Modern British Studies MA

Core modules

You will study four core modules:

This module will expose you to some of the key debates and moments in Modern British Studies and its associated historiography. There are difficulties in identifying organising narratives for understanding modern Britain. How do we write history that remains intellectually inclusive, avoids privileging historic and contemporary historiographical concerns and creates conversations that cut across regional, temporal and disciplinary boundaries? This module will introduce you to historical works that have stimulated new visions the past and its role in public life. If British society and culture has changed, so has the way that historians have approached and conceptualised it. While the module focuses on a series of key interventions, we will situate these in the context of broader debates about Modern Britain.
Assessment: 4,000-word essay

This module goes beyond thinking about Britain in terms of the great and the good and introduces you to rich and diverse sources through which historians have tried to understand the contours of everyday life in the past. The module will enable you to capture the pluralistic and inchoate messiness of ordinary life and historical change. A seaside postcard can be just as useful to a historian as a work of art. It is a module that will give you grounding in the interpretation of different sources and the problems and possibilities these present in studying the past.
Assessment: 4,000-word essay

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 covers what the dissertation project will entail. You will be expected to produce a short dissertation proposal for submission and you will be allocated a tutor who will supervise your dissertation preparation work. You will have one-to-one meetings with your supervisor, but you will also attend available generic sessions on skills run on the Research Skills module and available across the University.
Assessment: 4,000-word essay

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

• A Holiday from Reality': A History of Drugs and Drug Use in the Modern Era
• George Orwell, England and the Modern World
• Globalisation since 1945
• Gross Indecency to Gay Marriage? Gender and Sexual Minorities 1885 to the Present
• Reason and Romance: The Cultural History of Nineteenth Century Britain
• The Making of the World: Themes in Global History

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

• Britain and the First World War
• Britain, the Slave Trade and Anti-slavery
• British Women and Internationalism
• Immigrant Nation
• The Revolting Right

It is also possible to select options from other programmes offered in the School of History and Cultures - in African Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Cultural Heritage and History - 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.

Please note that the optional module information listed on the website for this programme is intended to be indicative, and the availability of optional modules may vary from year to year. Where a module is no longer available we will let you know as soon as we can and help you to make other choices.