History: Hellenic Studies

Core Modules

• History Past & Present

  This module looks at history from the point of view of its practitioners. It approaches historians as academic researchers but also as social actors and cultural brokers both in dialogue with the past, but also part of the societies they inhabit. The module centres around a set of key questions that drive historical research as well as historiographical debate today. How do historians think and write about the past? Do they have a role to play in our globalized and very much present-minded world? And how has "history" become part of contemporary debates on identity politics, post-truth and the digital divide? To answer these questions, the module critically interrogates history’s ambivalent position between art and social science and asks how historical concepts and historical research practices intersect with methods of communicating the past to an academic and wider audience.

• The Historian’s Toolkit: Studying and Communicating the Past

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the range, scope and access to physical and digital archives, museums and resources. You will learn how to evaluate and interpret documents, recordings and artefacts; how to construct a convincing historical narrative; and how to effectively communicate your findings in print, oral and digital formats. You will interpret a variety of evidence including manuscript and printed texts, oral testimony, film and photography, and material objects, as well as look at some key interpretative methods such as oral and digital history. You will learn from members of staff who are experts in their fields and from visiting speakers who are specialists and practitioners, examining a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to historical interpretation and its communication to academic and public audiences.

• Dissertation

  You will carry out an extended piece of research. You will be appointed a member of academic staff who will act as your supervisor, providing you with support and guidance. You will produce a written report of between 10,500 and 12,000 words in length.

• Academic Integrity

  This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.

   

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Optional modules may include:

• Homer’s Iliad

  In this module you will develop an understanding of a broad range of philological issues associated with selected books of Homer's Iliad. You will read significant sections from selected books in the original Greek and examine key issues such as literary criticism, philosophy, anthropology and the study of oral traditions pertaining to the Iliad.

• Homer's Odyssey

  In this module you will develop an understanding of a broad range of philological issues associated with selected books of Homer's Odyssey. You will read significant sections from selected books in the original Greek and examine aspects of higher criticism, including literary, philosophical and anthropological approaches and discussions of general critical theory pertinent to the study of the Odyssey.

• Greek Law and Lawcourts

  Our main evidence for the Athenian democracy in the fourth century are the speeches composed for delivery in court. At the same time, the speeches also offer a unique insight into Athenian social relations and social values through the stories told by individual litigants to their audiences consisting of large number of ordinary citizens who were serving as judges. This module offers an opportunity to study the ways in which the lives of the inhabitants of late fifth and fourth century Athens – citizens, resident aliens, and slaves – were regulated by the city's laws, and equally important how this normative framework could manipulated and sometimes even subverted by members of the community. The module will also offer an introduction to classical Athenian rhetoric, and the seminars will focus on the rhetorical strategies adopted by Athenian litigants in a wide variety of contexts. A broad range of Athenian lawcourt speeches in translation will be complemented by the study of texts (also in translation) by Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes.

• Elementary Greek Palaeography

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how to transcribe and study texts from facsimiles (reproductions) of Greek manuscripts dated or datable between the 9^th and 12^th centuries. Throughout the year you will be introduced to a variety of texts, ranging from biblical, theological and hagiographical to classical, literary and scientific. You will learn how to decipher abbreviations, ligatures and cryptogrammes, how to identify different styles and scribal hands, how to trace and date Greek manuscripts, placing them in the Byzantine cultural milieu in which, and for which, they were produced.

  Coursework focusses on transcribing texts and producing commentaries on the layout and the script. During the second term you will be invited to our annual visit Lambeth Palace Library to examine original Greek manuscripts and to attend the University of London Postgraduate Working Seminar on Editing Byzantine Texts, where you will learn through practice to edit, translate and annotate a Greek text from manuscripts.

• City of Athens

  The urban centre of ancient Athens was a modest town from antiquity until the nineteenth century when it became the capital of the newly independent state. The city has grown phenomenally over the last two centuries and the preservation of the archaeological remains is varied. The course will combine classroom teaching with an excursion to Athens where the relationship between the modern city and the primary material at the archaeological parks and museums can be studied at first hand. The lectures and seminars will provide a methodological and chronological framework for studying the material remains of the ancient city. Several themes will run through the course and they include, for example, the following: How are the religious and burial customs reflected in the archaeological record of Athens? What types of manifestations did the administration and politics of the polis have in architecture? How did the city prepare for war? What was the urban environment like?

• Byzantium and The First Crusade

  This module traces the response of the rulers of the Byzantine Empire to the First Crusade, which passed through their territory in 1096-7. The events of the First Crusade - its preaching by Urban II in 1095, its arrival at Constantinople in 1096-7, its progress through Byzantine territory to Antioch, the ‘third wave’ of 1101 – will all be discussed in this context through a range of Byzantine and Western source material in translation.

• Byzantium and the Fourth Crusade

  This module takes a long-term view of the crusade which captured and sacked Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine empire, in April 1204. Starting in around 1192, it places events in the context of relations between the Byzantines and previous crusades, of the internal situation of the empire and of the position in the Latin east in the aftermath of the Third Crusade. It then examines how the Fourth Crusade was preached and planned, how it was diverted first to Zara and then to Constantinople, and how it came to attack and pillage the city.

• Living in Byzantium I: Material Culture and Built Environment in Late Antiquity

  This module provides an introduction to the varied physical remains left behind by Late Antiquity, primarily in the eastern Mediterranean (4th to 7th century). The selection of material and issues examined range from the urban and rural landscapes, fortifications, palaces, houses, monasteries and churches, to monumental decoration and small scale objects. This wide range of topics will be investigated thematically from a primarily functional and practical point of view, in order to trace and highlight the significant changes that occurred in this period, signalling different stages in the transformation of the Roman heritage. Each subject will be approached on the basis of case studies that exemplify the nature and problems of the evidence.

• Diasporas, Refugees and Minorities in Modern Europe & The Mediterranean

  This module offers a historical and conceptual approach to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian diasporas, refugees and minorities in the imperial and post-imperial lands of Europe and the Mediterranean of the late 19th and 20th centuries. It maps the complex transformation of ethno-religious diasporas into refugees and minorities amidst war, genocide and forced relocation and considers their enduring legacy in Europe and beyond. Diasporas, refugees and minorities are often treated separately, but this module points to significant overlaps and interchangeable positions in their histories as Jewish minorities interacted with Christian refugees or became refugees themselves before, during and after the Holocaust.