perceptions of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 1600-1960
• The Empire of Letters: Correspondence in the Roman World
• The Third Reich

INDICATIVE COMPARATIVE CULTURE OPTION MODULES

• Culture and Crisis (Level 5)
• Film and Politics
• Reading Transnational Cultures
• Representations of Love, Desire and Sexuality
• Stories of the Self (Level 5)
• The Twentieth Century: Key Themes in Comparative European History (Level 5)
• Understanding Culture: Language and Texts

INDICATIVE FRENCH OPTION MODULES

• Dreaming the Self: Enlightenment to Romanticism
• French Cinema: History, Practice, Analysis
• French Political Culture: Traditions and Change
• French Thought: from the Renaissance to Postmodernity
• Memoire en francais
• Racine
• Reading the Signs: Text and Image in French Culture
• Sensibility and Sociability in the Eighteenth-Century French Novel
• The French Novel of Disillusionment
• The Twentieth-Century French Humanist Novel: Malraux and Camus
• Translation from and into French
• Writing the Self: Autobiographical Narratives in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Level 6)

INDICATIVE GERMAN OPTION MODULES

• A Topic in German Thought: The Idea of Enlightenment
• Berlin since 1945: History and Culture (Level 5)
• Das Dritte Reich
• Die Deutschsprachige Presse
• Fascism in German Film (Level 6)
• Literature and Society since 1945
• Post-War German Film
• The German Novelle
• The Politics of Gender and Modern German Culture
• Wirtschaftsdeutsch

INDICATIVE ITALIAN OPTION MODULES

• Introduction to Italian Culture (Level 4)
• INDICATIVE JAPANESE OPTION MODULES
• Advanced Seminar in Japanese Culture and Society
• Manga and Anime
• Popular Culture in Japan and East Asia
• Rethinking Japan: Introduction to Modern Japanese Society and Culture (Level 4)
• Theorising Japanese Cinema

INDICATIVE PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH OPTION MODULES

• Approaches to Spanish Culture and Society
• Art and Empire in the Iberian World
• Creative Destruction. Cultural responses to contemporary Portugal (level 6)
• Exile and Nation in 20th Century Spain
• Iberian Political Cultures: The Spanish Case
• Iberian Political Cultures: The Portuguese Case
• Literature and the Nation in Latin America (Mexico)
• Lusophone Cinema (level 5)
• Picturing the African Presence in Early Modern Spain
• Power and Control in Spanish Golden Age Art
• Power and Resistance in Spanish and Brazilian Film (Level 5)
• Scenes of Portuguese History: Cultural approaches to modern politics
• Spanish Pragmatics (Level 6)
• Studying the Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian and Native American Worlds
• The Latin American Novel
• The Problem of National Identity in Modern Spain
• The Urban Experience in Brazil
• Visual Cultures of Travel and Exploration in Latin America
• Please note that not all modules are available every year; the list above is indicative.

DEGREE CLASSIFICATION

If you exit the degree with Language 3 (A-level+/B2) or Language 4 (post-A-level/C1) the degree awarded will reflect this (e.g. BA History with German).

If you exit the degree with Language 5 (degree level/C1/C2) the degree awarded will reflect this (e.g. BA German and History).

Birkbeck makes all reasonable efforts to deliver educational services, modules and programmes of study as described on our website. In the event that there are material changes to our offering (for example, due to matters beyond our control), we will update applicant and student facing information as quickly as possible and offer alternatives to applicants, offer-holders and current students.