Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

This module considers how both conservatives and radicals used the language of age and life-stage to construct visions of the future between 1960 and 1989. How far can protest movements - second-wave feminism, black civil rights, gay liberation and CND - be understood as generational conflicts? And how does employing age, gender, class, race and sexuality as categories of historical analysis change the way that we do history?

This module aims to introduce students to important empirical and methodological questions about age, gender and sexuality, using a case study of Cold War Britain. It will consider the histories of 'muted groups' such as children, women, people of colour and LGBT people, but also demonstrate how the language used about such groups is used to structure power relations in society; for example, how groups and individuals are demeaned by being told 'that's childish' or 'you're acting like a girl'. The module will draw on a wide range of primary sources - for example, periodicals, photographs, maps, oral histories and self-narratives - and will be situated in the relevant historiography on post-war and Cold War Britain.

Particular attention will be paid to the following objectives:

•       How to use oral history and self-narrative sources.
•       How to use ‘secondary’ historiography when the main histories of a movement are written by contemporaries e.g. the historiography of second-wave feminism.
•       How to handle conflicting narratives about race, gender, sexuality and age critically, and how to use historical empathy to assess these sources.
•       How to analyse histories of particular phenomena using race, gender, age and sexuality as categories of historical analysis.

Outline Of Syllabus

A suggested list of seminar topics is as follows:

1.       Cold War Britain
2.       Class, trade unionism and the ‘New Left’
3. Race and immigration
4.       Black activism and Black Power
5.       ‘Second-wave’ feminism
6. CND and anti-nuclear activism
7. Childhood and the children's rights movement
8. Adolescence and student protest
9.       Lesbians and political separatism
10.       Gay men and AIDS
11. Trans, bisexual and gender non-conforming identities

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Knowledge and understanding of the way that concepts of childhood, adolescence and adulthood changed in the period c.1950 to c.1989 in Britain. Students will be able to describe a range of significant historiographical arguments about how these age-categories changed in this period, and assess how convincing these arguments are.

Knowledge and understanding of key protest movements in the period c.1950 to c.1989 in Britain. Students will know what these movements were and what their key goals consisted of, what the major conflicts were within these movements, and how they changed over time. They will be able to engage with major historiographical debates over the impact of these movements, and consider how thee movements affected each other.

Knowledge and understanding of competing visions of 'the future' in the period c.1950 to c.1989 in Britain. Students will explore how the term 'the future' was deployed in both mainstream and radical political discourses, how it framed discussions about the education, training and health of children and adolescents, and be able to describe how 'the future' was used differently by different historical actors in different contexts.

Knowledge and understanding of changing discourses around gender, sexuality, race, age and class in the period c.1950 to c.1989 in Britain. Students will be able to engage critically with both theoretical and historiographical literature on these identity categories. They will understand the key historiographical approaches and concerns within the histories of women/gender, people of colour/race, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, and class, especially in the context of socialist and trade union activism.

Students will be able to evaluate historians' arguments on these topics, assessing how convincing they think they are, and supplement this analysis with their own primary source knowledge, drawn from our reading within and outside seminars. They will be able to appropriately situate their own arguments within the relevant primary and secondary literature.

Intended Skill Outcomes

Students will be able to:

- Understand new historical methodologies, such as what it means to use age and/or gender as 'a category of historical analysis.'
- Critically engage with primary sources on age, gender, class, race and sexuality, without imposing contemporary readings.
- Understand how ideas about age, gender, class, race and sexuality were used in competing visions of the future in post-war and Cold War Britain.
- Evaluate different historiographical interpretations of how ideas about gender, sexuality, class, race and age changed in this period.
- Have the ability to consider a range of conflicting interpretations and put forward their own view.
- Carry out independent research and critically analyse a range of different primary sources, from oral histories to visual sources to government reports.
- Be able to think about the histories of women, children, people of colour, adolescents and LGBT people as part of the wider post-war and Cold War history of the British state.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The large % of independent study promotes self-directed learning and the effective use of primary and secondary literature. PIP seminar teaching encourages the close analysis of primary source material and the development of critical thinking and historical empathy. Online asynchronous discussions allow students to participate in class in a different way if they are less confident in PIP seminars. In-person lectures provide scaffolding for student learning while preserving small-group seminars for student discussion and analysis of primary sources and set reading, ensuring all students have a basic understanding of the topic and can participate in discussion.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

This source-led course privileges close reading of the source material rather than memorisation for a timed examination. Therefore, the main assessments are coursework-based.

The portfolio is a 'feed-forward' assessment that comprises an essay plan for the final essay and two edited discussion board posts. This encourages engagement with our weekly discussions as well as allowing students to draft material that will help them to understand how to structure and present their arguments. The essay plan allows them to get direct feedback on their ideas about their essay as well as feedback on its structure and arguments.

The essay further allows the assessment of the intended knowledge outcomes by testing the students' understanding of the primary and secondary literature, and their ability to examine this literature critically and to situate their own argument within this existing work.

General Notes

N/A