This 30 CATS final-year undergraduate advanced option deals with one
of the most significant episodes in world history: the French
Revolution. Promethean and tragic, it has inspired and haunted
imaginations throughout the modern era. 'It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times', wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities,
and, indeed, historians still argue over its paradoxical legacies. For
while it inaugurated human rights, universal manhood suffrage and civil
equality, it also unleashed terror, authoritarianism and empire. The
French Revolution is especially challenging to study since it bequeathed
the very terms we use to analyse it. Debates about liberal and social
forms of democracy, the viability or dangers of Enlightenment ideals,
and the necessity or gratuitousness of violence in efforts to bring about democratic justice
all grew out of the French Revolution itself. Studying the French
Revolution invites us to scrutinise our own values and explore the possibilities and pitfalls associated with them.
This module treats the origins, course and legacies of the French Revolution, including that of its slave colony Saint Domingue (the Haitian Revolution). It draws on a wide range of sources: primary, scholarly, literary and cinematic. Themes include Enlightenment ideas, emotions, inequality, freedom, capitalism, slavery, gender, race, colonialism, religion, terror and war. It is inspired by the belief that studying the French Revolution can help us better understand the challenges of modern democratic and capitalist societies. By making modernity more legible, it can make our future more navigable.
Societies are identified, at least in part, by whom they choose to marginalise. This first-year 30 CAT undergraduate module offers students an introduction to early modern history and the opportunity to explore why and how some individuals and groups were marginalised and persecuted because of differences in their beliefs, gender, ethnicity and behaviour. The early modern period was a time of great social, economic, and religious uncertainty. Conflicts and social tensions created by developments in Europe led to the emergence of new types of deviant and radical groups and new measures to control their behaviour. The module will be structured around a series of case studies of groups and individuals identified as 'deviants' in order to test established hypotheses about exclusion, prejudice and scapegoating.
Though this module focuses on early modern Europe, many of the groups we discuss will be set firmly within the context of wider global developments and economic transformations. Students will also be encouraged to reflect on their own ideas about deviant behaviour. The assessment for this module will encourage examining different deviant groups through a comparative framework.