History, Literature and Culture 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 a set of modules in a specialised area that 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.

Year 2

In year 2 you will choose two option pathways to follow for the rest of your degree – either two of the specialist pathways from the named degree, or one from your named degree and one from the 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:

• Literature, History and Social Change
  You'll explore the ways in which literary texts negotiate, reflect or subvert dominant meanings and narratives in relation to key historical moments. You will engage theoretical debates and develop analytical skills required for literary analysis via an exploration of ‘Victorian Gothic Fictions’ particularly in relation to late-nineteenth-century questions of gender, empire, ‘race’, science and technology. You also explore and contextualise key historical shifts in literary form and genre from realism to modernism and postmodernism.

• Culture and Conflict
  This option explores the cultural politics of representation associated with violent conflict. You will study a variety of cultural forms including fictional and documentary film, literary fictions, and photography. You will develop key analytical and critical skills by focusing on representations of the Vietnam War, ‘9/11’, and the Iraq Wars. You will also debate the ethics, aesthetics and politics of representation in context of racialised violence, colonialism and state repression.

• Philosophy and Literature
  How do literary texts – fiction, drama and poetry – ‘do’ philosophy? In what ways do philosophical works engage with literature? Focusing on the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, you critically explore these questions in relation to shifting concepts of the individual in relation to ideas of reason, faith and freedom, liberty, transgression and expression.

Find out more about the Culture and Conflict pathway

Find out more about the Literature, History and Social Change pathway

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:

• Politics, History and Ideology
• 'Race' and Resistance
• Self and Society
• War, Violence and Mass Killing
• Terror and Terrorism
• Globalisation, History and Identity
• Global Politics
• Critical Theory and Radical Politics
• Morality, Politics and the Good Life
• Politics of the Past
• Radical Histories
• 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.

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.

Option pathways

• Philosophy and Literature: From Poststructuralism to Posthumanism
  What would it mean to think the human through the condition that we share with (non-human) animals, rather than in opposition to them? What is a cyborg, and why has much contemporary literature and philosophy become preoccupied with this figure? What are the politics behind the rise of the non-human in literature and other cultural forms? We explore these and other questions through a number of forms of writing: post-colonial texts, feminism and queer theories; and philosophic and novelistic writings on the relationship between the human and the animal, and science fiction.

• Culture and Conflict: Culture and Conflict in the Contemporary World
  We look at conflicts around partition, ‘race’ and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One site is the Irish ‘Troubles’ of the twentieth century  where we  investigate cultural narratives of  insurrection, civil war, guerrilla war, state violence and ‘ethnic’ conflict. We also focus on apartheid South African and ask what role have different cultural forms played in articulating new, hybrid, identities in the aftermath of conflict? Have older narratives about apartheid and resistance been renegotiated in the light of the national reconciliation process begun by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

• Literature, History and Social Change: Caribbean and African American Writing: ‘Race’, History, Fiction and Resistance
  Caribbean writing is explored through the memory of enslavement and resistance, the development of racialised meanings, representations of violence, the supernatural, zombies and zombification, gender and sexuality. The course builds on this material to engage with a variety of African American writers of the twentieth century. We draw on critical approaches to ideology, fiction, genre and intersectional feminism to examine texts produced within a period of intense political resistance and cultural innovation.

Meet the team 

Our staff are widely published in global politics, philosophy and history. You'll have a personal tutor (normally the same throughout the degree) with whom you will meet regularly to discuss your academic progress.

Cathy Bergin, course leader
Drawing on a background in literary history and cultural discourse, Cathy Bergin's primary research interests are in the politics of 'race' and colonialism in  African-American and Caribbean writing, focusing on cultural formations and Communist politics in the 20th Century. She is particularly interested in the concept of 'rage' as the expression of black historical consciousness and agency.

Cathy has lectured in historical and critical studies at the university since 2005 and organises the long-standing Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics research seminar series.

Other staff who teach on the course include: Dr Vicky Margree, Dr Anthony Leaker, Dr Deborah Madden, Dr Anita Rupprecht, Dr Nicola Clewer, Dr Jo Kellond, Dr Tom Bunyard, Dr German Primera and Dr Zoe Sutherland.

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Course fees

Info

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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