Postgraduate Course: Crisis and Conflict in Late-Victorian Britain (online) (PGHC11512)
Course Outline
School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | The final three decades of the 19th century played host to heated debates over Britain's future. These were the years when Britain's economy began to descend from the heights of world pre-eminence, when social change again intensified into class antagonism, when the union came under unprecedented pressure, and when Victorian confidence began to sour into uncertainty and anxiety. This course examines these changes and the debates that they occasioned. |
Course description |
Between 1870 and 1900, the mood of expansive confidence and equipoise characteristic of the mid-Victorian period was replaced with one of anxiety and concern for the future. From the late 1860s, British economic growth began to falter, and rival economies started to catch up and even pull ahead. Against this backdrop of 'relative decline', publicity of urban poverty and the disorienting effects of rapid urbanization convinced many that the nation had lost its way. How did the late-Victorians understand the changes taking place around them? Were all late-Victorians afflicted by a sense of crisis and decline, or did some embrace and even benefit from rapid change?
This course runs the gamut of late-Victorian politics, society, culture and economy, and asks whether the final three decades of the 19th century comprise a discrete historical period with its own unique 'spirit' and character. Students will examine a range of materials to gain an understanding of how the late-Victorians understood their place in the world, their relationship to the British past, and their role in building the future.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Through screencasts, self study and interaction in the online forum, gain a broad knowledge of late-Victorian developments and personalities.
- Demonstrate, by way of coursework, an ability to read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship and popular debates about late-Victorian social, political, economic and cultural change.
- Demonstrate, by way of coursework, an ability to understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source material and different scholarly approaches.
- Demonstrate, by way of forum participation and the course essay, the ability to develop and sustain scholarly arguments in written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence.
- Consider the implications of the knowledge gained in the course for understanding how the late-Victorian period differed from preceding and succeeding periods.
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Reading List
Mark Bevir, The making of British socialism (Princeton, 2011)
David Cannadine, Decline and fall of the British aristocracy (New Haven, 1990)
Stefan Collini, Public moralists: political thought and intellectual life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1993)
E.H.H. Green, The crisis of conservatism: the politics, economics and ideology of the British Conservative party, 1880-1914 (London, 1995)
Jose Harris, Private lives, public spirit: a social history of Britain, 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1993)
Stephen Heathorn, For home, country and race: constructing gender, class and Englishness in the elementary school classroom, 1880-1914 (Toronto, 2000)
Seth Koven, Slumming: sexual and social politics in Victorian London (Princeton, 2004)
Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: a study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society (Oxford, 1971)
Paul Townend, The road to home rule: anti-imperialism and the Irish national movement (Madison, Wisc., 2016)
Judith Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992) |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Assimilate, process and communicate a wide range of information from a variety of sources.
- Process and critically assess information derived from historical research, utilising theoretical and methodological knowledge and skills specific to the subject area.
- Provide clear written and oral analyses based on historical information.
- Master practical skills in accessing and interpreting historical sources.
- Undertake a sustained independent research project in the course essay, and complete it within a strict time limit.
- Construct and pursue a coherent argument driven by analysis of the primary source material.
- Analyse, assimilate and deploy critically a range of secondary literature relevant to the student's individual research subject.
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Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Benjamin Weinstein
Tel: (0131 6)50 3762
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: |
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