HISTORY
ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY TWICKENHAM LONDON
2016/2017 SEMESTER 2/SPRING
MODULES FOR STUDY ABROAD STUDENTS
IMPORTANT NOTES:
1. Possible module combinations making up a full course load are:
3 x 20 credit modules = 60 credits in total
4 x 20 credit modules = 80 credits in total
Note that a UK student normally takes 3 x 20 credit modules in a semester)
We recommend that you check what the practice at your home institution is of
converting UK credits into US credits.
2. A timetable in order to ensure that clashes are avoided will be available in due
course.
3. The list provided here may be subject to change or availability. The information
and detailed course descriptions included in this document were extracted from
the most recently updated validation documents. However, minor changes may
be operated by the module convenors, which do not justify a full revalidation.
The Mediterranean World
Code: HST4004
Level: 4
This broad survey module introduces students to the concept of a European Renaissance and how
this developed in substantial measure from the encounter (and sometimes the clash) of the later
medieval European world with Byzantine Greece, Islamic Africa and Spain and how it evolved in
places as different as Cordoba, Florence Istanbul and Brussels. The module examines the European
encounter with the world beyond it, especially the European ‘apprehension’ of the African continent
and what it now called the Middle East and far East.
Revolutions and Rebellions
Code: HST4005
Level: 4
The module’s content will cover two principal fields – different ways of conceptualising revolutions
and rebellion, and specific examples of revolutions and rebellions that have occurred across four
continents. We will begin the module by examining ideas and ideologies of revolutions, providing
students with a vocabulary and conceptual repertoire that they can use to discuss revolutionary
activities throughout the remainder of the module. The specific examples of revolutions and
rebellions that we cover are located in a period that runs from the mid-18th to the early 21st
Centuries. They will normally include subjects such as: legal and illegal protest in the American
Revolution; Francophone revolutions (France and Haiti); Communist revolutions (Russia, Cuba,
China), 1968 (revolution or rebellion?); Islamic revolutions (Algeria and Iran); anti-colonial
revolutions (Vietnam and Nicaragua); the Palestinian Intifada; 1989 and the fall of Communist
regimes; the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. Finally, we will consider some of the ways in
which revolutions have been made a focal point for collective memory work and commemorative
practices.
Race and Ethnicity in the USA
Code: HST5003
Level: 5
The module’s content will bring together different ways of conceptualizing race and ethnicity, and
examine specific details about how this shaped the politics, culture and society in the USA from the
revolution until World War II. The module will equip students with the necessary vocabulary and
theoretical framework to understand how difference has been historically and culturally defined,
and this will allow them to explore specific case studies in some depth. The module seeks to go
beyond the ‘race binary’, and will examine the way ideas about race and ethnicity contributed to
political and social inequality structures, influenced public policy, mobilized protest and revolt, and
shaped personal and group identity. The topics normally covered will include: the origins and
development of African slavery, Native Americans and the ‘Trail of Tears’, integration and separation
of immigrant groups, the development of Jim Crow segregation, public policy and racial
enumeration, the phenomenon of lynching, Race riots, Black intellectuals and racial uplift,
intersections between class, race and gender.
Great Southern Land: A History of Australia
Code: HST5005
Level: 5
The module aims to study the political and cultural history of Australia from its earliest
known origins to the start of the 21st century.
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Origins: The Aboriginal Peoples of Australia
Occupation: European Settlement 1770-1821
From Colonies to States 1821-1889
Federation and Nation-building 1889-1913
ANZACS 1914-1945: The experience of war.
The Workingman’s Paradise? 1945-1974.
From ‘White Australia Policy’ to Multiculturalism,1945-1975
‘The Land of the Long Weekend’? Gender, Family and Leisure
After Vietnam: Australia and South-East Asia, 1976-1995
Reinventing Australia 1988-2000: Bicentenary to the Sydney Olympics.
Empire in France
Code: HST5011
Level: 5
In this module you will consider the political, social and cultural transformations in France and
Europe during the quarter century from the storming of the Bastille in 1789 to the fall of Napoleon.
The French Revolution continues to shape our lives in many ways, from the way we do politics to our
art and literature – it gave birth to the modern nation – state and the modern restaurant, our
concepts remain subjects of intense and passionate historical debate among historians, who still
have lots of questions about the ways we interpret the revolution. Why did the Revolution happen?
What was new about the regime that emerged after 1789? What role did ordinary men and women
play in events, and how did/were their lives changed? Why, ultimately, did the Revolution lead to
Terror war and dictatorship? What was Napoleon’s legacy for Europe?
Reign of Elizabeth I
Code: HST6003
Level: 6
The module will analyse the early life of Elizabeth and discusses how it may have influenced her
character and later policies. It then focuses on the state of England in 1558; the problems facing the
new queen, her intentions, and the nature of the Elizabethan Church settlement. Students will then
move on to study the rest of the reign thematically looking at the Catholic threat at home and
abroad, the problems of the queen’s marriage negotiations and the succession, foreign policy, the
rise and fall of political Puritanism, the war against Spain, the nature of political life and the image of
the queen in contemporary literature and portraits.
Imagining the Ottoman Empire
Code: HST6004
Level: 6
The Second World War: Collective Memory and History
Code: HST6007
Level: 6
The module content will be organised thematically, and each theme will be exemplified with references to
two or more national (or transnational) memory discourses. The themes to be explore will include: the
memory-history relation; narrating the origins of the second world war; historiography as a form of memory;
the work of memory institutions; the politics of commemoration; the aestheticisation and commodification
of war memories; Holocaust memories; gender, subjectivities and memory; and the frequently invoked
theme of ‘remembering for the future’. The main national discourses of war memories that will be used to
critically explore these themes will be Germany (GDR and FDR before 1990), the Soviet Union (and former
Soviet Republics), France, Britain, the United States and Japan. The critical attention paid to these national
memory discourses will be supplemented by consideration of the transnational discourses of Jewish and
European war memory.
Politics and Culture in 1960s America
Code: HST6008
Level: 6
This module examines the political, cultural and social life of the 1960s in the United States. You will
be presented with a broad range of materials from and about the Sixties and you will be expected to
identify key themes and develop arguments in order to make sense of this pivotal decade in
American history.
Arguably, the United States is still dealing with the fallout of the 1960s. The battle continues
regarding the legacy of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society; the assassination of Kennedy remains
important in the public collective memory; the new conservatism born in the Sixties shaped the
ideology of Reaganomics, and subsequently the social conservatism that dominated the Bush era.
Our approach in this module will be to question and debunk some of the mythology of the 1960s,
and to investigate both the short-term and longer term significance of the growth of liberalism, the
emergence of a counterculture, war in Vietnam, and the parallel development of conservatism.