You'll take two combined classes: French 1A (semester 1), French 1B (semester 2). These courses are mainly organised around a linguistic progression towards level B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. There's a regular input of cultural background which takes the form of three lectures in semester 1 and two in semester 2 covering the following topics:

• The Making of Modern France
• France in a Global Context
• Understanding the French Republic
• French Identities
• Contemporary French Society 

In addition, there's an introductory lecture in semester 2 entitled ‘What is translation about?’.

This class introduces you to the core principles, skills and sources in History. You will learn about key debates and controversies through historical case studies, including immigration, nationalism, terrorism, institutional care, vaccination, childhood and diplomacy. Through examining these case studies you develop critical analysis and communication skills. The class entails one lecture and one tutorial each week, which will involve the examination of select sources, as well as a discussion of that week's topic.

You will learn about important transformations in the British economy, society, culture and politics over more than three centuries. You will explore how Britain and British people have impacted cultures and societies across the globe, and how these interactions shaped British society. As in semester 1, this class entails one lecture and one tutorial each week, which will involve the examination of select sources, as well as a discussion of that week's topic

Cultural focus: time (35 hour week, RTT and ‘ponts’, paternity/maternity leave, …) & ‘human resources’ (hierarchical organisation, discrimination, unions, relocation,…)

Linguistic focus: the negation, asking questions, using pronouns.

Cultural focus: the origins of the European ideal, Europe and the EU viewed from France.

Linguistic focus: subjunctive mood.

Cultural focus: a historical view of immigration in France and a look at the specificity of the French ‘integration’ system.

Linguistic focus: the system of tenses in French (concentrating on past tenses).

Cultural focus: a further look (after first year) at French politics, concentrating on topical issues.

Linguistic focus: modal verbs.

Cultural focus: decentralisation, importance of regions in France.

Linguistic focus: the passive voice.

Cultural focus: the French economy (role of the state, …), marketing à la française

Linguistic focus: equivalent of –ing in French.

In addition, students specialising in French take the French Culture and History 2 class. This class focuses on the Occupation and French Colonialism/Decolonisation. The historical context for each topic is first set, and documents from the two periods studied, before discussion moves on to the cultural domain, via analysis of the following texts and films:

• Au Revoir les Enfants (film, Malle)
• Stupeur et Tremblements (text, Nothomb)
• L'Étranger (text, Camus)
• Le Samourai (film, Melville)
• Anthology of historical texts relating to the Second World War
• Anthology of historical texts relating to French Colonialism/Immigration

This class provides an introduction to Glasgow’s history, culture and identity from its origins to the present day. An interdisciplinary and international perspective will adopted throughout the course and Glasgow will serve as a lens through which students will be exposed to the various factors (politics, religion, geography, immigration, health, culture, science and technology) that impact upon a place and how it is perceived by the world.

This class provides a broad introduction to the historical relationship between diseases and human societies in the early modern and modern periods. It examines the core thesis that diseases and other health conditions have had dramatic impacts on history, shaping economic relations, political and social structures and cultural and religious beliefs. However, it also explores the reverse of this, the thesis that human activities, ideas and behaviours have radically altered the diseases and conditions that afflict our societies over the last five hundred years. The course is grouped around three themes, infectious disease, chronic disease, and society's responses to disease.

This class examines the relationship between war and society over the past 100 years, particularly the everyday experience, memory and representation of modern conflict. Focusing predominantly on the two World Wars, but also looking at more recent conflicts such as the Cold War, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, the class is informed by national and transnational perspectives and adopts a range of historical approaches, including military history, social and cultural history, gender history, life history and the history of trauma. Drawing on a variety of sources, including official reports, propaganda, films, images and personal testimonies, we will examine how war has been studied in political, social, legal, economic, ethical and cultural terms.

This class examines the International History of Europe from 1914 to 2022, a period marked by:

• world wars
• revolutions
• Cold War rivalry
• decolonisation
• the beginnings of European integration
• Brexit
• Russian invasion of Ukraine

From the legacies of empire to the global consequences of European wars, students will examine how Europe has influenced, and been influenced by, the international order. 

Cultural focus: a historical review of slavery and a look at modern forms of slavery.

Linguistic focus: reinforcement work on subjunctive mood, passive voice and negative forms.

Cultural focus: the impact of consumerism on the environment.

Linguistic focus: adjectives and comparative, hypothesis, conditional mood.

Cultural focus: a look at current issues in the French education system.

Linguistic focus: reported speech, imperative mood, a further look at pronouns.

Cultural focus: practical module aiming at preparing students for the year abroad.

There is also a French Studies 3 class: Freedom and Identity in France and the Francophone world. This class is based on the study of the following texts and films as examples of the treatment of the class’s twin themes:

• Milou en mai (film, Malle)
• Poverty (various texts)
• The Dreyfus Affair (various historical texts)
• Monsieur Klein (film, Losey)
• Rue des Boutiques Obscures (text, Modiano)
• National Identity in the Third Republic (various historical texts)

This module examines the maritime dimensions of the Atlantic world in the early modern period, moving away from the dominant landed view of empire to delve into the seascapes that underpinned and shaped the development of Atlantic empires and the modern world more generally. Focusing on maritime activities and possessions throughout the Atlantic Ocean, including Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, you will investigate how the ocean was more than a passive highway for the movement of diverse goods, peoples, and ideas but was also as an active force in that history, which shaped where, when, and how such movement occurred. 

This module examines the political, ideological, military, intelligence and cultural rivalries that defined the Cold War, with particular emphasis on their enduring significance for understanding the contemporary international order. This module moves beyond traditional bipolar interpretations centred on the United States and the Soviet Union, and instead critically assess the agency of European powers within the Cold War system.

This is a social history class on everyday life and the Troubles in the north of Ireland. Much of the historiography of the war in Northern Ireland (NI) has focused on the dynamics of the conflict and on the political manoeuvring that orbited those dynamics. This module takes a different tack to consider everyday life during the Troubles, and in particular the way in which people from the north of Ireland intervened in everyday life in both mundane and spectacular ways.

Drawing on various case studies (housing protests and the emergence of social housing; the feminist movement; the punk scene; gay and lesbian activism; prisons and imprisonment), you will engage with oral histories, documentaries, novels and other primary sources to consider how these movements emerged from and related to the war. In doing so, you will become aware of the global dimensions of a conflict sometimes misunderstood as atavistic or anachronistic, the connections between Irish and British social history, and the issues around 'dealing with the past' in contemporary NI.

The study of war has, until recently, tended to focus upon leaders, combatants and military strategies. This module, however, will analyse the experience of civilians on the Home Front, using World War Two Britain as a case study. An exploration of the cultural representations of non-combatant roles in war will be central to this module and we will engage with the historical debate about the relationship between war and social change. It will take a thematic approach and aims to make you familiar with both events and themes in the history of the Home Front.

This class examines the institution of slavery in different historical periods and in different regions of the world. Beginning with definitions of slavery, the class will examine slave-holding in ancient Greece and Rome, Asian and African forms of slavery, the Atlantic slave trade and the development of slave-based economies and societies in the New World. Among the themes to be considered will be the status of slaves and slaveholders in different societies; the economic significance of slavery and slave trading; the demography of slavery; issues of race, religion, gender and slavery; the survival of slave cultures; slave rebellion; the role of female slaves; the meaning of freedom in slave-holding societies; pro- and anti-slavery opinion and abolition.  There will be opportunities for comparison with other systems of bondage, such as serfdom and indentured servitude.

This class offers third year students the opportunity to spend eight weeks on a placement of their choice where their wider historical knowledge and set of skills can be applied; placements can range from museums, libraries, archives, historical associations to schools, charities, community organisations, healthcare providers, local authorities. This module aims to provide you 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 as well as the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia. 

This class is compulsory for students who want to study history at Honours level.

It introduces you to the methods used by historians to reconstruct the past, exploring and analysing the techniques used by historians in doing primary research. The class is designed to demonstrate how you can use these techniques in your own work, particularly your 4th year/Honours dissertation. The class will introduce you to the subject of historiography – the history of history – and the ways in which our understanding and construction of history has evolved. The class is designed to promote independent learning and encourage you to reflect more deeply on the subject matter.

This class explores how mental illness has been explained, treated and experienced, from ancient times to the present, particularly in western cultures. Mental illness has been and continues to be one of the most controversial areas of health and medicine and one of the goals of this module is to examine why this has been the case. You will investigate not only how thinking about mental illness has changed over time, but also the many cultural, economic. technological and political factors that have influenced notions about mental health and psychiatry. You will engage with, and think critically about, primary sources ranging from popular literature and film to newspaper articles and medical studies.

Who are the Irish diaspora? This class explores the history of the Irish diaspora and the relationships between migrants and the homeland. It examines the history of Irish people in a variety of locations, including Scotland, England, the United States, Argentina and Australasia, and also investigates how emigrants shaped the history of Ireland itself. We focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and examine themes of political activism, labour, religion, gender, ethnicity, race and discrimination. We will also examine the relationship of the Irish diaspora to major events of modern Irish history: the Great Famine and the Irish Revolution. 

The Russia Revolution of 1917 was a seminal event in the history of the Twentieth Century and it changed the world. This module introduces you to major debates in the history of the Russian Revolution, especially through the eyes of those who either participated in revolutionary events or were affected by it. In particular, the course aims to combine discussion of key interpretive texts with an analysis of eye-witness accounts, memoirs, as well as rich cultural production-poems, art, and literature - which was inspired by the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Arranged chronologically, ‘The Russian Revolution’ covers the Bolshevik victory in 1917, the Russian Civil War, and investigates the first ten years of Bolshevik rule.

This class examines the social history of drugs and medicines in modern societies, looking at why access to powerful medicines has been restricted, the reasons that useful medical innovations have often been rejected, and the social and cultural change driven by the introduction of new products and substances. The module is taught through weekly lectures and seminars.

The class provides a broad survey of Scottish social history since 1914. The aim of this class is to explore the nature and development of Scottish society in the twentieth century by assessing the impact of industrialisation and the problems associated with de-industrialisation, as well as the development of an urban society. By the end, you should have expanded your knowledge of contemporary Scottish history and have a good idea of the diversity of issues, techniques and arguments which historians have deployed in the study of twentieth-century Scotland.

The language course is based on a series of thematic dossiers dealing with current issues in France and the Francophone world. The focus of the class is on reinforcing and developing key professional language skills, such as translation into English, translation into French, liaison interpreting, and 'exposé' (formal oral presentation).

Students in Joint Honours French will additionally have one or more French Studies 4 classes. Everyone will take the Core Class, Images of Women, which considers the changing portrayal of women over the centuries, using the following texts as the basis of discussion:

• Madame Bovary (novel, Flaubert)
• Fatale (novel, Manchette)
• L’événement (Ernaux, novel)
• Women in the Paris Commune of 1871 (various historical documents)

Joint Honours students not writing a dissertation in French will take these two further classes:

• The Occupation and its portrayal in French films
• France since 1945

The class offers an introduction to the Environmental Humanities through an investigation of human-environment relations from the fifteenth century to the modern day, charting a crucial period of colonialism, commercialism, and globalisation that has shaped how environments are conceptualised, represented, and engaged with across time, space, and cultures. You will examine human attempts to manage, control, know, and live with diverse environments, such as soil, forests, oceans, and lakes.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 sets out a universalising idea of childhood which is assumed to apply across the world.  However, childhood is not a self-evident biological category, but a social construct that has varied across time and space.  By focusing on nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this class seeks to understand how childhood has been imagined throughout history; how children’s lives have been impacted by that changing definition; and how a particular construction of childhood, which emerged in the context of modern Europe, has come to be viewed as universal. 

This class looks at the period of Covenanting rule in Scotland within the wider context of early modern British and European History. Its focus is on the period 1637 to 1651, from the emergence of the Covenanting movement to the Cromwellian conquest of Scotland. These were some of the most turbulent years in British History. In addition to considering political, economic, military, diplomatic, religious and constitutional issues, the course also examines social issues in the context of the drive for a godly society and a significant amount of witch-hunting.

Sexual practices and attitudes to sex have changed dramatically since the nineteenth century. This module will examine how and why these have been transformed through an exploration of the social, cultural and medical history of sex and reproductive health in modern Britain and Ireland from the late Victorian period to beyond the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. How was sexuality understood by ‘ordinary’ people, the state and the medical profession? How did men and women limit their families? How did sexual and contraceptive practices change over time? In addition to answering these questions, you will examine how sexuality was understood and defined by the medical profession and how responses to reproductive health issues were shaped and influenced by social, political and cultural factors.

As well as introducing you to the main secondary readings on these topics, you will get to grips with a range of primary sources including individuals’ and patients’ narratives, literary texts, visual sources and films. We will assess the power of governments over men and women’s sexual and reproductive rights, for example, through an examination of debates over the legalization of contraception and abortion in two different cultural contexts.

We will also investigate the interactions between sexuality and public health, for instance, by exploring the history of venereal disease and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

You will additionally explore topics such as dating and popular culture, adolescence, sex education, and the sexual revolution, assessing the interactions between sexuality, medicine and society over a period of rapid social change.  

This special subject honours module introduces you to youth cultures of protest, resistance and activism in post-war Britain. The class will discuss movements across Britain, with a focus on Glasgow’s radical history – you will be encouraged to think about major political events ‘from below’ by examining how ‘ordinary’ young people in Britain challenged, influenced or reacted to government policies, state infrastructures and global political events.

You will consider questions like:

• What were the relationships between social movements, youth culture and the state, between organized political parties and spontaneous protests, between activism and humanitarianism?
• What gains were made as a result of political struggles and social movements in this period and what demands were defeated?
• How did social movements and youth subcultures influence popular culture or reimagine everyday spaces, places, institutions and practices?
• What can these histories tell us about how we understand gender, race, class, sexuality, youth, subcultures, work, migration, family life, infrastructure and the environment in Britain today?

More frequently than ever before, secret intelligence has become front-page news. Intelligence and security studies rank among the fastest-growing areas of academic research and public interest. However, the significance of recent intelligence can only be fully understood from a long-term perspective. In the past, learning the historical lessons of intelligence was challenging, more so than for any other profession, primarily because there was scant record of much of its past experiences. Nonetheless, the declassification of archival documents offers us an invaluable and largely unexplored field. This class aims to uncover some of the lost history of global intelligence, to illustrate how it reshapes current historiography, and to highlight its ongoing relevance to intelligence in the twenty-first century. Today, more than ever, national governments, global agencies, and significant multinational corporations have an escalating demand for experts with a profound understanding of intelligence issues, and who can exhibit exceptional analytical and judgment skills.

This special subject module examines the history of modern terrorism and political violence. Each seminar explores the challenges and problems associated with conceptualising terrorism through focusing on primary sources concerning key moments in the development of political violence in a variety of historical contexts.

In Part I of this class we investigate both state and insurrectionary terrorism mainly in the long-nineteenth century, beginning with the French Revolution, then moving to the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth century, colonial violence, white-supremacist terrorism in the United States, to the Suffragettes on the eve of the First World War. The key readings include primary materials such as the Russian terrorist Nechaev’s ‘revolutionary catechism’, anarchists’ court speeches, and Irish nationalists’ private letters about bombing London.

Throughout the course, we will discuss different historical and social science approaches to terrorism, its political uses, and reflect on how it has been represented in media. In doing so, we investigate a topic which holds vital significance in today’s society, though historical perspectives are too often absent from contemporary debates.

This special subject module provides an analysis of the key events and debates in the history of pharmacy.  It studies the creation of pharmacy as a profession from the Greco-Roman traditions, through the medieval apothecary guilds to the establishment of pharmacy education at university level in the twentieth century.  It assesses the struggles between doctors and pharmacists for the rights to dispense prescriptions and to control the medicinal markets and the historical roots of the division within pharmacy between the individual dispensing pharmacists and the establishment of the drug- store chains such as Boots in Britain and Walgreens in the USA.  

The class analyses the ways in which governments have regulated pharmacy defining between professionals and ‘quacks’.  It also studies the historical interaction between society and pharmacy, the challenges posed by the advent of the consumer society, the relationship between the pharmacist and the market and the impact on the drug trade of welfare medicine.

This special subject module introduces you to the social history of women in Ireland over 150 years from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, a period of rapid social and cultural change in the country. The class will appeal if you are interested in understanding how women’s experiences in Ireland have changed over the period and how these experiences have been shaped by gender, religion and class. You will have the opportunity to utilise a range of primary sources, such as women’s magazines, memoirs and personal accounts, feminist publications, novels and literature, as well as drawing on contemporary film sources. We will explore the experiences of women both inside and outside the home, looking at themes such as education and work, institutionalisation, emigration, women's activism, sex work, philanthropy and criminality, as well as private matters such as contraception, marriage, sexuality, and pregnancy. In Semester 1, we will broadly focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in Semester 2 we will broadly focus on the later twentieth century.

This special subject module involves the detailed study of the 1703 to 1707 period in terms of the making and ratification of the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. The focus of the class is on the use of primary sources and close reading and interpretation of specialised historiography. You are fully encouraged to articulate and develop your own arguments and thoughts, with regard to some of the most controversial areas of Scotland’s past.

This special subject module examines the debates surrounding the history of European integration with particular focus on the impact of British and French foreign policies on the process and evolution of European unity. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, you will develop a critical understanding of the major underlying forces that shaped British and French policies during the period under discussion and assess these policies in the wider context of the international history after 1945. These classes will examine the discussions about European unity that emerged following the Second World War, key developments on the road to closer integration such as the European Coal and Steel Community. You will assess the significance of the Treaties of Rome and examine the themes and deliberations surrounding the European Community’s enlargement. This class will consider the shifting and contested nature of the rhetoric associated with the political integration of Europe and the impact of Britain’s entry.

This class aims to engage you in the examination of themes related to twentieth century political history, as well as the history of communication and of warfare. Through the systematic use of a variety of primary sources, this class is also designed to help you develop a strong appreciation of theories and methodologies of historical research, key skills of the history graduate. This module examines means by which states conduct informal activities to promote their domestic and foreign objectives. In particular, it analyses the role of propaganda throughout the twentieth century, focusing on the use of modern mass communication and technology as well as the relationship between media and state and non-state actors. The class is structured around a number of historical themes, which help shed light on the emergence of propaganda, its interpretation and perception. Key themes analysed throughout the course include the First World War and Second World War as examples of ‘total war’; the growth of international radio broadcasting; the creation of centralised propaganda machines in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy in a comparative dimension. During seminars, you will be exposed to relevant primary source material. Particular attention will be given to understanding the theory and practice of propaganda and analysing how technological developments have contributed to shape modern information and mass persuasion.

This 20-credit module offers Honours students the opportunity to spend a minimum of 42 hours and up to 77 hours on a placement of their choice where their knowledge of French language and Francophone cultures as well as their set of skills can be applied; placements can range from teaching, translating, interpreting to tour guiding, doing research, etc. in situ or remotely.

This module aims to apply your language skills to real-life experiences and allow you to become more acquainted with industry-level expectations.

Learn more about what you can do as part of your placement.