Module Catalogue 2026/27

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

This module seeks to introduce second-year undergraduate students to the important and rapidly developing field of disability history and the many physical and psychological impacts of war on individuals and their societies. The focus is on Russia and the Soviet Union, Europe more broadly, the United States, the UK, and New Zealand. It explores social and medical reactions to the disabling effects of war on the bodies and minds of war combatants and their families, and the relationship between provisions for disabled civilians and disabled veterans.

Drawing on the contributors' research expertise, this module takes a comparative and thematic approach to disability. Special reference is paid to how war wounding and disability was constructed and experienced in the North American, Russian/Soviet, and British cases. Its frame of reference is, however, broader, reflecting the module team's expertise in how attitudes to disability shaped immigration control policies; the rise of the disability rights movement, and the history of PTSD.

Over the course of a programme of lectures and seminars, students will explore the multiple ways in which warfare maimed, injured, disfigured and impaired soldiers, and how veterans and the societies to which they returned classified, treated, compensated and cared for the war-disabled. Specific forms of disability, and how they were constructed and handled by different societies, will be considered. As well as exploring disabilities themselves, the module will explore institutional and domestic histories of care, issues of gender and masculinity, and the social experience of disability more broadly.

On successful completion of the module, students will be well-acquainted with the principal methods, approaches and sources that inform disability in a martial context, and be able to apply them to the specific focus of the module and to the present-day issues raised by conflict.

Outline Of Syllabus

Indicative contents:

•       Nineteenth-Century War Wounded
•       Medical Photographs and their Uses
•       Psychological Trauma in Russia and the Soviet Union
•       War Blindness, Deafness, and Plastic Surgery
•       Reconstructing Faces and Voices
•       Henry Ford and the Industrial Body
•       Prosthetic Limbs and Support Structures in the Soviet Union
•       Work, Rehabilitation, and Pensions
•       Hierarchies of Wounds and Disability
•       Disease and Fears of Contagion
•       Policing the State in Russian and the Soviet Union
•       The Able-Bodied and Empire
•       The War Wounded in Film
•       The Rise of a Social Disability Model in the UK

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

1.To acquire a general understanding of how war wounds were understood and treated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

2.To be able to contrast and compare the attitudes toward war, war wounds and disabilities in Russia and the Soviet Union, the UK, and the USA across the late-19th and 20th centuries.

3.To be able to assess the extent to which war wounding has resulted in more effective social responses to disabilities more generally.

4.To be able to locate attitudes toward war wounds within the larger framework of disability in relation to social support, financial support, cultural acceptance, and the divisions between people in those societies examined in the module.

5.To demonstrate an advanced awareness of how to appraise and productively compare different forms of evidence for the topics within the modules ambit.

6.To illustrate a developing cultural awareness in communicating your views about the diverse world experience encountered in the module.

Intended Skill Outcomes

1. To integrate different historical and national perspectives and different forms of evidence in reconstructing the contexts introduced in the module.

2. To investigate and evaluate historical topics both collectively (in seminars, in presentations, and on Canvas) and individually (in class preparation and in assessment-related work).

3. To apply learned knowledge and skills (selectively, where appropriate) in the completion of the module's different assessment components.

4. To demonstrate a greater competence in communicating complex idea verbally (in seminars and in presentations) and in written form (for the module's assessments).

5. To be able to move beyond the study or discussion of a single national history and show a greater awareness of the international dimensions of the subject.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

1. LECTURES impart an outline of core knowledge that students are expected to acquire; raise questions for students to consider in private study, and stimulate development of listening and note-taking skills. They enable students to gain a wider sense of historical argument and debate, and how such debates operate, which also allows them to develop comparisons between different historiographical debates. We will also introduce students to primary source materials in lectures.

2. SEMINARS encourage independent study and promote improvements in oral presentation, interpersonal communication, problem-solving skills, research skills, and adaptability. We will use the seminars to discuss historiographical debates in the literature and the relationship between historiography and primary sources. Seminars provide an opportunity for students to test out ideas in small groups, raise questions, and check their understanding of key issues, debates, and texts.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The first summative assessment asks students to write a short analysis of a primary source relating to the module's themes, drawing on knowledge from secondary sources. It allows students to get feedback on their approach to analysing primary source materials in advance of the second, larger summative assessment.

The essay at the end of the module asks students to draw on primary source materials and secondary literature to develop a comparative analysis that examines the international dimensions of war wounding and disability. This allows students to demonstrate: knowledge of wider socio-cultural frameworks that shaped attitudes towards and experiences of disability; ability to use evidence and analyse primary source materials; competency in communicating ideas in written form.

General Notes

N/A