Early Modern History

Teaching staff: Professor Richard Drayton
Module code: 7AAH0001
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module addresses the nature of historical practice, ensuring that students can use and critically evaluate a range of theories, methods and approaches. It will raise awareness about history as a discipline and its relationships with other kindred fields. There will be visits, for example, to libraries, archives and museums, and an opportunity for students to discuss their dissertations. Skills to be considered in the module include quantitative approaches, visual and textual analysis and the oral presentation of materials.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH0001.aspx

Teaching staff: Team taught.
Module code: 7AAH2002
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 40 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 20 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  written examination/s;  coursework; 
1 x 4,000 word bibliographical essay; 1 x take-home exam

The study of early modern history at graduate level requires students to acquire important insights and skills that they may not have encountered in their undergraduate degrees. With the coming of printing and the increasing complexity of social and cultural interaction that it made possible, the quantity of sources expanded exponentially. The gradual breakdown of the Church in Protestant Europe and the demise of Latin as the language of government during this period means that the linguistic and palaeographic skills required of historians become more complex. This compulsory module introduces students to the various approaches to writing the history of early modern Europe and to the specific skills required to research early modern topics. Students will be expected to prepare reading for every session and to play an active part in all discussions, for example by preparing short papers as appropriate.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2002.aspx

Module code: 7AAH2001
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 60 credits
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 15,000 word dissertation

The 15,000 word dissertation is the core of the early modern MA. It offers students the chance to research a topic of their choice, working with a supervisor from the department.

Recent dissertation topics have included:

• Innocence during the Terror, 1793-1794. A study of the concept and its influence
• Brokerage in the Mediterranean
• Monstrous births in early modern Europe
• Private and Public Piety
• Justification by faith and the fate of three archbishops
• Scottish national conciousness
• Preaching - the Public Voice of the Edwardine Reformation

Module code: 7AAH2006
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

Early modern bodies were defined by their social and cultural contexts. Medical discourse, moral reform, popular culture and collective identities shaped a distinctively pre-modern body, made up of humours and fluxes, mutable and sometimes magical. This module brings together perspectives from social, cultural, medical and gender history, together with a range of original sources, to examine the relationship between bodies and their social and cultural context and to consider the changes that went towards the making of the modern body in Britain and Europe between 1500 and 1750. Topics will include popular medicine; the invention of homosexuality; social discipline; sexual knowledge and reproduction.

Module code: 7AAH2014
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module brings together two of the most lively and innovative areas of early modern historical studies, the “new British history”, and the history of political ideas. It offers students the opportunity to explore how power, identity and politics were conceptualized in the English speaking world during a period of social and economic change. The “long eighteenth century” experienced the beginnings of industrialization and population growth, the emergence of a class society, the erosion of the monopoly exercised by the established church over religious life, and the spread of mass literacy. It was also the period when the modern British State was consolidated and a colonial empire assembled across the Atlantic. Finally, the rise of Grub Street and the emergence of a popular press, facilitated by the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, made London the largest centre of print culture, pamphleteering and political journalism in the world.

The module involves studies, at an advanced level, of the debates surrounding the revolutions in 1688, 1776 and 1789, the unions of 1707 and 1801, and the growth of commerce and “politeness”. It will also involve an introduction to specialised methodological issues. Students will be introduced to two areas of methodological debate. The contextual approach favoured by Dunn, Pocock and Skinner, which focuses on the vocabularies or languages available to political writers, had to establish itself against an older school characterised by the abstract exploration of a canon of key texts. Recently it has also defended itself against the more radical challenges presented by the linguistic turn. Meanwhile, advocates of the new British history have attacked Anglo-centricity and attempted to study the interactions of the various peoples, nations and states within the “Atlantic archipelago” and their extension to North America. Whilst the reaction to their work has been mixed, there is no doubt that they have forced scholars to question the categories and frameworks that have shaped British historical research since the nineteenth century.

Teaching staff: Professor Francisco Bethencourt
Module code: 7AAH2012
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The purpose of this course is to study the process of European expansion and its impact on the definition of ethnic prejudices, hierarchies of peoples and race relations. We will study the both the reflection in Europe on different peoples of the world resulting from the Oceanic exploration, as well as the practice of colonial societies established in Africa, Asia and America. The tension between ethnic prejudices and civil rights will be at the core of this module. We will include the debates on freedom of the American Indians, on African slavery, on the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, and on the recognition of citizenship for Native Americans and African freedmen.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2012.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Niall O'Flaherty
Module code: 7AAH2010
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

Throughout the enlightenment mainstream social, political and scientific thought in Europe was underpinned by a cosmology that attributed order in nature to divine design, and which accorded man a pre-eminent place in this divine scheme. But from the second half of the eighteenth century this view had come under increasing attack from a number of radical thinkers. The core aim of this course is to provide students with an advanced understanding of these debates about the origin of order in the universe and man’s place in nature in their historical and intellectual contexts, with particular emphasis being placed on the social, political and religious dimensions of such controversies. Students will become familiar with a number of key interventions in the debate through a detailed study of the primary texts starting with David Hume’s devastating attack on the epistemological basis of natural theology and ending with Charles Darwin’s radical revisioning of the relationship between God, man and nature.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2010.aspx

Teaching staff: Mr Daniel Hadas
Module code: 7AAH1003
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Full-year 
Teaching pattern: 20 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  written examination/s 
1 x 3 hour examination

Latin for Graduates aims to provide students with the translation skills necessary to carry out research for an MA dissertation or PhD thesis in late antique, medieval, or early modern studies. The module consists of intensive instruction in Latin grammar, from the basics to complex sentence structures involving a range of clauses, indirect speech, participles, etc. Students will also read a variety of texts in order to achieve an understanding of the particular features of post-classical Latin. The module is divided into beginning and advanced sections: the beginning section presumes no previous knowledge of Latin, while those students who have studied Latin to GCSE level or above are welcome to enter the advanced section.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH1003.aspx

Teaching staff: 

Dr Anna Maerker

Module code: 7AAH2019
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour seminars (weekly)
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/modules/level7/7AAH2019.aspx

Teaching staff: Professor Ludmilla Jordanova
Module code: 7AAH2011
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module addresses recent developments in the study of early modern religion. Religion lies at the heart of the early modern period, and has accordingly occupied a privileged historiographical position. The module explores work published on this major issue since about 1970 and critically evaluates it. It seeks to provide students with an understanding of recent developments in the field and their significance. This is important because ways of thinking about religion have changed so markedly in recent times, with new approaches, sources and assumptions being deployed and new subjects being explored.

Teaching staff: Dr Anne Goldgar
Module code: 7AAH2007
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module will examine comparatively two of the largest cities in Europe in the seventeenth century, cities which were very different in nature: Paris was the capital city of an absolutising monarchy, Amsterdam the most powerful metropolis of a federalised republic. Paris was part of an old but developing political system, Amsterdam part of a new and rapidly changing nation. Paris was dominated by the influence of the court of Versailles, Amsterdam by a wealthy merchant elite. Paris was a centre of administration, Amsterdam a centre of international trade.

Teaching staff: Professor Ludmilla Jordanova
Module code: 7AAH2009
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module is concerned with the role of visual and material culture in Britain from the Restoration until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It focuses on items that have been endowed with particular value, although not necessarily monetary. More specifically it considers the role of portraits and related objects that were prized because they were associated with significant people. "Significant" does not necessarily mean "elite" or "famous", rather it suggests the ways in which users of portraits viewed sitters who were important to them. Arguably portraits were a central form in which identity was produced, presented and managed in this period, and their use was far more widespread than is generally recognised.

We will consider how objects were made, acquired, exchanged, valued and endowed with meaning and how their historical importance can be appreciated. We shall also be concerned with networks, whether personal or professional, with gifts, with patronage, with artistic practices, with the things themselves and the ways in which they were displayed and used. Students will have a chance to work closely with images and objects, to think about how they are best studied by historians, and about the key changes that took place over the period with respect to identity. Thus the module takes gender, age, social status, marital status, occupation and so on, as issues that are essential for understanding the role of objects such as portraits. Students are expected to give class presentations.

Teaching staff: Dr Lucy Kostyanovsky
Module code: 7AAH2003
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module will examine some of the many different manifestations of religious change and identity in Europe as it was torn apart by the experience of Reformation. It breaks away from the polarized studies of Reformation as a Protestant/Catholic divide to explore the impact of religious developments on a variety of levels, from high politics to parish practice, looking at the experience of the British Isles alongside that of other European states.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2003.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Michael Rowe
Module code: 7AAH3008
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The French Revolution and triumph of the concept of popular sovereignty can be viewed as representing the political equivalent of splitting the atom. Positively, the immense energies released could be harnessed for a variety of purposes, from waging war to providing welfare. Negatively, they could do immense damage unless contained within the political structures. Europeans, from French revolutionaries to the nation builders of the 1860s and 1870s, struggled to find constitutions that would achieve these ends.

This module looks at the more important constitutions of the period. Teaching is organised in ten two-hour seminars. Eight of these are grouped into four pairs, arranged chronologically and illustrating developments over time and in different nations. The first seminar in each pair provides an introduction to the political context in which the constitutions – whose texts are then examined in detail the following week – came into being. Although each pair of seminars focuses on two constitutions from roughly the same period, other constitutions are also referred to for comparative purposes and in order to achieve a pan-European perspective. The remaining two seminars include an opening seminar that sets out the main themes, and a concluding seminar that returns to these themes and makes comparisons between national traditions and also assesses developments over time.

The overall aim of this module is to analyse, within a comparative international context, the interplay between political ideas, everyday politics, political structures, and political culture. Chronologically, it spans the period from when no European state possessed a constitution to when the vast majority did. The module is centred on a close-reading of European constitutional texts, which are readily available, both in printed form and on the internet, in their original languages and increasingly in English translation. These texts will be supplemented by a mass of secondary sources, including publications in French and German as well as in English.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH3008.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Anne Goldgar
Module code: 7AAH2005
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

Historians have for some years been interested in the way that early modern cultural practices, both popular and elite, can be examined through anthropological approaches to ritual behaviour. Most historians interpret the term ‘ritual’ fairly widely, incorporating secular as well as religious events and concepts. Because much of the most interesting cultural history of the last 25 years has relied on this type of analysis and focused on this type of material, this module will not only be able to introduce students to important concepts in the study of early modern history, but also to many of the chief writings on cultural history in recent years. Discussion will focus on themes of central importance to members of early modern communities, either as individuals or as members both of a face-to-face society and as part of the developing state.

The module will begin by examining the theory of ritual. It then will turn to the most easily comprehensible form of ritual life, religious ritual, but will examine not only types and functions of such ritual but also how, in the Reformation, these were reformed (and how this in itself was a ritual process). Further discussions will look at ritual in the life of individuals and communities. These include rites of passage such as marriage and death, rituals marking the passage of time (which contribute to communal and individual consciousness), and rituals which give rise to feelings of solidarity as well as those which express and regulate violence in small communities, both in normal life and on festive occasions. The way that forms of interaction can be ritualized, and how this can contribute to cultures of power, is examined in the final part of the module. Here students will look at the rise of civility and court culture, and the way that forms of ritualized display, including such varied ceremonies as coronations and executions, can function to negotiate power between rulers and ruled.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2005.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Adam Sutcliffe
Module code: 7AAH2018
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module focuses on the history of selfhood in the ‘long Enlightenment’ (c.1670-1800), looking at philosophical approaches to the nature of the self, literary and cultural explorations of human emotional responses to the feelings of others (‘sensibility’), and the political ramifications of these cultural and intellectual changes. Core readings will split roughly evenly between primary texts (mostly influential works of philosophy, but including some fiction) and notable recent historiographical studies. Starting with some key late seventeenth-century texts by John Locke and Baruch Spinoza that were hugely influential in the following century, we then look at the emergence of materialist understandings of the self in the early eighteenth century, and at the explosion of interest in ‘sentiment’ in both fiction and in moral and economic thought in the latter half of the century. We will conclude with a consideration of the significance of changing concepts of the self in the political and cultural upheavals of the American and French Revolutions. Two themes will recur at various points in the course: the development of individualist approaches to ethics and belief as an alternative to traditional religion, and the formation of notions of selfhood in juxtaposition to ‘others’, whether across the gender divide or in contrast to non-Europeans or minorities such as Jews.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2018.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr John Price
Module code: 7AAH3010
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module examines the nature of heroism. It seeks to answer questions to the following: What is a hero? What is a heroine? Why is heroism such an important historical phenomenon? Is there a distinctively 'modern' form of it? Many of the examples will be British, however students are encouraged to develop a comparative perspective on the subject. They will also be invited to reflect critically upon both the range of relevant sources (medals and monuments, for example, as well as biographies and autobiographies) and the ways in which historians have approached the subject. Those who were publicly celebrated come from a variety of fields, and indeed there is also a history of forms of achievement. Thus the module will also examine certain key zones -- the church, the military, science, medicine, literature, architecture and so on -- in order to assess their changing status. The professions, class and gender, and their representation, will be central issues in the module.