Module Information

Academic rationale of the proposal:

This module provides students with an introduction to the study of political cultures in Europe (including Britain) and the USA in the modern period. It forms the core module for the new MA in Modern History which targets those postgraduate students who wish to study modern history without necessarily specialising in either Britain or Europe (as our present PGT provision in this field demands), and that utilises the department'r full range of expertise in the field of modern history, including (for the first time at PGT level) American history.

Brief Description:

The core module of the MA focuses on political cultures as they evolved in Europe and the US from the late eighteenth century. We will explore this history in four principal and interrelated ways: (i) by examining the emergence of new organisations of civil society, state systems and understandings of the public sphere from the nineteenth-century onwards, (ii) by analysing the means whereby twentieth-century 'open' and 'closed' systems of government evolved, were challenged and defended, (iii) by considering the roles performed by the media in maintaining and undermining these systems of government, and (iv) by considering the roles of ritual, performance, representation and memory in the construction of political identities.

Content:
Seminar topics (indicative):
1. Introduction: what is political culture?
2. The Enlightenment, the public sphere and the coffee houses
3. State and civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
4. Marx, class and political allegiance
5. Politics and the people
6. Mass media, political culture and the `degeneration? of the public sphere
7. Region and nation in political culture
8. Reputations: heroes, commemoration and political culture
9. History, memory and historical cultures
10. Conclusions