2020/21

This module explores the system of slavery established in the United States and the lived experience of those enslaved by it.

Full information about this module-- including the video lectures and seminar readings-- can be found on the module website.

Please click on the link:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi2c9/

While Historiography I introduced students to key methodological and theoretical approaches in history writing from the Enlightenment to roughly the 1990s, Historiography II explores such themes from the 1990s to the present. However, unlike Historiography I, the 9 lectures/seminars do not proceed chronologically. Instead, each week focuses on a different important theme/theory/methodology which is currently hotly debated among academic historians. Each lecture is therefore presented by a member of staff specialised in the week’s theme. While each lecture will start off with a brief introduction into the historiography of the subject, the bulk of it will concentrate on the individual lecturer’s methodological and theoretical approach. Historiography II aims to offer students a clear idea of what is currently exciting and important in Anglo-American academic history writing. It will develop students’ abilities in study, research, and oral and written communication, through a programme of seminars, lectures and essay work. Students are encouraged to link their studies in Historiography II with their other second- and third-year modules. Historiographical knowledge will help students to choose a dissertation topic and supervisor in year 3.

“Folklore expresses fundamental human needs, desires, and anxieties which are often not revealed through other means” (Simon J. Bronner). It allows people to create traditions, share knowledge, and give meaning to everyday life. The folklore of the British Isles has always been in a constant process of regeneration. The old and the new, the oral, the textual, and the visual have mixed and mingled. Folklore has moved from the countryside to towns and cities and now to the Internet as digital communication encourages new forms of vernacular expression.

The module focuses on folklore beliefs, practices, and representations from prehistory to the present. Topics include: the ritual year; birth, marriage, and death; the supernatural; place; work and play; urban legends and cyberlore. The module considers similarities and differences between England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and it also encourages you to reflect on the broader global framework.

In the last sixty years, there has been an increasing interest in the history of Sub-Saharan African history before European colonial rule. In the 1960s, after African countries became independent, many scholars moved away from Eurocentric paradigms to explore the African past in order to enhance the historicity and agency of African societies, from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. This module seeks to study the African continent within the wider context of Global history, by studying Africa's place in the First Globalization (14th-18th c.).