Telling stories about oneself and expressing intimate emotions, desires and experiences has become a defining feature of modern life. This course will explore...

Personal Testimonies of Twentieth Century Britain (HIST0537)

Telling stories about oneself and expressing intimate emotions, desires and experiences has become a defining feature of modern life. This course will explore the historical development of this urge to confess in twentieth-century Britain. We will examine a range of forms of personal testimony from letters, diaries and autobiographies, to medical case histories, documentaries and oral histories. Each of these media allowed the narrator to shape their stories in particular ways and offer specific challenges and opportunities to the historian. How, for example, did letters home from the Front in the First World War provide possibilities for certain types of narrative while inhibiting others? Could soldiers tell their families about their experiences of fear and physical discomfort or did they construct accounts of courage and patriotism? We will consider the historical conditions which prompted a culture of personal testimonies and how the telling of intimate stories has facilitated the development of a politics of identity in modern Britain. The accounts we will study demonstrate the diversity of experience and identity in twentieth-century Britain, exploring accounts of sexual marginalisation, racial discrimination, feminist activism and ‘ordinary’ working-class life. The Special Subject will prepare students to develop dissertation topics on Modern British History and using a variety of written, oral and visual sources.

This module is for half-year affiliate students only. Please see the 30-credit full-year version, HIST0470, for the full module description.

Please be aware...

Crown Church and Estates in Central Europe 1500-1700 A (HIST0471)

This module is for half-year affiliate students only. Please see the 30-credit full-year version, HIST0470, for the full module description.

Please be aware that you will only be covering half of the module content described in the full module description (content covered in Term 1 or Term 2, depending on your time with us).

If you require any further information, please contact the History Taught Programmes Team.