War and Society - HIS00144H

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Module summary

War is one of the dominant themes of history and is capable of being studied from a wide variety of perspectives. Traditional military history has prioritised strategy, operations and the dynamic role of war in state formation. More recently, however, historians of war have begun to adopt methodologies from social and cultural history in order to understand how societies experience conflict and give meaning to it. Questions at the forefront of this new line of enquiry are the material as well as ideological resources people draw on to justify the use of violence and how warfare, in turn, transforms the very foundations societies are built on.

This course embraces all of these issues, and more, within a specifically comparative context, organising the subject of ‘war and society’ in a thematic manner and drawing specific comparisons about the themes over a wide variety of case studies. Most of the examples will be from the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries, but there will also be reference to earlier periods.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2024-25

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to the practice of comparative history;
• To enable students to acquire skills and understanding of that practice by studying a particular topic or theme; and
• To enable students to reflect on the possibilities and difficulties involved in comparative history
   

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Grasp the key approaches and challenges involved in comparative history;
• Understand a range of aspects of the topic or theme which they have studied;
• Be able to use and evaluate comparative approaches to that topic or theme; and
• Have learned to discuss and write about comparative history
   

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1, then a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in each of weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of the semester. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour plenaries/lectures and eight 2-hour seminars in all.
 
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. War, peace and combat in comparative perspective
2. Revolutions in military affairs
3. Laws of war
4. Ideology, propaganda and the objectives of war
5. Gender
6. Different forms of armed conflict
7. Ending war    
8. The commemoration and remembrance of war
    

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Open Examination	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For formative assessment work, students will produce an essay plan relating to the themes and issues of the module.
 
For summative assessment students will complete an Open Exam in the assessment period.
 

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Open Examination	100.0

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will receive written feedback, which may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss their feedback during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission. For semester 1 assessments, the tutor will be available during student hours of the following semester for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading: 

• John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Random House, 1993). 
• Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History (London: Routledge, 2004).