Level Three Modules
HIL300/01/02 Dissertation
These three modules allow students to take the fullest opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual autonomy and research independence by producing a piece of work in the form of a 9000 word dissertation in a historical area of your own choice, supported by expert supervision and tutorials. The dissertation can be either in the form of a piece of original research or an independently positioned paper which sustains an argument for the required word length. As part of this personal study you will also be expected to give an informed presentation to fellow students. Recent student dissertations have tackled the following:
Women in the court of Henry VIII; Pre-war popular youth culture; The Reformation in Sussex; National Socialist Propaganda Posters; Lesbian literature of the 1920s; Portsmouth War memorials; Victorian women travel writers; The impact of postmodernism upon the nature of history debates; The concept of poverty in the writings of Mrs Gaskell; 19th century rail travel; Representations of the Holocaust in postwar Britain; Marriage in Italian Renaissance Art; Working-class crime in Portsmouth in the late 19th century; History teaching in British primary schools during the last 30 years.
HIL311 Religion and Society in England, 1580-1640
This module builds upon the Level Two module The Origins of the Civil War by focusing specifically on the Reformation and religious origins of the British Civil War. Working thematically throughout the course, the relationship between the church and state will be examined, new developments in theology will be discussed and questions raised about the nature of church government, the operation of the church courts and the usefulness of concepts such as ‘popular religion’. Recent work at parish levels will also be explored.
HIL314 Histories Beyond the End of History?
By the last decades of the twentieth century, questions were being raised by various historians and history theorists, as to whether or not histories as they had been known, were now about to exhaust their intellectual resources: both metanarrative histories (certain forms of Marxism for example) and academic histories as practices by professional historians working in universities, seemed to be - and still seem to be - coming to some sort of end. This course considers whether we have indeed come to 'the end of histories', whether there could be, or will be - new forms of history, or whether or not the intellectual experiment of 'historicising the past' has just about run its course. Taught by overview lectures and in seminar sessions, the bulk of the course will examine a range of set-texts drawn from some of those central to theorising the current condition of histories: Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, J. F. Lyotard, Frank Ankersmit, David Harlan, Elizabeth Ermarth, Hayden White and David Roberts. A course which aims to locate discussions over histories today and (possibly) tomorrow in new areas and explore ideas rarely considered on undergraduate degrees, it is a challenging but exciting level three course.
HIL316 Literature and Politics in Early Modern England
The aim of this module is to explore the relationship between imaginative literature and political developments in England across a long and dramatic period, from about 1516 to 1651. By examining a series of famous works of literature in their historical context, students are invited to think about ways in which these works transmit political attitudes or opinions. Authors to be studied include Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and Andrew Marvell.
HIL 318 Vichy France
This third year module provides students with the opportunity to study an aspect of contemporary European history in greater detail than at Level 1 or Level 2. The Vichy regime (1940-1944) rules France in collaboration with the Nazi army of Occupation. Notoriously it divided France between Petainist supporters of the regime and resistance fighters, rallied by Charles de Gaulle on 18 June 1940. This is a division that continues to cause controversy and that itself shapes how historians have written on the regime.
HIL 319 War, Memory and Political Culture in Western Europe
This module examines how European political cultures collectively remembered the traumas of the Second World War. Special attention is paid to how history-writing, public commemoration and film have shaped collective views of the past. The course is theoretically informed by the work of Freud and the less well-known sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs.
HIL321 Heritage Studies
The module will help to further develop students’ understanding of heritage and museum studies. Building on previous heritage-based modules, the module will enable students to critically evaluate the debates about heritage in Britain, how the past is interpreted and represented in the present and the role of museums in modern society. The module will involve field trips to a national museum, a country house and a local heritage site, which will allow students to relate the wider theoretical debates to their findings from site visits.
HIL324 National Curriculum History: A History for England
This level three course examines the debates surrounding the introduction and implementation of a national curriculum for history, put into English Schools in 1991. It also has a vocational side to it, in that it offers final year students the chance to consider some of the theories and practices of recent and contemporary schooling particularly in relation to history, not least with a possible eye to entering the teaching profession. In three parts, the course begins by examining the type of history put into schools after 1991, continues by charting the fortunes of National Curriculum History up to the present day, and ends with four sessions led by visiting teachers/lecturers from primary and secondary schools, and leaders of PGCE courses in various universities. The course is co-ordinated by Professor Jenkins, with Mark Mason, the co-ordinator of the History PGCE at Chichester. Taught mainly through seminars, the course raises questions not just about the putting into schools of a compulsory curriculum subject, but reflects more widely on education, schooling, politics and the condition of history today both in schools and in higher education.
HIL323 Religion and Gender in 19th century Britain
This module builds on previous gender history and Victorian history modules by exploring popular and institutional religious attitudes towards the changing roles of women and men in the 19th century against a turbulent background context of the decline in the cultural authority of the church and rapidly shifting ideas on gender. The module examines the way in which religious commentators, male and female, remained persistent, creative and influential definers of acceptable ideologies of gender through the period, despite the rise of alternative social and medical scientific discourses, as a means of defending their claim to continued moral authority.