Contemporary History BA(Hons)

Course structure 

You will be taught in small, participatory seminar groups to foster skills in oral presentation, debating and listening. Every seminar is supported by a preceding lecture.

Your academic work will be supported by workshops that develop your academic and independent research skills.

Year 1
All degrees within the humanities programme area share a first year. Students take six modules that develop the skills central to our courses. These include topics such as historical and philosophical inquiry, cultures, democracy, narrative and society.

Year 2
In year 2, students choose two option pathways to follow for the rest of the degree. Pathways are sets of modules which give students a deep, critical engagement with the subject. 

Final year
Students complete their year 2 option pathways and undertake a dissertation. Project findings are presented in an oral exam that tests skills of presentation, communication, discussion and debate. 

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through Student View.

Year 1 

In year 1 you take six modules that help develop the skills central to your course.

Modules

• Historical Inquiry

  This module will introduce you to the practice of historical inquiry through an exploration of various approaches to the study of crisis and conflict in the mid-twentieth century. You will explore the dilemmas that the study of conflict poses for global and transnational history; the impact of war and crisis on social, gender and race relations, and the international order; and the ways in which memories of this period act in the contemporary world.

• Philosophical Inquiry

  This module introduces you to key topics in philosophy. Studying moral and political philosophy will enable you to explore questions such as How can I act ethically? and Could a more equal society be built? Philosophy of science and epistemology will empower you to interrogate arguments behind various truth claims encountered today. You will explore Plato, Hume, Kant, Utilitarianism; inquire into the nature of art and freedom; and interrogate philosophy’s historical complicity in sexism and racism.

• Studying Cultures

  This module introduces fundamental concepts and methods in cultural studies. Through a case study of Britain in the counter-cultural period of 1968–74, you will explore conflicts involving questions of ‘race’, national identity, gender, class and youth. Focusing on the distinction between lived cultures and cultural texts, you will relate the practices and values of everyday life to the workings of ideology within narrative forms including girls’ magazines, a novel by Angela Carter and a James Bond film.

• Democracy

  This module introduces you to the histories and contexts within which the concept and practice of democracy developed. You will study classical, republican, liberal, anarchist, Marxist, communitarian and global conceptualisations of democracy, in each case examining their relevance to our current political circumstances. You will explore the cultural preconditions for democratic freedoms and the representation of democratic values in different social and political movements.

• Globalisation, Conflict and the Environment

  This module introduces key concepts, theories and questions in international relations and global studies. You will interrogate and evaluate the political implications of different approaches for the study of key aspects of our contemporary world. You will explore how concepts and theories are applied to contested global issues, such as environmental sustainability and war/conflict. 

• The Politics of Representation

  This module introduces you to political, historical and structural approaches to the study of narrative and representation. You will critically reflect upon how the stories we encounter construct particular visions of our world. Focusing on issues of narrative, ideology, language and semiotics, you will explore textual and visual forms, including television and film, news media, the internet, imaginative fiction and photography.

Female resistance fighters in the Second World War

Year 2

In year 2 you will choose two option pathways to follow for the rest of your degree – one specialist pathway from the named degree, and one from the wider humanities programme. As well as the pathways, you’ll take core modules and start the research for your final-year dissertation project.

Core modules
Critical Traditions in Western Thought 1 and 2 explore some of the key debates and concepts in history, culture, politics, and philosophy since the Enlightenment.

Option pathways
Choose one specialist pathway from:

• Politics of the Past
  This option analyses the political uses of history, how it has been utilised to affirm and to contest power. It starts by looking at how ‘official’, state-sponsored histories are entangled with the rise and development of nationalism from the late eighteenth century all the way to today.

• Radical Histories
  By following this option you will explore the modern history of radical social and political thought, and movements. You will learn how writing the histories of marginalised and forgotten groups of people poses a serious challenge to long-established hierarchies and ways of thinking.

• Race and Resistance
  This option focuses on racism, what it is, how it works and how it can be contested. You will start by studying the evolving conceptualisation of ‘race’, racisms and strategies of resistance. From there you will examine the diverse histories of racism and resistance through case studies. 

• Politics, History and Ideology
  This option examines the dominant role and effects of ideology in modern world history. The year starts with a close study of the rise and fall of European global hegemony from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War. It then moves to an exploration of the multi-faceted history of the Cold War.

And one from the wider humanities programme – you will either follow this option for all of year 2 or you can choose the Humanities Placement: Active Citizenship module and study the option pathway for a semester: 

• War, Violence and Mass Killing
• Mediating Conflict
• Terror and Terrorism
• Literature, History and Social Change
• Philosophy and Literature 
• Self and Society
• Globalisation, History and Identity
• Global Politics
• Critical Theory and Radical Politics
• Morality, Politics and the Good Life
• Contemporary Global Challenges

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Placement

During your second year you can choose to take the Active Citizenship module. This is a 50-hour professional work placement at a not-for-profit organisation.

Your placement could be at a local charity, a non-governmental organisation or a community organisation. Students have taken roles at organisations including Art in Mind, Pathways to Independence and Screen Archive South East.

The university’s Active Student service will help you to find the right placement opportunity, and you will be offered support in putting together your application and your CV and cover letter.

You will have fortnightly academic seminars where you reflect on the links between academic theory and practice, and on the skills you have developed on placement.

Final year

In your final year, you continue studying your option pathways developing and extending the work started in year 2, inviting deeper engaged reflection through seminar discussion and coursework essays on the broader themes you have examined.

Specialist option pathways

Politics of the Past: Memory Battles: The Politics of Historical Representation
Which histories do we focus on and what meanings do we attach to them? What are the politics of history-writing? This module looks at how public history and collective memories are constructed, looking at representations of history in popular culture, from museums and heritage sites, to films and the contemporary media.

Radical History: A History of Capitalism, its Critics and its Crises
This module explores the major mutations of capitalism in the last two hundred years, from Adam Smith all the way to neoliberalism and the recent global economic crisis. At the same time it examines the long history of anti-capitalist radical critiques and movements, focusing on specific case studies from British and global history.

Race and Resistance: The Politics of Discrimination and Resistance
This module looks at ‘race’ and racialisation in relation to the language of national security and mass incarceration. Case studies include the Middle East (Israel/Palestine), Europe (the Northern Irish and British Muslim communities in Britain) and North America (‘post-racial’ racism in the United States since the 1960s).

Politics History and Ideology: From Pax Americana to the Ends of History
What is the role of the US as the dominant world power? This module explores the rise of the US global dominance in through the bipolarism of the Cold War and the subsequent era of neoliberalism, examining key debates about the end of the USSR, the effect of globalisation on the world order, and the strength of US power today.

You will also complete and submit a dissertation, drawing on your subject knowledge and research method skills, as you develop your own extended critical response to your chosen topic. You also take part in an oral exam: drawing from a theme in your dissertation, you will prepare and deliver a presentation and take questions. In doing so you demonstrate your presentation, communication, discussion and debate skills 

People gather ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

Meet the team

Dr Eugene Michail, course leader

Eugene Michail is the joint degree leader of the Contemporary History BA. He works on contemporary European history. He has a long interest in the theory and politics of history-writing. His research covers a range of topics from resistance movements of the Second World War, to the memories and representations of war and violence in modern Europe, to the recent euro and refugee ‘crises’. He is currently involved in a collaborative local history project on a Greek island community’s own memories of the unfolding refugee crisis.

Rebecca Searle is a historian whose work focuses on the ways in which the study of the past can be used to make critical interventions in the politics of the present. She established and co-ordinates the Housing Forum, an initiative to bring together academics, community organisations and policy makers to develop local solutions to the housing crisis. Her research interests include the history of the housing crisis; the global history of contemporary capitalism; the history of twentieth century Britain; and war and conflict in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Deborah Madden works on feminist and postcolonial historiographies of the British Empire, which includes the development of colonial medicine and education. Her research is also concerned with imperial sites of memory as well as contemporary engagement with postcolonial heritage in India and the Republic of Ireland.

Dr Jon Watson is the joint degree leader of the Contemporary History BA. He teaches on: the histories of racism and anti-racism in the United States, France and Britain from the 19th century to the present; the intersections of international politics and the national history of the United States; and on peoples' histories 'from below' looking at how such sources as slave interviews, blues music and zoot suits might help us understand histories of power, marginalisation and resistance.

Robin Dunford is an interdisciplinary researcher, whose research focuses on transnational social movements. He has explored the role that marginalised voices have played in the development of human rights instruments. Most of his published work has been on peasant resistance movements and on modern humanitarianism and humanitarian interventions.

Mark Abel teaches in the areas of history, global politics and international relations and is particularly interested in the world order in the post-Cold War period, and the resistance movements of the twenty-first century against corporate globalisation and neo-liberalism.

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Course fees

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The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2023–24.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

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