Course description

This course is intended to give students the breadth necessary for an honours degree in history. Each seminar uses a particular thematic focus as a means to explore the past, and allows students to make a detailed study of particular historical topics and problems. Students select two of the three streams offered. C1: Victorian Legacies: the nineteenth century in retrospect (Dr Geoff Ginn) examines a range of legacies of the Victorian era that remain important today. Topics address themes from social life and politics to culture, recreation, gender and consumerism, and can be studied in their British, international or colonial aspects C2: Issues in United States History (A/Prof Chris Dixon) provides a close analysis of a number of key issues in US history and historiography. Possible topics include the War of Independence and the founding of the republic, slavery and the civil war, American exceptionalism and US foreign policy; Roosevelt and the New Deal, and the cultural and political contests of the 1960s. C3: Apocalypse and Modernity (Dr Leigh Penman) surveys the impact ideas of a coming `end of the world,¿ the apocalypse, over the past three millennia. Beginning with its roots in ancient Persia, we will consider the impact of millenarian and apocalyptic thought in medieval and early modern Europe, as well as consider its place in more recent movements such as Communism, Nazism, and radical Islam.

Archived offerings