BA History and Russian

This module examines the development of sport and leisure from 1837. Developing from leisure and free-time, this course will focus on how sport has been an active catalyst for historical change in British society and culture from 1837 to 1939. This will include an examination of how sport has been integral in shaping and mirroring class, gender and race in Britain. This is as well as not only analysing how British sport spread and developed to become intrinsic to the creation of national identity across the Four Nations, but also how other countries, particularly across the Empire, embraced British sports, adapting them with their own cultural contexts and nuances. Through visiting and examining local archives and museums, students will also gain a greater understanding of the interlocking relationship between sport and British politics on the one hand and sport and British media on the other.

Restricted to History programmes, History joint honours programmes (please check your programme structure for further details).

- Encourage students, through the history of sport, to develop nuanced understandings of how sport was a catalyst for change in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain.

- Enable students to analyse how sport was integral to concepts of class, gender and race. 

- Enable students to examine how sport formed and shaped national identity and culture in the Four Nations and Empire.

- Facilitate connections for students regarding the relationship between sport and British politics and British media and sport.

- Introduce students to different approaches to the study of cultural and social British history through the study of sport and local related archives and museums.

By the end of this course students will be able:

• to explain why and how sport acted as a catalyst for change in British culture and society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 
• to assess how sport shaped concepts of race, class, gender and national identity.

• To evaluate the relationship between sport and British culture and society.
• To assess critically the role of sport as a catalyst for change.
• Identify and evaluate new approaches to the study of sport.

• Developing archival and museum research skills.
• Research, planning and essay writing.
• Developing primary and secondary sources analysis and evaluation skills.
• Master online databases and internet resources appropriate to the module.

• Present nuanced interpretations.
• Produce independent research projects.
• Work collaboratively as part of a team.
• Critical thinking and analysis.

Assessment task	Formative or Summative	Weighting within unit (if summative)
Source Analysis	Summative	35%
Research Essay	Summative	65%

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Oral feedback on non- assessed activities	Formative
Written feedback on primary source analysis	Summative
One- to-one feedback (during consultations and office hours)	Summative

Peter J. Beck, Scoring for Britain: International Football and International Politics, 1900-1939, (Routledge, 2013).

Raymond Boyle and Richard Haynes, Power Play: Sport, the Media and Popular Culture, (Edinburgh University Press, 2009).

Luke Harris, Britain and the Olympics Games, 1908-1920: Perspectives on Participation and Identity, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Pamela Horn, Pleasures and Past Times in Victorian Britain, (Sutton Publishing, 1999).

Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History, (Oxford University Press, 1990).

Tony Mason (ed.), Sport in Britain: A Social History, (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Carol A. Osborne and Fiona Skillen, Women in Sports History, (Routledge, 2011). 

David Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media, (2^nd ed.), (Open University Press, 2004).