The course
This joint degree combines two interconnected disciplines; your philosophy studies will complement your study of History by providing you with a deeper understanding of fields such as politics, literature and art. You will spend time critically inquiring into questions that are fundamental to our understanding of politics and ethics, of art and culture, of our relationship to our past and future, and of our connection to the natural world, whilst satisfying your curiosity about the past, acquiring understanding of specific periods and problems, and making discoveries.
Studying History is exciting and rewarding; it encourages you to appreciate the human experience in other places and at other times. Exploring what people have felt, thought and done in the past expands our self-awareness. It will help to satisfy your curiosity about the past, acquire understanding of specific periods and problems, and make discoveries.
Our internationally renowned academics are developing the very latest thinking on historical problems; this cutting edge knowledge informs the curriculum and will enhance your learning experience. By studying History at one of the largest and most influential departments in the country you will be able to choose from an exceptionally broad range of subjects, enabling you to spread your studies across the medieval and modern worlds, from Ancient Rome through to modern China, from Saladin through to Margaret Thatcher.
Our flexible degree programmes enable you to apply to take a Placement Year, which can be spent studying abroad, working or carrying out voluntary work. You can even do all three if you want to (minimum of three months each)! To recognise the importance of this additional skills development and university experience, your Placement Year will be formally recognised on your degree certificate and will contribute to your overall result. Please note conditions may apply if your degree already includes an integrated year out, please contact the Careers & Employability Service for more information. Find out more
- An interdisciplinary and collaborative course.
- Develop your understanding of key philosophical texts.
- Learn about differing assumptions which inform central philosophical traditions.
- Exploring what people have thought and done in the past expands your self-awareness.
- A wide selection of history modules to suit your own interests.
Course structure
Core Modules
Year 1-
The course follows a grand narrative arc that explores the themes, sources and questions that have animated the work of historians from antiquity to the present day. How have historians discussed themes like Renaissance, Revolution or Gender? What kinds of sources have they used? How do such ideas influence our understanding of historical change? How has this shaped public debate/public history?
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In this module you will develop an understanding of how the ‘new philosophy’ of the seventeenth century set the modern philosophical agenda. You will look at the work of some of the most ground breaking philosophers of the period, such René Descartes and John Locke, and consider how later philosophers such as Gottfried Leibniz and David Hume took up and expanded their ideas. You will consider the fundamental questions which became central to the European Enlightenment, including those concerning knowledge and understanding and the relation between science and other human endeavours.
- Tutorial Special Study
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In this module you will develop an understanding of ancient philosophical ideas and the ways in which philosophical arguments are presented and analysed. You will look at the thought and significance of the principal ancient philosophers, from the Presocratics to Aristotle, and examine sample texts such as Plato's 'Laches' and the treatment of the virtue of courage in Aristotle, 'Nicomachean Ethics' 3.6-9.
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In this module you will develop an understanding of the major debates in European and some Anglo-American philosophy. You will look at the key texts by eighteenth and nineteenth-century philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, examining the continuing significance of their ideas. You will consider the major epistemological, ethical and aesthetical issues their idea raise, and the problems associated with the notion of modernity. You will also analyse the importance of the role of history in modern philosophy via Hegel's influence.
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In this module you will develop an understanding of how the rationalist and empiricist traditions in philosophy influence contemporary thought in the philosophy of mind. You will look at the continuing relevance of the mind-body problem to the question of what it is to be a human being and consider the connections between the analytic and European traditions in philosophy with respect to language, subjectivity, and the phenomenology of experience. You will also examine the importance of consciousness to contemporary debates in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.
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The subject of the essay must be outside the direct remit of the various Group 1 and Group 2 taught courses that the student is taking. The essay is intended to facilitate and develop the student's powers of independent thought and research, exercised in a field selected by the student for its particular attractions to him/her and where regular supervisory guidance is available.
- Dissertation
Optional Modules
There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.
Year 1-
This course looks at how power was exercised in the ancient Mediterranean world - in politics, in religion, and in culture. It covers a long and dramatically changing period, from early Greece (the time of the Homeric epics) to the rise of Christianity and then the rise of Islam. A variety of areas of life are investigated through both primary sources (in translation) and a selection of the latest secondary works.
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This course investigates the origins of our ideas about human rights and duties, revolution and democracy, consent and liberty, etc. A number of key writings are studied: ranging from Plato and Aristotle in the ancient world to Machiavelli, More, Hobbes, Locke and the Enlightenment in the transition from the early modern to the modern world. Analysis of the development of fundamental ideas about politics and society through these examples sharpens the mind and throws light upon the present in the perspective of the past.
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The early modern period is an age of change. It has been seen by many as the beginning of modernity, for it witnesses the consolidation of both national monarchies and the central state, the split of Christianity with the emergence of the Reformation, the spread of Islam to the Balkans, European expansion into the ‘new world,’ the introduction of print, and significant changes in patterns of consumption. This course will assess the impact that these processes had on the lives of ordinary early modern Europeans and on their ways of making sense of the changes in the world around them. For example, we will examine how the process of state-building brought about a new culture of discipline and self-restraint in everyday life; how people’s attitudes to the sacred and standards of morality changed with the spread of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. We will ask whether the introduction of print revolutionized ordinary people’s access to information and knowledge, and whether the encounter with Native Americans stimulated the development of a separate European identity, perceived as superior. This course will also address continuities and changes in the domestic and private spheres of individuals’ lives -- gender relations, patterns of family life, ideas about childhood and intimacy, attitudes to health and hygiene, birth and death. Throughout the emphasis will be on the experience of ordinary people.
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This course highlights a range of major themes in (predominantly) European history from the French Revolution to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. In studying specific events and developments students will also be introduced to more general concepts like revolution, constitutionalism, liberalism, nationalism, industrialisation, socialism, communism, fascism, parliamentary democracy and welfare state. Exposure to different historical methods and conflicting interpretations will help students to hone their own analytical skills.
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The course establishes a framework for the discussion of the politics of extra-European societies as represented by their leaders in the twentieth century. The leaders are studied both in terms of what their lives represent, and as individuals. The leaders represent political ideas on leadership and varying notions of what constitutes authority, as well as examples of the phenomenon of charisma. One of our tasks is to understand how these societies are different. The course then looks at a variety of case studies which might include (amongst others): Nelson Mandela in South Africa; Gandhi and Indira Gandhi in India, Mao in China; Peron and Che Guevara in Latin America; the Zionist, Ben Gurion; Ayatollah Khomeini and militant Islamism in Iran. It assesses their role in the development of nationalism, and of the wars and revolutions which arose from resistance to the West, especially imperialism. It discusses their ideological vision, interpreting its origins and aims. Finally, it looks at the seeming clash between Islam and the West, and relates it to resources, particularly oil.
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The terms 'Middle Ages' and 'Medieval' are often used to evoke a dark and bigoted world, wracked by war, pestilence and superstition and oppressed by tyrannical kings and prelates. The image is not entirely false as all those things can be found in medieval history but it is by no means the full picture. The period from c.400 to c.1500 saw Western Europe transform itself from the poorer part of the retreating Roman empire to a wealthy and dynamic society that was starting to explore the world far beyond its borders. This course explores some of the changes that took place along the way and answers some of the questions that you may always have wanted to ask: What was 'feudalism'? How were castles and Gothic cathedrals built? Why did the Pope become so powerful? What were the Crusades? And does any of this have any relevance whatsoever to the modern world?
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This module charts a period of dramatic change, during which the British Empire was transformed by the loss of the 13 American colonies; enormous territorial expansion in India and Africa; the abolition of slavery; and the growth of settler societies in Canada, southern Africa and Australasia. The course considers British imperialism from both a metropolitan and a colonial viewpoint.
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British Empire reached its greatest extent, and yet, by the 1960s, it had all but disappeared. This module covers the history of Britain's expansion and contraction in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, from the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War to the achievement of African independence during the premiership of Harold Macmillan.
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This module covers the history of the Roman Republic from the foundation of Rome to the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. We will trace the rise of Rome from city-state to world power and examine the pressures that drove Rome to conquer her Mediterranean empire and the consequences of that expansion for the Romans and for the peoples they conquered.
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This module traces the history of the Roman Empire from the achievement of sole power by the first emperor, Augustus (31 BC - AD 14), to the murder of Commodus in AD 192. We will assess the political, social and cultural developments under the emperors and explore fundamental themes including imperial frontier policy and administration, the process of Romanisation, and the nature of Roman religion.
- Globalising Capital: Britain and the World, 1846 to 1913
- The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1000-1250
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The approach of this module is firmly comparative, and the geographical scope is wide: from the British Isles to the Crusader States. The period c.1000–1250 in Europe saw many key developments, including: the establishment of universities and of the Inquisition; the persecution of heretics, religious minorities and of perceived sexual deviants; and the growth of vernacular literature.
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This module examines a period of momentous change, which witnessed the Great Famine and Black Death kill perhaps half of Europe’s population, the consequences of endemic warfare rampaging across the continent, and outbreaks of popular revolt involving exceptional brutality. Lectures and seminars trace the major developments in the period.
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Late medieval Christian Europe was a world of contrasts. Plague was endemic, but those lucky enough to survive enjoyed improving standards of living that rested in many parts of Europe on a flourishing economic life. This naturally affected life in cities, opening up opportunities for many.
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This module covers the repercussions of the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution, economic crisis, the collapse of parliamentary regimes in the inter-war period, Italian fascism, German Nazism, Stalinism in Russia, the civil war and the origins of the Franco regime in Spain, and the Holocaust.
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This module focuses chronologically on the major political and institutional developments, from the end of World War II, the onset of the Cold War, and the communist take-over of Eastern Europe, to decolonisation, the collapse of the southern dictatorships, the fall of communism, and the Yugoslav wars.
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This module looks at the major political developments that took place in different parts of Asia during the twentieth century. Topics include: the downfall of the Qing dynasty in China and the causes of the political struggle there that resulted in the establishment of the Chinese Communist state in 1949; the modernisation of Japan under the Meiji state, the rise of Japanese imperialism and Japan’s post-Second World War recovery; the emergence of the nationalist movement in India and the processes that led to independence and partition in 1947, together with the post-1947 histories of different parts of South Asia.
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The reigns of the Tudor monarchs saw fundamental changes in the power and influence of the state, in religious beliefs and practices and in the economy and society. This module considers the importance of the sixteenth century in the changing nature of political power and explores how the exercise of monarchical authority was shaped by the politics of personal monarchy, royal personality, minority, female monarchy and religion.
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This module explores the successive crises of popery and absolutism in the British civil wars and the execution of Charles I (1638-49), the Exclusion Crisis (1678-83) and the Glorious Revolution (1688). Attention will be paid to political and intellectual culture including, the role of print, the rise of party politics and propaganda, the growth of science, and the decline of magic.
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This module explores one of the most vibrant centuries in British history, an age frequently seen as one of liberty, luxury, elegance and excess. Beneath this commercially successful and fashionably polite society lay fears of riot and disorder, debt, poverty and rising crime rates.
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The period from the French Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century witnessed extraordinary transformations in just about every area of Europeans’ lives. Developments include industrialisation, new technology, emerging ideas and artistic movements - this module addresses these and others in order to ask both what drove the major changes of the nineteenth century and, just as importantly, how people responded to and made sense of them.
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This module studies the birth of a new European order - it runs from the slow disintegration and eventual collapse of the Roman empire in the West to the beginnings of a new European empire under the Carolingians. We shall explore the nature of emerging states, their ruling elites, their religion and culture, and their relations (friendly and hostile) with the wider world of the old Byzantine empire and the new empire of the Islamic Caliphate.
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The period 1000-1400 in western Europe witnessed the development of mass heresies, commanding wide and often international followings. This module will follow the responses to these from the preaching and launching of a crusade to the development of the Inquisition.
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This module looks at the history of the non-western twentieth-century world from the vantage point of developments in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America: from empire-building to de-colonization and revolution in the Middle East, to intersections between politics and race in Southern Africa, to radical movements and US intervention in Latin America.
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This module will provide an introduction to the main medical schools and writers from the Hippocratic Corpus to Galen, situating medical theory in the wider context of classical philosophy. It will also cover the reception of ancient medicine in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Arabic world.
- The Western Powers and East Asia, 1839-1945
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This module introduces students to the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period, from the conquest of Constantinople to the accession of the modernizing Sultan Selim III. This period captures dramatic changes in both the internal dynamics of the empire and its position in the world: from a centralized conquest state under powerful Sultans to a decentralized network of regions, and from an aggressive militaristic empire with pretensions to universal sovereignty to a struggling polity increasingly dependent on diplomacy and alliances to fend off its enemies.
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This module will examine superpower relations during the Cold War, including the collapse of the USSR and the period of uncertainty which followed. The module will take a global comparative perspective in telling the history of international relations in the period 1945-91.
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Traditionally, university courses on political ideas tend to leap from the Ancient Greeks to Machiavelli, largely ignoring the wealth of ideas and theories to be found in between. This module seeks to supplement, and even challenge, this standard canon by exploring a range of other thinkers, including (among others) Cicero, Al-Farabi and Christine de Pizan.
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Beginning with a brief overview of Iberia, Africa and the Americas in the late fifteenth century, this module explores how subsequent encounters between societies on both sides of the Atlantic created the complex world of colonial Latin America. This module emphasizes the transatlantic connections between Spain, Portugal, West Africa and the Americas that resulted in the dynamic movement of people and ideas within and across the broader Iberian world.
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This module explores the transformation from empire to nation state in the Near and Middle East. The key historical process in this period was the eclipse of old religious and imperial forms of identity by new national identities – how did Middle Easterners reconciled Islam with modernity, and the integration of the region into the increasingly globalized capitalist economy?
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The Italian Renaissance is conventionally portrayed as a period of cultural and artistic renewal, economic prosperity and advanced political forms (republican governments). This module will verify the validity of this picture by considering the everyday experience of the men and women who inhabited the cities of Northern and Central Italy between 1350 and 1650 - political participation, class conflict, education, ways of inhabiting, material culture, crime and violence, gender relationships and sexual deviancy, devotion and the use of magic.
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This module covers the economic developments affecting the international economy thought the second half of the twentieth century to the end of the Great Recession (2007/8-2012). Topics include the Marshall and Dawes Plans, the ‘Golden Age’, the fall of the Keynesian consensus, stagflation and the rise of the New Right, and the rise of the less-developed economies.
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Who were the Victorians? What did they believe in? What was the legacy of the Victorian years? And what do they continue to mean and signify to us today? This module offers a general overview of the dramatic political, cultural and social contours of life in Britain during the Victorian period, often seen as the zenith of British progress and self-confidence.
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This module seeks to investigate politics, society and culture in modern Britain during the sixty-year period encompassed between the outbreak of World War One in 1914 and Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1973. Topics include the impact of two world wars upon British cultural life and gender roles, the decline of Liberalism and rise of Labour, the growth of leisure and the mass media, post-war immigration, and the end of the British empire.
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This module surveys a formative period in which the United States experienced rapid and dramatic demographic, territorial and economic changes, developing from a young nation threatened by European and Native American enemies to a continental power. Meanwhile, a growing sectional crisis over slavery led to a bloody Civil War (1861-1865) that threatened to tear asunder the American republic.
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This module examines the social, cultural, economic and political contours of US history since 1877, incorporating topics such as westward expansion, industrialisation and urbanization, the progressive era, the First World War, the Great Depression and the New Deal, the Second World War, the Cold War, domestic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of the New Right in the 1980s.
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This module examines the difficult years of the early 20th century in Spain, including the civil war. It seeks to explain the causes of Spain's superstructural instability by looking not only 'top-down' at political tensions and economic contradictions, but also 'bottom-up' at the social and cultural fragmentation of Spain during this period.
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This module adopts a thematic approach within a broadly chronological framework. It explores state and society under the rule of General Franco, and traces the processes of social, economic and cultural change which precipitated the crisis of the dictatorship and Spain's transition to democracy.
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This module explores how China made its transition from an isolated, self-contained 'Middle Kingdom' in the middle of the nineteenth century, to its present day status as an emerging global superpower. Overall we examine how a new nation was built, not just in political and social terms but also through the experiences of the people who lived through it.
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This module explores perceptions of the ‘holy man’ in different religions and traditions over the centuries in an attempt to understand a period, a society and a culture. Students familiarise themselves with important aspects of sanctity and spirituality, assessing the place and role of holy men and women in society, both in East and West (including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
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This module will introduce students to a concept of science that differs from our contemporary system. It will, for instance, examine the methods that ancient Greek and Roman scientists used to reach conclusions, either through a theoretical or experimental approach.
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This module sketches the emergence of modern India (and its neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal) from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It includes such iconic historical events as the Great Mutiny of 1857, the Amritsar massacre, Gandhi’s Salt March, the Partition of India into Pakistan and India, the Maoist revolution in Nepal and the recent slide of the region into the grip of competing religious fundamentalisms.
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Beginning in the years shortly before the Fourth Crusade captured and sacked Constantinople in April 1204, this module traces the slow decline and fall of the Byzantine empire. It will examine how the Byzantines initially recovered from the disaster of 1204 but were then unable to defend their borders against waves of new enemies, east and west.
- The Greek World from the Fall of Byzantium to the Rise of Nationalism, 1453-1910
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This module will offer students a journey into Italian history. It scrutinises the main historical, political, social, economic, and anthropological features of this comparatively young nation state. Topics include unification in the 1800s, fascism, and the figure of Silvio Berlusconi who has dominated recent Italian politics.
- The History of Cyprus from the Ottoman Conquest to the Present Day
- From Venizelos to Varoufakis: The History of Greece from 1910 to the Present Day
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This module opens with the transformation of the Roman Empire under Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (306-337) and with the conversion of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, in AD 312. Students will explore the fundamental political, social and religious developments of the fourth century and then examine the contrasting fortunes of the western and eastern regions of the Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries.
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By the early years of the seventh century, the Eastern Roman Empire was at the point of collapse. This module traces the reasons why the empire survived and investigates the profound changes that took place in its military organisation, society, religious life, art and culture.
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In this period London grew from a town of 50,000 inhabitants to a capital city of some 200,000. The Reformation not only swept away ‘superstitious’ beliefs, but destroyed much of the fabric and topography of the medieval City - this module will consider how Londoners coped with these changes. How were Londoners fed and watered? How were crafts organised? How was the City governed?
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Between 1553 and 1603 England found itself in the unprecedented situation of being ruled by two queens, Mary and her sister Elizabeth. Focussing on issues such as politics, religion, personnel, ceremony and foreign relations, students will explore new ways of understanding both queens, focusing on continuities as well as change and challenging commonplace arguments as to their relative success or failure.
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The triumph of the First Crusade (1099) resulted in the establishment of a Latin Christian community in the Levant for almost two hundred years. This module is primarily concerned to examine how the settlers maintained their hold on a region which was spiritually, economically and politically important to the Byzantine empire and the Muslim world as well.
- Medicine and Society in Medieval Europe
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'Martin didn't make the movement, the movement made Martin' noted veteran civil rights activist Ella Baker. Baker's perceptive comments strike at the very heart of contemporary historiographical debates. On the one hand, scholars have increasingly viewed the mass black movement for civil rights in the United States as a grassroots phenomenon; on the other hand, scholars still emphasise the vital national leadership role played by Martin Luther King, Jr. This module looks at both sides of this question.
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The slender flapper, cigarette holder in hand, off to cocktails or a night at the flicks epitomizes the surface glamour of modernity. With an office job, a swimsuit, sex appeal (known as 'SA' or 'It') and a voguish knowledge of Freud, she was ready for anything. But how real were her gains? This module explores the words and experiences of British women in a century of rapid social, economic and cultural transformation.
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This module will examine the intellectual and cultural history of Russia in the turbulent years from the Great Reforms of the 1850s and 1860s to the 1917 Revolution. During this period, Russian society experienced industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation and the erosion of traditional values and social distinctions.
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This module covers the democratic Second Republic (1931-6) the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) and the first and most brutal phase (1939-53) of the Franco dictatorship. In Spain, as in Europe, the 1930s and 1940s saw the explosion of modern mass political mobilisation and antagonistic visions of national development vied for dominance.
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During the two decades after the First World War the newly established or reconstituted countries of Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) were troubled by a multitude of problems. The aim of this module is to highlight the causes and consequences of the failure of parliamentary government and liberal institutions to take a firm hold.
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The course examines the main currents of political thought in Modern European and World History from Rousseau to the present: eighteenth-century commercial society and its enemies (Hume, Smith, Rousseau), the French Revolution (Paine, Wollstonecraft), reactions to the revolution (Hegel), nineteenth-century early socialism (Owen, Fourier, Saint Simon), Tocqueville and the American model, Marx and communism, Mill and liberalism, Nietzsche and modernity, Bakunin and anarchism, twentieth-century anti-imperialist theorists (Fanon, Gandhi), Orwell and dystopia, and green political theory.
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This course will review the modern literature on the causes and consequences of the Great Depression Slump for Britain and America during the 1920s and 1930s. Politicians, government advisors, and academics in the west were unable to explain why capitalist society was plunged so deeply in to depression, and they were also perplexed as to why the usual remedies failed to generate forces of recovery.
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Over the past two centuries Muslim societies have been experiencing a major process of religious revival and reform, of which a dominant feature has been an increased emphasis on action in this life to achieve salvation. In following this course students will engage with the main figures in the movement from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab to Usama bin Laden, and some of the main organisations from the Deoband School to al-Qaeda.
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This course examines the occurrence of genocide from the colonial period to the present day: the colonization of Australia and North America, the Herero genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Stalin's Great Terror, post-1945 genocides of indigenous peoples, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. It will explore the development of the concept of genocide and the debates over definition.
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This course provides a comprehensive treatment of the history of terrorism, beginning with its origins and etymology, tracing its evolution and development, to its employment as a form of political violence in the contemporary period. Students will study a diverse range of geographical and historical contexts through key case studies with a particular focus on: actors involved, the socio-political milieu, rationale for employing terrorism, causes and consequences of terrorist acts, political outcomes, and counter-terrorism measures.
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The Victorians transformed the physical world around them, indeed, we might argue that they invented the modern British material world as we know it. This course explores the Victorians through the spaces, buildings and things that they created. Material expressions of identity, class, gender, religion, ethnicity and political affiliation, were a fundamental part of Victorian life. This course offers students the opportunity to explore Victorian society and culture from a fresh perspective, and to learn new strategies and methods for approaching historical sources, including object analysis.
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Histories of Humanitarianism investigates the deep shifts in humanitarian ideas, practices, and organisations over the past century and a half: from imperial ‘civilising missions’, through war and post-1918 efforts to ‘organise the peace’, followed by the reassertion of humanitarian values after 1945, through to humanitarianism in an age of decolonisation and cold war, and then the post-1990 challenges posed by so-called ‘complex emergencies’. Adopting a broad definition of humanitarianism, the course focuses on the politics, culture, and development of humanitarianism, and asks what (and who) drove these shifts in policy and practice.
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Sharīʿa law (Islamic law) is an important but widely misunderstood phenomenon that is central to several contemporary political controversies, including democratization in the Muslim world, political Islam and radical Islamism, and the status of the Muslim diaspora in the west. This course will help students understand sharīʿa law as an evolving legal tradition, by introducing them to the fundamental intellectual structure of the law and then tracing how sharīʿa has been manifested in a variety of historical contexts including the Ottoman Empire, colonial India, the modern Middle East and modern Britain.
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This seminar-based course will examine the interconnected world created by the dynamic movements of people, plants, animals, ideas and products across the Atlantic basin during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.
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This course will look at Modern Chinese political and social history from the second half of the 19th century to the contemporary period, through the stories of three powerful and well-known public figures: the Empress Dowager Cixi; Soong Mei-ling (the wife of Chiang Kai-shek); and Jiang Qing (Madam Mao).
- Despots and Mullahs: The (Modern) Muslim World and Development, 1930-1980
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The First World War was a transformative event in modern British history, which, on the eve of its centenary, continues to provoke intense popular and academic interest. More than 1,000,000 British subjects lost their lives as a result of military service during the conflict, and many more were physically or psychologically traumatised. This module will explore the British experience of the war and look at the ways in which the conflict has been interpreted and remembered in Britain in the century since it began.
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This course examines the origins, development and decline of the Cold War and ‘hot wars’ in Southeast Asia between 1945 and c.1979. After the end of the Second World War, the nationalist struggles for independence in Vietnam, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya and Singapore resulted in the creation of new nation states. We will explore how the Cold War between the superpowers interacted with nationalism, decolonization and regionalism in Southeast Asia.
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This course explores how the French sought both to describe and transform their society in the turbulent century following 1789, through the lens of innovative works of literature, political thought, art and the social sciences. The spectacular upheavals of the revolutionary decades shattered traditional certainties about French society, but in their place offered violence, instability and new sources of social division.
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This module focuses on the connections between political, social and religious developments in Muslim societies from a gender perspective, investigating how far the role of women has been influenced and shaped by factors such as the decline of Muslim political power, the rise of the West, the challenges of secularism, modernisation and development, the arrival of feminism, the power of nationalism and the nation-state, and the impact of different processes of reform and revolution.
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Art and architecture were key weapons in the construction of power in the Roman world and the establishment of the Empire. Using both archaeological and literary evidence, this module looks at how those in power employ art and architecture to express their authority and values.
- From Constantinople to Alexandria: Eastern Mediterranean Cities, 1798-1956
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Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, won three successive general elections and occupied 10 Downing Street (between 1979 and 1990) for longer than any other politician in twentieth-century Britain. She divided popular opinion, domestically and internationally, and her historical significance is yet to be determined. What exactly was Thatcherism, and why is Margaret Thatcher's legacy still so controversial and contested? How far did Thatcherism succeed in its objectives, especially considering Margaret Thatcher’s pledge to ‘change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society’?
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Beginning with the Restoration of Charles II and ending in the ‘Regency’ period during the reign of George IV, this module examines how men and women’s perceptions of themselves were moulded by their families and wider society, and the extent to which their experiences were determined by gendered perceptions of sexual, racial, and class differences.
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This module introduces students to the ways in which the ancients expanded knowledge, both in terms of the geographical expansion of the known world and through technological advance.
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The rise of a xenophobic, demagogic and nationalist political right is one of the most unexpected and controversial phenomena in contemporary times. This module will trace the history of fascism and nationalism from their early twentieth-century roots through the post-war period to their twenty-first century manifestations in Europe and the US. Through seminars and readings the historical arc of this socio-political phenomenon will be discovered, and its challenge to liberal values and democracy will be analysed.
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In this module you will develop an understanding of the major debates in European and some Anglo-American philosophy. You will look at the key texts by eighteenth and nineteenth-century philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, examining the continuing significance of their ideas. You will consider the major epistemological, ethical and aesthetical issues their idea raise, and the problems associated with the notion of modernity. You will also analyse the importance of the role of history in modern philosophy via Hegel's influence.
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In this module you will develop an understanding of how the rationalist and empiricist traditions in philosophy influence contemporary thought in the philosophy of mind. You will look at the continuing relevance of the mind-body problem to the question of what it is to be a human being and consider the connections between the analytic and European traditions in philosophy with respect to language, subjectivity, and the phenomenology of experience. You will also examine the importance of consciousness to contemporary debates in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.
- Introduction to European Philosophy 2: The Critique of Idealism
- Philosophy and the Arts
- Varieties of Scepticism
- The Varieties of Scepticism
- The Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy of Religon
- Philosophy and Literature
- The Good Life in Ancient Philosophy
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In this module you will develop an understanding of some of the key concepts in political theory today. You will look at political obligation, civil disobedience, democracy, citizenship, equality, global justice, human rights, and freedom and toleration. You will consider important theorists including Berlin Rawls, Nozick, Sandel, Okin and Pettit, examining the recent major theoretical perspectives in the context of contemporary politics.
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In this module you will develop an understanding of the themes, arguments, and interpretations of major political thinkers from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. You will look at the works of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Marx and Nietzsche and consider how the ideas articulated by these thinkers continue to underpin contemporary debates about the nature of freedom, human rights, value pluralism, popular sovereignty, state legitimacy, and the modern condition. You will also examine how study of these thinkers illuminates contemporary debates even where these debates no longer make reference to them.
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This module opens with the transformation of the Roman Empire under Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (306-337) and with the conversion of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, in AD 312. Students will explore the fundamental political, social and religious developments of the fourth century and then examine the contrasting fortunes of the western and eastern regions of the Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries.
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By the early years of the seventh century, the Eastern Roman Empire was at the point of collapse. This module traces the reasons why the empire survived and investigates the profound changes that took place in its military organisation, society, religious life, art and culture.
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In this period London grew from a town of 50,000 inhabitants to a capital city of some 200,000. The Reformation not only swept away ‘superstitious’ beliefs, but destroyed much of the fabric and topography of the medieval City - this module will consider how Londoners coped with these changes. How were Londoners fed and watered? How were crafts organised? How was the City governed?
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Between 1553 and 1603 England found itself in the unprecedented situation of being ruled by two queens, Mary and her sister Elizabeth. Focussing on issues such as politics, religion, personnel, ceremony and foreign relations, students will explore new ways of understanding both queens, focusing on continuities as well as change and challenging commonplace arguments as to their relative success or failure.
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The triumph of the First Crusade (1099) resulted in the establishment of a Latin Christian community in the Levant for almost two hundred years. This module is primarily concerned to examine how the settlers maintained their hold on a region which was spiritually, economically and politically important to the Byzantine empire and the Muslim world as well.
- Medicine and Society in Medieval Europe
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'Martin didn't make the movement, the movement made Martin' noted veteran civil rights activist Ella Baker. Baker's perceptive comments strike at the very heart of contemporary historiographical debates. On the one hand, scholars have increasingly viewed the mass black movement for civil rights in the United States as a grassroots phenomenon; on the other hand, scholars still emphasise the vital national leadership role played by Martin Luther King, Jr. This module looks at both sides of this question.
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The slender flapper, cigarette holder in hand, off to cocktails or a night at the flicks epitomizes the surface glamour of modernity. With an office job, a swimsuit, sex appeal (known as 'SA' or 'It') and a voguish knowledge of Freud, she was ready for anything. But how real were her gains? This module explores the words and experiences of British women in a century of rapid social, economic and cultural transformation.
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This module will examine the intellectual and cultural history of Russia in the turbulent years from the Great Reforms of the 1850s and 1860s to the 1917 Revolution. During this period, Russian society experienced industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation and the erosion of traditional values and social distinctions.
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This module covers the democratic Second Republic (1931-6) the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) and the first and most brutal phase (1939-53) of the Franco dictatorship. In Spain, as in Europe, the 1930s and 1940s saw the explosion of modern mass political mobilisation and antagonistic visions of national development vied for dominance.
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During the two decades after the First World War the newly established or reconstituted countries of Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) were troubled by a multitude of problems. The aim of this module is to highlight the causes and consequences of the failure of parliamentary government and liberal institutions to take a firm hold.
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The course examines the main currents of political thought in Modern European and World History from Rousseau to the present: eighteenth-century commercial society and its enemies (Hume, Smith, Rousseau), the French Revolution (Paine, Wollstonecraft), reactions to the revolution (Hegel), nineteenth-century early socialism (Owen, Fourier, Saint Simon), Tocqueville and the American model, Marx and communism, Mill and liberalism, Nietzsche and modernity, Bakunin and anarchism, twentieth-century anti-imperialist theorists (Fanon, Gandhi), Orwell and dystopia, and green political theory.
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This course will review the modern literature on the causes and consequences of the Great Depression Slump for Britain and America during the 1920s and 1930s. Politicians, government advisors, and academics in the west were unable to explain why capitalist society was plunged so deeply in to depression, and they were also perplexed as to why the usual remedies failed to generate forces of recovery.
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Over the past two centuries Muslim societies have been experiencing a major process of religious revival and reform, of which a dominant feature has been an increased emphasis on action in this life to achieve salvation. In following this course students will engage with the main figures in the movement from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab to Usama bin Laden, and some of the main organisations from the Deoband School to al-Qaeda.
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This course examines the occurrence of genocide from the colonial period to the present day: the colonization of Australia and North America, the Herero genocide, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Stalin's Great Terror, post-1945 genocides of indigenous peoples, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. It will explore the development of the concept of genocide and the debates over definition.
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This course provides a comprehensive treatment of the history of terrorism, beginning with its origins and etymology, tracing its evolution and development, to its employment as a form of political violence in the contemporary period. Students will study a diverse range of geographical and historical contexts through key case studies with a particular focus on: actors involved, the socio-political milieu, rationale for employing terrorism, causes and consequences of terrorist acts, political outcomes, and counter-terrorism measures.
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The Victorians transformed the physical world around them, indeed, we might argue that they invented the modern British material world as we know it. This course explores the Victorians through the spaces, buildings and things that they created. Material expressions of identity, class, gender, religion, ethnicity and political affiliation, were a fundamental part of Victorian life. This course offers students the opportunity to explore Victorian society and culture from a fresh perspective, and to learn new strategies and methods for approaching historical sources, including object analysis.
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Histories of Humanitarianism investigates the deep shifts in humanitarian ideas, practices, and organisations over the past century and a half: from imperial ‘civilising missions’, through war and post-1918 efforts to ‘organise the peace’, followed by the reassertion of humanitarian values after 1945, through to humanitarianism in an age of decolonisation and cold war, and then the post-1990 challenges posed by so-called ‘complex emergencies’. Adopting a broad definition of humanitarianism, the course focuses on the politics, culture, and development of humanitarianism, and asks what (and who) drove these shifts in policy and practice.
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Sharīʿa law (Islamic law) is an important but widely misunderstood phenomenon that is central to several contemporary political controversies, including democratization in the Muslim world, political Islam and radical Islamism, and the status of the Muslim diaspora in the west. This course will help students understand sharīʿa law as an evolving legal tradition, by introducing them to the fundamental intellectual structure of the law and then tracing how sharīʿa has been manifested in a variety of historical contexts including the Ottoman Empire, colonial India, the modern Middle East and modern Britain.
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This seminar-based course will examine the interconnected world created by the dynamic movements of people, plants, animals, ideas and products across the Atlantic basin during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.
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This course will look at Modern Chinese political and social history from the second half of the 19th century to the contemporary period, through the stories of three powerful and well-known public figures: the Empress Dowager Cixi; Soong Mei-ling (the wife of Chiang Kai-shek); and Jiang Qing (Madam Mao).
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This course contrasts and compares the experience of state formation in four distinct countries of the Muslim world: Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan. Although separated by language, history and very different experiences of Imperial domination over the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century, each one of these countries has struggled with similar problems after achieving some form of independence.
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The First World War was a transformative event in modern British history, which, on the eve of its centenary, continues to provoke intense popular and academic interest. More than 1,000,000 British subjects lost their lives as a result of military service during the conflict, and many more were physically or psychologically traumatised. This module will explore the British experience of the war and look at the ways in which the conflict has been interpreted and remembered in Britain in the century since it began.
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This course examines the origins, development and decline of the Cold War and ‘hot wars’ in Southeast Asia between 1945 and c.1979. After the end of the Second World War, the nationalist struggles for independence in Vietnam, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya and Singapore resulted in the creation of new nation states. We will explore how the Cold War between the superpowers interacted with nationalism, decolonization and regionalism in Southeast Asia.
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This course explores how the French sought both to describe and transform their society in the turbulent century following 1789, through the lens of innovative works of literature, political thought, art and the social sciences. The spectacular upheavals of the revolutionary decades shattered traditional certainties about French society, but in their place offered violence, instability and new sources of social division.
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This module focuses on the connections between political, social and religious developments in Muslim societies from a gender perspective, investigating how far the role of women has been influenced and shaped by factors such as the decline of Muslim political power, the rise of the West, the challenges of secularism, modernisation and development, the arrival of feminism, the power of nationalism and the nation-state, and the impact of different processes of reform and revolution.
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Art and architecture were key weapons in the construction of power in the Roman world and the establishment of the Empire. Using both archaeological and literary evidence, this module looks at how those in power employ art and architecture to express their authority and values.
- From Constantinople to Alexandria: Eastern Mediterranean Cities, 1798-1956
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Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, won three successive general elections and occupied 10 Downing Street (between 1979 and 1990) for longer than any other politician in twentieth-century Britain. She divided popular opinion, domestically and internationally, and her historical significance is yet to be determined. What exactly was Thatcherism, and why is Margaret Thatcher's legacy still so controversial and contested? How far did Thatcherism succeed in its objectives, especially considering Margaret Thatcher’s pledge to ‘change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society’?
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Beginning with the Restoration of Charles II and ending in the ‘Regency’ period during the reign of George IV, this module examines how men and women’s perceptions of themselves were moulded by their families and wider society, and the extent to which their experiences were determined by gendered perceptions of sexual, racial, and class differences.
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This module introduces students to the ways in which the ancients expanded knowledge, both in terms of the geographical expansion of the known world and through technological advance.
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The rise of a xenophobic, demagogic and nationalist political right is one of the most unexpected and controversial phenomena in contemporary times. This module will trace the history of fascism and nationalism from their early twentieth-century roots through the post-war period to their twenty-first century manifestations in Europe and the US. Through seminars and readings the historical arc of this socio-political phenomenon will be discovered, and its challenge to liberal values and democracy will be analysed.
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The last person to be executed for blasphemy in the UK was Scottish student Thomas Aikenhead, who perished at the hands of the public executioner in 1697 for maintaining the belief that Judaism, Christianity and Islam were human impostures, that all scripture was fable, and all priests devious manipulators. He was, in the language of the times, a freethinker. This course, by examining the History of Ideas, explores the conflict between reason and religion during the early English Enlightenment in the years following the English Civil War and on either side of the Glorious Revolution.
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This course scrutinises an area of English social history that was once universally disparaged. Recent work, however, suggests that the Church in England from c1375-c1525 displayed remarkable resource in adapting to and satisfying the needs of contemporaries. As well as surveying some of the more vibrant areas of the Church’s institutional life, the course will dwell on the laity’s response, particularly as expressed through the parish. This will provide the opportunity to delve into areas such as popular belief and practice, parish government, and more informal activity in the foundation and management of lay confraternities.
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The Second Crusade was the largest crusading expedition of the twelfth century, encompassing campaigns to Iberia, the Baltic and the Holy Land. It was also the first crusade to see the participation of kings and to have a fully organised preaching network, headed by the charismatic Bernard of Clairvaux. In spite of its unprecedented scale, this massive attempt to ‘extend the frontiers of Christendom’ as Pope Eugenius III described it, was in many respects a failure. This exciting and broad-ranging course illuminates an episode that affected all areas of Christian Europe as well as touching many regions of the world beyond.
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In the early fifteenth century with most of the Balkans under the domination of the Ottoman Turks, Constantinople, capital city of the shrunken Byzantine empire, held out behind its formidable defences. The siege of 1453 launched by Mehmed II (1451-1481), however, succeeded where so many previous attempts failed. This module considers the political, strategic and military factors that enabled him to succeed and break through Constantinople’s Land Walls.
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Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) was obsessed with crusading and he dedicated his pontificate to defeating the enemies of the Church. A profound challenge to his authority came from the Cathars of southern France - men and women following an austere lifestyle and holding a dualist belief in a Good God and an Evil God. Using a series of vivid contemporary narratives, in conjunction with other documents (including inquisitorial records), this course examines the beliefs and organisation of the Cathars and the progress of the Crusade and the Inquisition against them.
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This course examines the changing place of the Empire in British politics and society in the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1830 and 1870 the political relationship between Britain and the colonies was recast, while understandings of 'race' also changed profoundly. Drawing on a wide range of textual and visual sources - including official papers, cartoons, explorers' diaries, newspapers, maps, parliamentary debates, novels and letters - students will examine British responses to imperial events such as the emancipation of slaves, indigenous rebellions in India and Jamaica; David Livingstone's exploration of Africa; and the settlement of New Zealand.
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This course concerns the leading thinkers, and principal themes, of social and political thought in Victorian Britain, with an emphasis upon the development of liberalism and socialism and individualist and collectivist approaches to social and political problems. Examining in particular the question of extending the franchise, poor relief, and attitudes towards commerce and industry, culture and 'character', the course focuses on T R Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, William Morris and John Hobson, with an excursion into Social Darwinism.
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Berlin was one of the focal points in the history of the 20th century. The notions associated with the German capital appear far from unequivocal however. Across Europe and the world it served, and continues to serve, as a byword for both modernity and decadence; for civic pride and civil unrest, reactionary as well as progressive movements; for war and genocide; for tyranny, but also for freedom and, above all, for the unexpected turn of events. Based on a wide and diverse range of primary source material, the course extends, chronologically, from the making of metropolitan Berlin before 1914 to the ramifications of reunification after 1990.
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Term 1 builds a conventional chronological narrative of the Holocaust, with students learning about the major events, such as the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism, ghettoisation and the development of the genocide process. Term 2, however, broadens the course by encouraging students to think of the fierce debates in Holocaust historiography as being as important for our understanding of the events as 'historical study', in order to help students understand the very real political stakes involved in writing about the Holocaust.
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This module examines the ups and downs in Sino-American relations during the Cold War. It looks at how and why Communist China and the United States were transformed from hostile enemies in the 1950s and early 1960s into tacit allies by the late 1970s. By placing Sino-American relations in the wider domestic and international contexts, this course will enhance our understanding of how the two great powers – and two different cultures – shaped, and were shaped by, the global Cold War.
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Between the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the outbreak of World War Two, the Soviet Union experienced a programme of forced modernisation, unprecedented levels of state repression, and the devastation of WWII. The course will examine how Stalinist policies amounted to an attempt to sculpt a new society through a combination of forging 'Soviet' citizens, and excising undesirable elements from the body social. It will also explore how different constituencies within Soviet society supported, sought accommodation with, or resisted the values and policies of the state.
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This course covers the crucial transitional period in which Christianity came to dominate the Mediterranean world, from the accession of the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine in 306 to the death of Augustine of Hippo in 430. Students will explore the fundamental political, social and religious developments of these years through the close study of literary and material evidence.
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Henry VIII and Elizabeth I might be considered masters of propaganda, but what of the boy king Edward VI or the first queen Mary I? Might a failure of royal image explain Charles I’s deposition and the subsequent Republican interlude? From Holbein to Van Dyck, students will explore representations of power in the midst of the great political and religious changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Students will consider how successful the Tudor and Stuart monarchs were in controlling their image and how authority was negotiated between ruler and ruled as can be seen in collaborative enterprises such as civic shows, royal entries and parliaments.
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Victorians were both fascinated and repelled by their capital city, often at the same time. For the American writer Henry James, London was not only "magnificent", but also a "brutal" city which had "gathered together so many of the darkest sides of life". This course strolls through the sights, smells, and senses of Victorian Babylon, the "dreadfully delightful city" with its extremes of imperial splendour and crushing poverty.
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Ever since the Islamic Revolution in Iran happened to coincide with the greater prominence of Christian nationalist rhetoric in Ronald Reagan's White House journalists, policy makers and academics have suggested that the end of the 'short' twentieth century brought about a global return of religious radicalism. This course will discuss the utility of 'fundamentalism' as an analytical category as it seeks to explain a wide range of radical political cultures around the globe under one master category: from the new wave of Islamic terrorism to settler intransigence in and religious Zionism in Israel, from communal violence in India committed under the banner of a muscular Hinduism to the neo-Imperialist agenda of the Christian Right in the US.
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This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the role that migration has played in British life since the nineteenth century, with particular focus on the evolution of identities and notions of citizenship. From immigration legislation, to race riots, from multiculturalism to Islamaphobia, this course engages with key aspects of modern British life and the various factors, historical as well as contemporary, that have shaped them.
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Terrorism has become one of the most pervasive and defining features of the second half of the 20th and now 21st Century. Indeed terrorism has transcended time and space and has been employed across a range of historic and geographic contexts by a range of actors, from lone-individuals to anti-colonial revolutionary organisations, and from fundamentalist religious groups to liberal democratic states. The course aims to examine the underlying reasons for the ascendancy of this form of political violence and the immense challenges it has posed to state and society throughout this period.
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In the 1850s photography was established in Britain – and altered the way that Britons saw themselves forever. This course looks at the relationship between images, society and culture, from the coming of the camera to cinema and early television. We will consider the impact of photography on science and medicine, and how asylum doctors used it. Photography transformed understandings of place – and changed the way the British saw the Empire.
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This course aims to examine the history of Chinese migrations in both an internal and external context, engage with the issues of frontiers, and understand their long-term impact on China’s situation which is still very relevant today. The study of migrations will show how Chinese human mobility responded to and reflected changes in politics, economics, and culture during the period, and how the lives of Chinese migrants in foreign countries reflected China’s foreign relationships.
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This course will provide students with a detailed, intensive and thorough examination of the origins and development of African American Islam. The course examines the formative years of the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1930s Detroit and the debates that surround the identity of the group’s founder, W.D Fard Muhammad. This course focuses largely on Malcolm X and assesses his career in the NOI, commercialisation in the early 1990s and his contested legacy. The course will provide students with an intensive overview of the debates that relate to Malcolm’s autobiography and his split from the NOI in 1964.
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This course will examine the development of atomic weaponry and its effects on Western society during the twentieth century. The A- and H-Bombs are arguably the most influential technological developments of the last century, affecting geopolitics, military strategy, and the shape of post-1945 society, and well as putting in the hand of a few the power to render the Earth uninhabitable. This had a profound effect on politics and society.
- Drawing the Line: Independence, Partition, and the Making of India and Pakistan 1900-1960
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The course will adopt a thematic approach to explore a range of topics through which Europeans endeavoured to make sense of, and navigate a path through, this changing world. Visions of change were shot through with ambivalence. Optimism about the creative powers of the market and faith in technological, material and political progress were undercut with darker apprehensions of disorder, decline, and decay. Politicians, journalists, artists, scientists and writers fiercely debated ideas of race, class and gender and wove a richly varied imaginative tapestry that reflected on the unstable world around them.
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This module will examine the forms and concepts of Roman domestic space and the crucial role it played as a means of parading an individual’s political and social identity in ancient Rome. We will study closely the residence remains themselves (for example, the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum), as well as how domestic space was employed in ancient literature as a means of exploring ideas of personal identity and belonging in the Roman Empire.
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The American Civil War was the defining moment in the history of the United States. The American populace, north and south, white and black, found themselves grappling with two issues – what would be the nature of the political union that formed the backbone of the American nation state, and what would be the status of African-Americans within that nation.
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This course offers students an opportunity to engage with both unfamiliar and well-known thinkers of the modern era – including Rousseau, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud – as they confronted some of the fundamental questions of human existence. Does man need God? Is religion a revealed truth or a human invention? Did the history recounted in the Bible ever take place?
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Europe, as an “ideal” and imagined landscape, is a very old concept. Its stories have crossed the long history of humanity, including emperors and ordinary people, revolutions and nation-building, powers and paintings, and legends and tales. This course focuses on the journey towards the unification of many European lands, exploring how this united Europe was built, and especially how it has been perceived by political movements, politicians, and scholars both in previous decades and in the present.
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The century from about 1050 to 1150 was one of profound upheaval and dynamic change in Europe. At the centre of all these changes was the Church, both as an institution and as the director of Christian life, and at the heart of the Christian life lay monasticism. This course explores the context of reform in the monasteries, the nature and variety of reform, the debates over the extent of reform, and the implications of reform for the role of monasteries in society.
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Genocide is far from being an exceptional or infrequent event: by some counts, there have been over 50 genocides since 1945. This module seeks to understand the common roots of this recurrent phenomenon by making connections between a range of very different case studies, from colonial genocides in North America and Australia through to more recent cases in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. We will examine the causes of these genocides – from international and domestic factors, through to the reasons individuals chose to kill – and debate the role that ideology, war, competition for resources, and the nation-state system played in each, as well as engaging with issues of victimhood, loss, and living together again in the aftermath.
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This interdisciplinary module explores advances a witness-centred history of the Holocaust as activism, emigration, powerlessness and the difficult rebuilding of life and communities in the postwar period. It takes students through the emergence of the witness as a self-designated, juridical and analytical category via a range of first person, collective and curated, testimonial, visual and oral documents.
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With the emergence of homosexuality as a defined modern identity in the late nineteenth century, this course will go on to explore how queer identities were constructed and contested, described and debated in both mainstream culture and in the queer subcultures that emerged and took shape, laying the foundations for LGBTQ identities as we understand them today.
- Modern European Philosophy 1: Husserl to Heidegger
- Modern European Philosophy 2: Critical Theory and Hermeneutics
- Philosophy and the Arts
- The Varieties of Scepticism
- The Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy and Literature
- The Good Life in Ancient Philosophy
- Radical Political Theory
- Issues in Democratic Theory
- Political Theories of Freedom
Teaching & assessment
Depending on the module, you will be taught through a combination of lectures, large and small seminar groups and occasionally in one-to-one tutorials.
Outside classes you will undertake group projects and guided independent study. Private study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle, which provides a wide range of supporting materials.
A Personal Tutor will guide and support throughout your degree and you will be supervised by a member of staff when preparing your second-year independent research essay and your final-year dissertation.
Most modules contain an element of assessed coursework, such as an essay, presentation or seminar participation marks. Other assessment methods include exams and online quizzes.
The results of the first year exams qualify you to progress to the second year but do not contribute to your final degree award. The second and final year results do contribute to the final degree result, with the final year work counting double that of the second year.
You will take a study skills course during your first year, designed to equip you with and enhance the writing skills you will need to be successful in your degree. This course does not count towards your final degree award but you are required to pass it to progress to your second year.
Entry requirements
A Levels: AAB-ABB
Required subjects:
- At least five GCSEs at grade A*-C or 9-4 including English and Mathematics.
Where an applicant is taking the EPQ alongside A - levels, the EPQ will be taken into consideration and result in lower A-level grades being required. Socio - economic factors which may have impacted an applicant's education will be taken into consideration and alternative offers may be made to these applicants.
Other UK and Ireland Qualifications
International & EU requirements
English language requirements
All teaching at Royal Holloway (apart from some language courses) is in English. You will therefore need to have good enough written and spoken English to cope with your studies right from the start.
The scores we require
- IELTS: 6.5 overall. Writing 7.0. No other subscore lower than 5.5.
- Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. Writing 69. No other subscore lower than 51.
- Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE III.
- Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) grade.
Country-specific requirements
For more information about country-specific entry requirements for your country please visit here.
For international students who do not meet the direct entry requirements, we offer an International Foundation Year, run by Study Group at the Royal Holloway International Study Centre. Upon successful completion, you may progress on to selected undergraduate degree programmes at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Your future career
Our degree courses not only promote academic achievement but also the means to hone the life-skills necessary to excel, post-graduation.
Choosing to add philosophy into your studies at Royal Holloway not only prepares you well for postgraduate study it also equips you with the skills and qualities that employers are looking for. Philosophy degrees are well-regarded by employers because they give you the capacity to think through issues and problems in a logical and consistent way and to develop critical and transferable skills which can be applied in almost any area of employment from computing to the arts.
So, by choosing to study this intellectually demanding discipline you will develop a broad range of highly prized transferable skills, such as:
- the ability to communicate views and present arguments clearly and coherently
- the ability to critically digest, analyse and summarise complex ideas
- time management and the discipline to meet deadlines
- organisation and research skills
- problem-solving skills and capability
This joint degree gained at Royal Holloway provides valuable training for many professions as well as a basis for further study. It is highly regarded by employers because of the skills and qualities students develop. It demonstrates that you enjoy being challenged, are able to think through issues and problems in a logical and consistent way and have a understanding other values and cultures, which equips you to operate successfully in a fast-changing and increasingly globalised and multi-cultural environment.
On graduation you will be informed and independent - armed with key skills including: problem-solving, organisation and planning, research and analysis, as well as communication and presentation skills and critical thinking.
Fees & funding
Home and EU students tuition fee per year*: £9,250
International students tuition fee per year**: £17,300
Other essential costs***: There are no single associated costs greater than £50 per item on this course
How do I pay for it? Find out more about funding options, including loans, scholarships and bursaries. UK students who have already taken out a tuition fee loan for undergraduate study should check their eligibility for additional funding directly with the relevant awards body.
*The tuition fee for UK undergraduates is controlled by Government regulations. For students starting a degree in the academic year 2020/21, the fee will be £9,250 for that year. The Government has also confirmed that EU nationals starting a degree in 2020/21 will pay the same fee as UK students for the duration of their course.
**Fees for international students may increase year-on-year in line with the rate of inflation. The policy at Royal Holloway is that any increases in fees will not exceed 5% for continuing students. For further information see fees and funding and our terms and conditions.
***These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree programme at Royal Holloway. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing etc., have not been included.