- UCAS course code
- VR11
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
BA History and French
Combine a specialist study of French culture with a range of diverse historical periods.
- Typical A-level offer: AAB including specific subjects
- Typical contextual A-level offer: ABC including specific subjects
- Refugee/care-experienced offer: ACC including specific subjects
- Typical International Baccalaureate offer: 35 points overall with 6,6,5 at HL including specific subjects
Fees and funding
Fees
Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £26,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.
Policy on additional costs
All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).
Scholarships/sponsorships
- Find out more from student finance
- Eligible UK students can apply for bursaries and scholarships
- Funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages
- Many students work part-time or complete a student internship
Course unit details:
From Jamestown to James Brown: African-American History and Culture
Unit code | AMER20141 |
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Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 2 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 1 |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
This module examines the African American experience in the United States from the colonial period to the contemporary era. It is interdisciplinary in design, using different approaches to considering the history and culture of Africans who gradually became African Americans as the British American colonies became the United States.
In the nineteenth century, the American South was not merely a society with slaves but was a genuine slave society, although blacks were found in the American North as well and slavery was critical to the development of the United States as a whole. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery was eventually abolished and African Americans were granted full citizenship rights, but the imposition of segregation in the southern states in the late nineteenth century took away many of those hard-earned concessions. In the early twentieth century, African Americans struggled to combat the material and psychological effects of statutory and habitual racial discrimination.
This module explores the ways in which African Americans fashioned vibrant forms of popular culture and pioneered various tactics of political and economic resistance. These efforts provided the foundations for a civil rights movement that gathered momentum in the era of World War Two and reached its zenith in the 1960s. The course will consider the cultural and political dynamics of that movement and the transition to Black Power. It finally addresses the contemporary black experience, allowing some reflection on the long history of African Americans in North America.
Aims
- To encourage students to understand, appreciate, and engage critically with concepts and issues in the history and culture of African Americans;
- To allow students to read and respond to a variety of texts, including primary and secondary sources drawn from a variety of genres and historical contexts;
- To develop students' research skills and their ability to work individually, researching chosen topics for essay and examination assessment;
- To promote excellence in written expression, deploy critical and analytic modes of thought, and to make use of evidence to form a lucid and coherent argument appropriate to the second-year level of student assessment.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, students will have demonstrated:
- A knowledge of the experiences of African-Americans from the beginnings of plantation slavery up to the contemporary era;
- A degree of familiarity with the interdisciplinary nature of American Studies;
- Proficiency in locating, studying, and analysing sources of information;
- An ability to construct and sustain written arguments to a level appropriate to second-year students.
Employability skills
- Analytical skills
- Students taking this unit will be able to analyse and evaluate arguments and texts. Above all, committed students will emerge from this course unit with an advanced capacity to think critically, i.e. knowledgeably, rigorously, confidently and independently.
- Group/team working
- Students taking this unit will be able to work courteously and constructively as part of a larger group.
- Innovation/creativity
- On this unit students are encouraged to respond imaginatively and independently to the questions and ideas raised by texts and other media.
- Leadership
- Students on this unit must take responsibility for their learning and are encouraged not only to participate in group discussions but to do so actively and even to lead those discussions.
- Project management
- Students taking this unit will be able to work towards deadlines and to manage their time effectively.
- Oral communication
- Students taking this unit will be able to show fluency, clarity and persuasiveness in spoken communication.
- Research
- Students on this unit will be required to digest, summarise and present large amounts of information. They are encouraged to enrich their responses and arguments with a wide range of further reading.
- Written communication
- Students on this unit will develop their ability to write in a way that is lucid, precise and compelling.
Assessment methods
Method | Weight |
---|---|
Other | 50% |
Written assignment (inc essay) | 50% |
Creative Assignment
Feedback methods
Written feedback on essays; additional one-to-one feedback (during the consultation hour or by making an appointment)
Recommended reading
Summer reading
Scott and Shade, Upon These Shores: Themes in the African American Experience
Wright, Black Boy: American Hunger
Hine, Hine and Harrold, African Americans: A Concise History
Finkenbine, Sources of the African American Past: Primary Sources in American History
Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877
Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration
Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America
Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks
Cook, Sweet Land of Liberty: The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Assessment written exam | 2 |
Lectures | 22 |
Seminars | 11 |
Independent study hours | |
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Independent study | 165 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
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Natalie Zacek | Unit coordinator |