MSc/PgDip Historical Studies

You'll be introduced to methodological and practical issues in historical research.

This class explores the diplomacy of the post war world. It will provide students with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the key international issues faced by Britain, France and the United States after the Second World War. Students will examine the issues which strengthened the post-war alliance and those which challenged it.

This class examines cultural, religious, social and political conditions that favoured the emergence of an Arab political national identity in its regional variants. It considers a number of case studies and will examine the origins and development of Arab nationalist movements and their contribution to the creation of nation-states in the Middle East.

Advanced Oral History allows you to explore advanced oral history theory and practices as a valuable means of understanding the past. In weekly seminars, we'll examine the advantages and limitations of oral history as both a research methodology and an outcome by reading and discussing key texts written by leading oral historians and related practitioners. In addition, you'll gain practical experience designing and implementing a mini oral history project directly related to your postgraduate dissertation.

This class will teach students how to read handwriting from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries.  It will introduce students to different types of hand (e.g. secretary) and the various contractions often used in documents from the early modern period.  

This class analyses core debates in the History of Pharmaceutical Science and the History of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

It uses a series of cases studies including: the establishment of pharmacology as a medical science, standardisation and the quality of medications, the globalisation of the medicinal market, pharmaceutical legislation, drug scandals and the politics of pharmaceutics.

Through analysis of the historiography and primary materials, students will engage with the ethical debates which have accompanied the rise of the pharmaceutical industry as a global giant.

This class explores the changing concepts of death in war in the European conflicts between the French Revolution and the First World War. From being left on battlefields to being granted permanent resting-places and being remembered in war memorials, this period saw fundamental shifts in practices and attitudes towards soldiers’ death in war. Students will therefore analyse the efforts to create meaning for soldiers’ sacrifices and to inspire future generations to follow in their footsteps. The underlying themes of this class will be the emergence of national sentiment and national consciousness and the role of religion in concepts of sacrifice in war. The class will focus upon Europe (including Britain), but comparisons will also be made with the American Civil War, in which treatment of the war dead and memorialisation shifted fundamentally, prefiguring changes that were to occur with the Franco-Prussian War only a few years later.

In this class, you'll explore radical political movements in the complex transnational space between Ireland and its massive diaspora, from the Great Famine to the Irish Revolution. Focusing on a set number of individual lives, you'll examine how Irish emigrants connected with their homeland and with other centres of Irish settlement, and mobilised in movements for social reform and national independence. You'll investigate the roles of class, gender and generation in political mobilisation, and identify how Irish nationalism connected with international reform movements of the era, including socialism, feminism and humanitarianism.

This class offers students the opportunity to spend eight weeks in a placement of their choice with museums, archives, historical associations and healthcare providers (only for students registered with the MSc in Health History) in Glasgow.

This module aims to provide students with an insight into the day-to-day workings of an organisation, in order to develop history-specific vocational skills and promote reflection on employability and also on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia.

The module provides a vocational component to the History postgraduate taught portfolio, and aligns with similar provisions planned by the School of Humanities.

It may be of particular interest to those MA students not planning to pursue a PhD after their studies. Students will be asked to complete a small project or piece of research for their host and to write a reflective essay on their experience.

This class explores the development of the British empire throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans between 1590 and 1720. Focusing on the comparative analysis of two settlements each week, students will explore diverse themes including piracy, slavery, trade, religion, settler-indigenous relations, disease, and colonial rebellion. Throughout the course of the module, students will cover cash-crop plantations like Virginia and Jamaica, religious colonies like Massachusetts Bay and Maryland, commercial bases like Bombay and the Gold Coast, and piratical outposts like Campeche and Madagascar. In doing so, students will investigate the ways in which empire was formed through the haphazard activities of individuals operating throughout Britain, the Caribbean, North America, Africa, and India. In assessing the means, methods, and consequences of these projects, students will engage with a wide range of primary sources including settlers' journals, official letters, voyage logs, and political pamphlets. Students will also be encouraged to shape the class assignment to match their own particular interests.

This postgraduate module examines the relationship between Scotland and Ulster in terms of the 'Three Kingdoms History' of the early modern period and how this then developed and interacted in the context of colonial North America in the eighteenth century. The module examines the Plantation of Ulster and its impact; Scotland, Ulster and the British Civil Wars; Restoration links between Scotland and Ulster, c. 1660-88; The Williamite revolution and Scottish migration to Ulster in the 1690s; Ulster migration to colonial North America in the eighteenth century and Scots v. Scotch-Irish/Scots-Irish. Conflict in a colonial context? Historiography, sources and debates will be discussed in the class and students will be given information on key resources and how to access them. Guidance on primary sources and manuscripts will be given. Students are strongly encouraged to develop and consolidate their knowledge of primary sources and transcribed manuscripts within a broader historiographical context.

This class examines aspects of historical debates surrounding race and social inequality in American history prior to the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. We will discuss changes in the economic and social position of African Americans in the first quarter of the 20th Century in the southern and northern United States. In particular, we will look at the effects of the Jim Crow segregation laws, black migration and its causes, the impact of World War I on the black population and race relations, the functions of racial violence and the reasons for the decline in lynching, and changes in African-American employment, leadership and artistic expression. Competing black ideologies and prescriptions for progress will also be examined, including intellectual elitism, radical equal rights protest, nationalism, socialism and accommodation.

The centenary of the First World War has led to extensive research in a range of areas, including an exploration of the role of colonial troops in the war effort. This course aims to draw on this research in order to provide students with an understanding of these issues within a wider context: i.e. why did the ideology behind French colonialism lead to the use of black troops on the battlefield? What was the legacy during the interwar period of African participation in the war, both in Africa and in France? Did the participation of colonial troops in the Second World War lead to different outcomes to those that followed WW1?

You’ll research a topic of your choice, under the supervision of a member of the programme staff. You’ll be able to use the extensive archive holdings relating to the history of medicine and of health and healthcare available in Glasgow and elsewhere in Central Scotland.