From Medieval to Modern: History and Historians

This module is taught across the whole of the academic year and is designed to extend and deepen your understanding of the past, simultaneously equipping you with the cognitive, analytical, and digital skills needed to study history. The module will provide both a survey of the last two thousand years of history, and an introduction to the issues and challenges involved in attempting to know and understand the past.

The module is organised to provide a rounded and multi-dimensional introduction to the discipline of history. We will help you to understand humanity through its past, but also to understand which elements of human life resonate with you: people’s conflict or their co-operation; their sense of self or their altruism; their hierarchies or their destructiveness; their peculiarity or how recognisable the past can be.

This module includes three components:

• The first introduces you to broad patterns of continuity and change within the standard chronological division of history: Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern.
• The second, ‘Disputed Histories’, introduces new perspectives and methodologies to the study of themes encountered earlier in the course.
• The final component explores the skills that you will derive from this module as well as the numerous careers that you can pursue with a history degree.

Each week’s lecture is usually taught by a different faculty member, and so you will be introduced to the historians in the department and the subjects they research.

What our students say:

‘The teaching was very good and the lecturers were consistently engaging.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)

‘The seminars were very helpful on gaining new perspectives on different topics and the group discussions were engaging.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)