Module HIST1761: Power and Culture in the Modern World, 1800-2000

Department: History

HIST1761: Power and Culture in the Modern World, 1800-2000

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To equip first-year students with a grounding in modern history.
• To introduce students to current approaches in cultural, transnational and comparative approaches to history.
• To engage students with critical questions pertaining to the nature of modern identities, using the ideas of place, time and historical processes.

Content

• This module explores the intersection of culture and power on a global scale across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cultural processes helped to establish new global orders, whether organized around empires and colonies, sovereign nation states, commercial enterprises or international institutions. They also, however, played an insurgent role in challenging dominant frameworks and advancing alternative cultures, for instance, through protests, propaganda, and armed conflict. Moving beyond political history, the module raises a variety of far-reaching, overarching questions. How did the cultures of nineteenth-century empires lay the foundation for a global system of nation states and to what extent did imperial cultures continue? In what ways was culture embedded in the emergence of modern societies and state power? What were the connections between culture and the major hot and cold wars of the twentieth century? How did relationships between culture and power shift with late twentieth-century transformations of international networks and globalisation? By moving forward through time across the module and taking selected deeper dives into pivotal geographies, students will develop a critical understanding of how culture and power informed each other in modern history.

Learning Outcomes

• A critical understanding of the concept of modernity, and of how it was shaped and experienced during the period, c. 1800-2000.
• Familiarity and critical engagement with cultural, transnational and comparative approaches to history.
• Knowledge of divergent spatialities and chronologies of writing history, and ability to critically analyse these.

• Identifying, defining, and understanding historical problems.
• Ability to explore the ways in which historians use different types of evidence to address historical problems.
• Ability to identify and to critique conflicting historical interpretations.
• Discussing and explaining ideas in a small-group context.
• Practicing introductory writing and research skills.

• The ability to employ sophisticated reading skills to gather, sift, process, synthesise and critically evaluate information from a variety of sources (print, digital, material, aural, visual, audio-visual etc.).
• The ability to communicate ideas and information orally and in writing, and to devise and sustain coherent and cogent arguments.
• The ability to write and think under pressure, manage time and work to deadlines.
• The ability to make effective use of information and communications technology.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Student learning is facilitated by a combination of lectures to set the foundations for further study and to provide the basis for the acquisition of subject specific knowledge.
• Lectures provide a broad framework which defines individual module content, introducing students to themes, debates and interpretations. In this environment, students are given the opportunity to develop skills in listening, selective note-taking and reflection.
• Seminars to allow students to present and critically reflect upon the acquired subject-specific knowledge, methodologies and theories, and to identify and debate a range of issues and differing opinions. The seminar is the forum in which students are given the opportunity to communicate ideas, jointly exploring themes and arguments. Seminars are structured to develop understanding and designed to maximise student participation related to prior independent preparation. Seminars give students the opportunity to develop oral communication skills, encourage critical and tolerant approaches to reasoned argument and historical discussion, build the students' ability to marshal historical evidence, and facilitate the development of the ability to summarise historical arguments, think in a rapidly changing environment and communicate in a persuasive and articulate manner, whilst recognising the value of working with others and, occasionally, towards shared goals. The seminar will also be the primary forum for developing students skills in reading and criticising primary sources.
• Assessment: Examinations test students' ability to work under pressure under timed conditions, to prepare for examinations and direct their own programme of revision and learning and develop key time management skills. The examination gives students the opportunity to develop relevant life skills such as the ability to produce coherent, reasoned and supported arguments under pressure. Students will be examined on subject specific knowledge.
• The summative essay remains a central component of assessment in history, due to the integrative high-order skills it develops. It allows students the opportunity to recognise, represent and critically reflect upon ideas, concepts and problems; students can demonstrate awareness of, and the ability to use and evaluate, a diverse range of resources and identify, represent and debate a range of subject-specific issues and opinions. Through the essay, students can synthesise information, adopt critical appraisals and develop reasoned argument based on individual research; they should be able to communicate ideas in writing, with clarity and coherence; and to show the ability to integrate and critically assess material from a wide range of sources.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

The formative assignment is the one-page summative essay plan/outline due Week 31.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.