CULTURAL HISTORY

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor D N Dumville

Pre-requisites

None.

Overview

The word 'civilisation' carries much baggage, and its supposed opposite, 'barbarism', almost as much. Both concept and history are studied here, with reference to primary sources of various sorts, from third-millennium B.C. Mesopotamia to twelfth-century A.D. western Europe. Topics discussed include the wild man of the woods, the origins of civil institutions, social functions of rhetoric, social stress and systems-collapse in Antiquity, the two cities in mediaeval thought, the idea of novelty, and why Domesday was postponed.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture, 1 one-hour primary-source class, and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (60%); continuous assessment (40%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr B Marsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Overview

Between 1750 and 1918 Britain underwent enduring cultural and technological transformations. This course seeks to place the development of such radical new technologies as steam-power, railways, ocean-going steam ships and electrical telegraphs in the context of social, cultural and political change. Were these 'tools of empire' ready-made implements for the effective deployment of politicians? Or did imperial ambitions, by engineers as much as by statesmen, lie behind the origins and spread of such large-scale technological systems? The course will also consider more generally the changing role and status of engineers in British society; and it will ask how technologies came to be emblems of Western cultural dominance.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures per week; 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%) with two essays each of 2,500 words.

Resit: 1 three-hour examination (50%); continuous assessment (50%) with two essays each of 2,500 words.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D Smith

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Notes

This course will be available in the first half-session of 2010/11.

Overview

The course places the history of medicine in a social and cultural context. It examines key periods and themes including: ancient, medieval and early modern medicine; astrology; the medical revolution; the medical Enlightenment; non-Western medicine; contagion, quarantine and trade; the humanitarian and vivisection movements; childbirth and midwifery; the anatomical body and representations of death; the social history of madness and the asylum; medicine in the twentieth century. Cutting across those topics, the course also addresses issues such as the changing status of women as healers, the secular versus the religious, medicine in film and photography, and the material culture of medicine.

Structure

3 one-hour lectures or 3 one-hour tutorials per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%).

Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%). NB: New in-course assessment must be submitted.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr R O'Connor

Pre-requisites

Available to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Notes

This course will be available in the first half-session of 2010/11.

Overview

What is the relationship between science and religion, and why have Westerners so rarely agreed on it? This course, based on the close study of primary sources between the Renaissance and the present day, takes a historical perspective on this troubled and fertile relationship and uncovers the true stories behind the simplistic myths often promoted in today's media. Famous episodes in this history (such as the Galileo and Darwin controversies) wil be reexamined, and categories we often take for granted - 'science', 'religion', even 'Biblical literalism' - will be questioned and set in their historical contexts. Broad trends will be outlined and examined, but with close attention paid to the ways in which individual people experienced the science-religion nexus. The course will conclude by bringing this historical perspective to bear on present-day controversies.

Structure

1 one-hour lecture, 1 one-hour seminar and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour examination (50%), continuous assessment (50%), of which the continuous assessment consists of seminar participation (10%), one 1500-word class exercise (10%), one 3000-word essay (30%).

Resit: 1 three-hour examination (60%), plus submission of all written assessment (class exercise (10%), essay (30%)).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be advised

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Notes

This course will NOT be available in session 2010/11.

Overview

Throughout the course, students examine patterns of continuity and change from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Topics include families and households; urban living; political cultures; status, taste and consumption; cultures of belief and learning; gender; popular and elite cultures; and Europe's relationship to 'old' and 'new' worlds. Whether this period of western history really was 'a time of revolutions' and saw the 'birth of modernity' will be critically addressed.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%).

Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%).

NB: New in-course assessment must be submitted.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr B Marsden

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Overview

In order to construct a general framework within which to set about understanding how people have found meaning in their lives, the course is based on five persvasive themes whose mutual relevance is explored through historical instances. They are: symbols; spatio-temporal orientation; growth and development; technology and collective or individual identity. Thus, the significance of technology is analysed in terms of what (for example) clockwork has symbolised, and how Western culture's increasing reliance on accurate time-measurement has been associated with pursuit of greater economic rationality, which in turn affects people's sense of who they are.

Structure

2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%).

Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%). NB: New in-course assessment must be submitted.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr B Marsden

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

This course explores the cultural history of Victorian science and technology. No prior knowledge of science is required. First, it introduces some of the methods historians and sociologists have deployed in studying the cultural history of science. Then it goes on to consider a set of perspectives (including: cultural authority; space and architecture; religion and reform; the metropolitan versus the provincial; imperialism, science and (un)orthodoxy, and material culture) and case studies (including: mesmerism; Darwinian contexts and controversies; the social construction ot technologies).

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment: 2 essays (each worth 45% of the final mark) and seminar contribution, including presentation (10%).

Resit (for Honours students only): Candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 wil be required to submit themselve for re-assessment and should contact the Course Co-ordinator for further details.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be advised

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

Intoxication is a fascinating and widespread form of human experience that is increasingly explored in cultural history and the social sciences. This course explores perceptions of 'intoxicating' substances - such as alcohol, natural and chemically produced drugs, and other means of access to altered modes of consciousness - in their cultural and social settings. Themes to be addressed include: mind and body; addiction; rituals of consumption; cultural creativity, difference and protest; social paranoia and political regulation; and healing. Sources range from historical case-studies, literature and art to contemporary media.

Structure

2 two-hour seminars per week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: In-course assessment (100%).

Resit (for Honours students only): Candidates achieving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 wil be required to submit themselve for re-assessment and should contact the Course Co-ordinator for further details.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D Smith

Pre-requisites

As for entry into Cultural History Honours.

Overview

What is 'culture'? How are we to study it historically? This course introduces students to a range of methodologies and disciplines through which the history of culture can be analysed, focusing primarily but not exclusively on the Western world since the Middle Ages. The specific historical challenges associated with each topic will be discussed, as will the historical benefits and limitations of particular forms of evidence and the approaches they call for.

Structure

1 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour lecture/seminar per week, except for reading week.

Assessment

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination (45%), one 4,000 word essay (40%) and seminar participation (10%).

Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be advised

Pre-requisites

Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. This course is only available to Senior Honours Cultural History students.

Overview

This course will provide students withe guidance through seminars and individual advice on writing a dissertation on a topic approved by the Co-ordinator of the dissertation course.

Assessment

1st Attempt: Dissertation (100%).

Resit (for Honours students only): Candidates achieiving a CAS mark of 6-8 may be awarded compensatory level 1 credit. Candidates achieving a CAS mark of less than 6 will be required to submit themselves for re-assessment and should contact the Course Co-ordinator for further details.