In his annual message to Congress on December 1st, 1862, Abraham Lincoln declared: “We cannot escape History”. It is our aim to ensure that none of our students would want to: indeed, every year a large majority opt for the subject. Situated in the newly refurbished Centenary building, History is an enthusiastic and energetic department where we relish a collaborative engagement with the past. We believe that what we teach is vitally important. History allows our students to access both the heady sense of difference and escapism to be found in Roy Jenkins’ “rich tapestry” of the past at the same time as it develops in them the means by which they might participate intelligently in the world.
Our teaching covers a range of periods and countries from the French Revolutions and Victorian Britain, to India, the Soviet Union and civil rights in America, all the way through to recent conflicts in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. We have eight energetic and inspiring members of staff, each with different specialisms, and have recently enjoyed trips to New York, Washington and the French and Belgian battlefields. Both the new History Library (replete with coffee and armchairs) and the New Block classrooms are open throughout the day and into the evenings, for one-to-ones, consolidation and extension activities, or simply as a place for students to settle down to independent study as part of an active intellectual community. As a result, we take great pleasure together in our exploration of L.P. Hartley’s “foreign country”.
Jo Doidge-Harrison, Head of History
Upper College Extension History Programme:
5.15-6.00pm every Friday (see Department boards for dates and locations)
- Does History Teach Morality? The Chatham House Version
(Please note 15 minutes of reading to be collected in advance from MDJ)
- History and Ideology of the Conservative Party
- The Slavery of Fear in the Antebellum South
- The Role of the Individual in History
(Please note 15 minutes of reading to be collected in advance from JEDH)
- Who Writes History?
- History and Ideology of the Labour Party
- The Mau Mau: A Document Study
- Oral History: Does it Refresh the Parts other Histories cannot reach?