Overview

Example topics include... 1. The 1916 Easter Rising and its legacy. 2. Jewels and massacres: The British Empire and India. 3. Interwar nationalism in Scotland and Wales 4. The Second World War: Lions, Unicorns and national identity 5. The Stone of Scone and the Tryweryn controversy: symbolism in Scottish and Welsh nationalism. 6. The Crown: Monarchy and Britishness. 7. 'Rivers of Blood': Immigration, multiculturalism and race during the 1950s and 1960s, with a case study of Enoch Powell. 8. 'The rise of nationalism': Devolution discourse from the 1960s-1990s. 9. The Troubles, 'Terrorism' and murals: from Bloody Sunday to the Hunger Strikes 10. 'There ain't no black in the Union Jack': race and the National Front during the 1970s and 1980s. 11. The body and national identity: tattoos, clothes and food.

Assessment Strategy

-threshold -Threshold students (D- to D+) will have done only a minimum of reading, and their work will often be based partly on lecture notes and/or basic textbooks. They will demonstrate in their written assessments some knowledge of at least parts of the relevant field, and will make at least partially-successful attempts to frame an argument which engages with historical controversies, but they will fail to discuss some large and vital aspects of a topic; and/or deploy only some relevant material but partly fail to combine it into a coherent whole; and/or deploy some evidence to support individual points but often fail to do so and/or show difficulty weighing evidence (thereby relying on unsuitable or irrelevant evidence when making a point). Alternatively or additionally, the presentation of the work might also be poor, with bad grammar and/or punctuation, careless typos and spelling errors, and a lack of effective and correct referencing.

-good -Good students (B- to B+) will demonstrate a solid level of achievement and depth of knowledge, and will in addition exhibit constructive engagement with different types of historical writing and historiographical interpretation. Ideas will be communicated effectively and written work will include a good range of sources/reading and demonstrate a clear understanding of the issues and of the existing interpretations expressed in a well-structured, relevant, and focused argument. Students at the top end of this band will engage with and critique the ideas that they come across, and synthesise the various interpretations they find to reach their own considered conclusions. Written work will be correctly presented with references and bibliography where appropriate.

-excellent -Excellent students (A- and above) will show strong achievement across all the criteria combined with particularly impressive depths of knowledge and/or subtlety of analysis. In written work, they will support their arguments with a wealth of relevant detail/examples. They will also demonstrate an acute awareness of the relevant historiography and give an account of why the conclusions reached are important within a particular historical debate. They may show a particularly subtle approach to possible objections, nuancing their argument in the light of counter-examples, or producing an interesting synthesis of various contrasting positions. Overall, the standards of content, argument, and analysis expected will be consistently superior to top upper-second work. Standards of presentation will also be high.

-another level-Students in this band (C- to C+) will demonstrate a satisfactory range of achievement or depth of knowledge of most parts of the module, and will make successful, if occasionally inconsistent, attempts to develop those skills appropriate to the study of History at undergraduate level. In the case of the written assessments, the answers will attempt to focus on the question, although might drift into narrative, and will show some evidence of solid reading and research. The argument might lose direction and might not be adequately clear at the bottom of this category. Written work will be presented reasonably well with only limited errors in grammar, punctuation, and referencing, and not to the extent that they obscure meaning.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyse individual pieces of historical evidence very closely: setting them in context, judging their qualities as evidence, and explaining their significance.

• Critically appraise historiographical and inter-disciplinary debates and arguments by evaluating competing historical interpretations.

• Critically examine and compare academic interpretations to evaluate various manifestations of nationalism in the UK in the 20th century.

• Demonstrate a close engagement with a range of primary sources relating to nationalism and use them in constructing a historical argument.