BA Film Studies and History

This course introduces students to European history from c.1750 to c.1914 to discover how and why the lives of Europeans were shaped by states, nations, and empires in the modern era. The course will serve as a thematic introduction to the study of modern history at degree level. Most states claim to embody a nation, and most people claim to belong to a nation. But it was not always so –European states, nations, and empires in their modern manifestations were created over the course of the long nineteenth century, with important implications for our contemporary world. Between 1750 and 1914, European states, nations, and empires were crucial sites for the reorganisation of social and political life – including key categories of race, class, and gender – at home and abroad as they became engines of global expansion and imperial domination. This course will therefore introduce students to a new approach towards European history that studies Europe as part of the wider world. 

HIST10311 is restricted to History programmes, and History joint honours programmes (please check your programme regulations for further details).

This module is only available to students on History-owned programmes; and History joint honours programmes owned by other subject areas. Available to students on an Erasmus programme.

The course aims to:  

1) provide a thematic survey of the modern history of Europe in its global context;  

2) introduce students to some important theoretical approaches to major themes in the study of modern history; 

3) practise weekly reading skills; 

4) encourage students to explore diverse ways of understanding change and continuity in the history of Europe over time and think about questions of domination, power and inequality 

5) practise taking notes on relevant information from lectures and seminars 

 

Indicative list of weekly topics

 

Week 1 – Seminar: Organisational seminars; lectures: Introduction & Course Organisation; Modernity and Modernisation  

Week 2 – Seminar: State, Nation, and Empire: discussing key terms; lectures: The Idea of a Mass Society; Theories of Nationalism  

Week 3 – Seminar: Eighteenth-Century Empires; lectures The Eighteenth-Century Imperial State; Enlightenment and the State  

Week 4 – Seminar: The French Revolution: Birth of the State, Birth of the Nation?; lectures: The French Revolution: Money, Institutions and the State; The French Revolution: Inventing the Political Nation  

Week 5 – Seminar: ‘The Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars in Europe and beyond’; lectures: War, Revolution, and the Modern French State; The French Revolution Abroad  

Week 6 – Seminar: Nationalism as Revolutionary Force: Radical Nationalism in the mid-19th Century; lectures: Dreaming of Freedom, Dreaming of the Nation. Middle-Class Ambitions and Nationalist Ideology  

Week 7 – Seminar: Making States and Using Nationalism: Italian and German Unification; lectures: Making States and Empires: Italy. Making States and Empires: Germany  

Week 8 – Seminar: The Dark Side of Nationalism and Imperialism: Race, Empire and Exclusion; lectures: Making People National. Race, Empire and Nationalism  

Week 9 – Seminar: Class, Gender and Exclusion; lectures:  Class, Masculinity and Political Inclusion; Gender, Femininity and Racism  

Week 10 – Seminar: The Essay: What are you expected to do?; lectures on essay-writing skills 

 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour seminar per week and 1 x course unit office hour per week.

 

All the support materials for the course will be on BB, and the portfolio pieces and the essay will be submitted and returned via this medium.

 

Further weekly meeting times will be scheduled with the lecturers on the course for drop-in sessions.

 

• Be familiar with some of the main theoretical approaches that have shaped the historiography of nation and state in modern Europe;

• Have critically examined these approaches in examining a number of historical case-studies; 

• Be confident in using a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the multi-dimensional meanings and impacts of modernity, nationalism and imperialism. 

• Students will apply a range of theoretical approaches to a range of empirical case studies, to demonstrate their ability to bring the qualities of one to bear on the other.  

• They will regularly practise how to extract arguments from academic writing. 

• Students will learn how to prioritise tasks,  
• detect academic arguments in historical writing,  
• conduct weekly reading,  
• and write with brevity and precision.

• Clear, brief writing.

• Regular reading and thorough preparation for seminars.

• Confidence in presenting opinions orally and in writing.

Literature review (Summative) 30%

Essay Plan (Summative) 70%

 

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Oral feedback in seminars and office hours (one-to-one feedback)	Formative
Written feedback on Turnitin on portfolio pieces and essay	Summative

 

Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 2014) 

C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Oxford, 2004). 

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, 2010). 

Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 (London, 2016). 

Holly Case, The Age of Questions (Princeton, 2018). 

Alan Forrest and Matthias Middell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History (London, 2015).