In the first year of your history degree, we introduce you to some major historical themes such as the growth of the modern nation state or the rise of the Atlantic world. We’ll also show how new approaches can illuminate the past. Crime and vice in the 19th century, for example, looks at how Victorians dealt with drug taking and how contemporary newspapers covered the Jack the Ripper murders. The second and third years allow you to specialise in areas that interest you most. Our lecturers draw from their own research, whether that’s on early modern magic, the treatment of World War One veterans suffering from shell shock, women in modern Britain, or the USA in the 1960s.

Year One: History Degree

• Introduction to History
  How will you study history at university, and what can history do for you after graduation? This module shows how you can accumulate skills to succeed at university and beyond.

• The Atlantic and Making of the Modern World 1 and 2
  In 1500 the richest parts of the world lay in China and India. By 1900, that had changed completely. What happened in the centuries after 1500? Find out how a new ‘Atlantic system’ caused millions to be enslaved. How it changed the way we eat. How it overturned long-accepted ideas about the power of monarchs… and much else besides.

• Nations and Empires: The Making of Modern Europe, 1750-present
  Most nationalists claim that they represent an old nation whose roots can be traced back hundreds of years. In reality, nationalism is something new, with a history which has shaped modern Europe. Discover how an age of nationalism and nations could become an age of empires.

• Crime, Vice and Lowlife in the Nineteenth Century
  How did Victorians think about crime? Why did late Victorians write to ask Sherlock Holmes for assistance? What do the Jack the Ripper murders tell us about the late 1880s? This module enters the world of the Victorian slum – and asks if we can trust descriptions we’ve received from the nineteenth century.

• Science, Magic and Learning in Early Modern Europe
  In a world of alchemists and astrologers, what was science and what was magic? Learn what monsters, musical planets, the search for Atlantis and the quest for the philosopher’s stone did for modern science.

The second and third years of the history degree allow you to specialise in areas that most interest you.

Year Two: History Degree

• Approaches to History (20 credits)
  How does a historian find and tackle sources: from medieval cartoons to yesterday’s photographs, from military documents to local newspapers? How do we form new questions about old material? This module is the essential training for your third-year dissertation.
  
  
• Work-based Learning (20 credits)
  Develop a project in a professional workplace, supported and assessed by historians. This module can be adapted to your interests, ambitions and circumstances. For example, current second-year students are working to organise special events at local museums.

You will also study 100 credits of optional modules. Options available may include:

• American Violence, Crime and Warfare
  Trace the origins and history of American violence: the slave trade, the near-destruction of Native American civilization, military interventions abroad, state violence against citizenry, criminal violence, vigilantism, serial killer phenomena, movie and media-inspired violence.

• Poor Lives: Poverty, Welfare and History
  The life of the poor in history: What was the role of the dreaded workhouse? Why did many Victorian philanthropists think food aid was ‘evil’? What happened when savage cuts were made to welfare in the 1870s?

• The Tudor Myth: 1485 to the present
  The Tudors are one of the world’s most celebrated dynasties – and worked hard for their image. How did Henry VIII and Elizabeth I shape the myth of a Tudor Golden Age? How has the myth survived, through maps and portraits, literature and film to the present day?

• The Russian Revolutions and the Soviet Union, (1917-1953)
  Wars, revolution & revolutionaries from Lenin to Stalin! Mass movements for rights and freedoms followed by dictatorship; opportunities for human advance flawed by terror on an unprecedented scale. Study the defining events of the twentieth century.

• Germany: Memory, Identity and Public History
  This module examines key ideas and experiences which have shaped different versions of a German cultural or national identity in the modern period (c. 1500-1989). It considers how these identities are reflected and challenged through public history: through popular narratives and political controversies, at museums, sites of memory and virtual spaces.
  
  
• Women in Modern Britain
  Students will examine the range of identities available to women in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the institutions that governed their lives and relationships, and the various forms that resistance and revolution took in this period.

• Must Rhodes Fall? Imperial History and the Politics of Race and Nation in Contemporary Britain (Also available in Year 3)
  This module will explore imperial history as a currency of politics that has been at the centre of controversies not only on campuses and among academics, but also in court rooms, galleries and museums and on the streets. Students will learn to negotiate and think critically about politicised histories of empire, as well as to analyse the manifestation of historiography through public interventions in history, whether on social media or television

Year Three: History Degree

• Dissertation (40 credits)
  Put simply, a dissertation is an extended essay on a research topic of your choosing. At this stage, you become a practicing historian in your own right. It’s both the most challenging and the most rewarding piece of work you’ll do. Be ambitious: the best have been published in academic journals.

You will also study 80 credits of optional modules. Options available may include:

• America in the Sixties
  This module gets to grips with the myths and the realities of one of America’s most turbulent and controversial decades. It explores topics such as the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and the growth of a counter-culture.
  
  
• A Global History of the Nuclear Age
  How the nuclear age connects us across space and time – and what it can mean in those changing contexts – lies at the heart of this module and shapes our understanding of ‘the global’. The structure of this module mirrors the nuclear lifecycle, beginning with uranium mining in the Congo and ending with the environmental and humanitarian impacts from nuclear tests around the world. Along the way, we will be joined on Skype by artists, campaigners, filmmakers and nuclear veterans who continue to experience and inform us about the legacies and present-day politics of the nuclear age in the twenty-first century.
  
  
• The Ending of Atlantic Slavery
  The ending of Atlantic slavery was neither quick, nor easy, nor straightforward. As late as the 1850s slavery seemed to be an inevitable and irreplaceable part of life across swathes of the New World. Yet ‘Atlantic system’ slavery did perish. Its downfall raises fundamental questions about how historical change comes about.
  
  
• Urban Wales, c.1860-1914: Culture, Society and Popular Politics
  Study the vibrant, exciting, boisterous world of industrial Wales – the Rhondda (greatest coal-exporting area…in the world), Cardiff (greatest coal-exporting port…in the world), Merthyr (premier iron-producing town…in the world). How did rugby became the Welsh working class sport? Was Wales really a ‘land of song’? Learn how the past ‘made’ today’s Wales.
  
  
• Witchcraft and Deviance in Early Modern Societies
  What was considered immoral, or criminal, in the past? Discover why fifty thousand people were executed for the imaginary crime of witchcraft and how attitudes to sex, adultery, and even morris dancing have changed.
  
  
• Fronteirs: A Global History 
  Frontiers are frequently seen as the boundary between modernity and more archaic forms of social organization. The American West provides the classic example. This module examines the distinguishing features, functions and key themes in the history of a range of frontiers throughout time and space.
  
  
• Work-based Learning
  Develop a project in a professional workplace, supported and assessed by historians. This module can be adapted to your interests, ambitions and circumstances. For example, current third-year students are working with secondary teachers to develop course materials and gain classroom practice.
  
  
• The Great War: Global and Local
  This module asks why nations in Europe and beyond went to war, and how the conflict engaged - or marginalised - different groups. What did the First World War mean for the working classes? How did it affect Britain's women, to 1918 and beyond? How did nationalists from Ireland to Poland support the war effort, or subvert it? And how have winners and losers remembered the war since 1918?

• Words of Power: Britain's Languages, c1500-1800

Studying history provides many transferable skills that are valued highly by employers. It’s the perfect training in how to research, evaluate and communicate information.History prepares you for employment in a variety of professions. Your studies at USW will extend your written and verbal communication skills, encourage self management and teamwork, and analytical thinking. We also offer career planning and skills support from year one of the history degree. History graduates enter a wide variety of careers in education, industry and commerce, heritage management, museums, public services, the voluntary sector, and the media. Many graduates continue their studies and research at postgraduate level.

Graduates from the University of South Wales history degree have established a wide variety of careers in education, industry and commerce, public services, the voluntary sector and the media. Many also progress to postgraduate study and research. Many graduate careers are directly related to history: you can use our history degree to apply for a PGCE and train as a secondary school teacher, or you can gain knowledge and experience of the heritage sector in the course of your degree. Whilst others go on to careers which aren’t directly related to the subject, but require professionals who can work independently and creatively, master a subject and communicate clearly. As a widely respected degree subject, history can lead to jobs in public and private sector management, banking, finance, politics, journalism, new media, public relations and charities.