Living in England, 1600-1800 - HIS00166I

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Module summary

This module explores the experience of living in England in two centuries of dramatic demographic and industrial change. What was it like to live in a village? What challenges did a migrant to London face? To what communities did individuals feel they belonged? Who could read and what did they read? How did people organise their time? What did they eat and drink? We will explore these sorts of questions by studying three broad topics: urban and rural communities; the cultural, social and economic connections between people; and, as far as possible, what everyday life was like. Particular attention will be paid to the variation in experience and identity across gender, rank, region, race and age, as well as between the rural and the urban.

This module places deliberate emphasis on a wider range of materials than you may have been exposed to before. We will discuss recent scholarship and study primary materials such as maps, paintings, diaries, letters, travel accounts, published guidebooks, institutional and legal records. Through various different approaches - for example, particular case studies and the crossing of conventional time periods - we will challenge the various ways that historians ‘cut up' the past, and the implications this has for our understanding of the history of English life in this period.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2024-25

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with the opportunity to study particular historical topics in depth
• To develop students’ ability to examine a topic from a range of perspectives and to strengthen their ability to work critically and reflectively with secondary and primary material
   

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will: 

• Have acquired a deep knowledge of the specific topic studied
• Have developed their ability to use and synthesise a range of primary and secondary sources
• Be able to evaluate the arguments that historians have made about the topic studied
• Have developed their ability to study independently through seminar-based teaching
   

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW) during which there are no seminars. 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. The Lie of the Land: Birth, Marriage and Death
2. The Town Mouse: Urbanisation and Urban Life
3. The Country Mouse: Agrarian and Industrial Changes
4. Peddling Your Wares: Buying and Selling
5. The Rhythms of Daily Life: Sleeping, Eating and Drinking 
6. Three Score Years and Ten: Childhood, Youth and Old Age 
7. Spreading the News: Oral and Print Cultures    
8. London: A Special Case?
    

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For formative assessment, students will complete a referenced 1200 to 1500-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This will be submitted in either the Week 5 or Week 9 RAW week (on the day of the weekly seminar).

For summative assessment, students will complete an Assessed Essay (2000 words, footnoted). This will comprise 100% of the overall module mark.

Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period. 
 

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative work 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 deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For term 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:

• Naomi Pullin and Kathryn Woods (eds.), Negotiating exclusion in early modern England, 1550-1800 (London: Routledge, 2021).
• Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner (eds.), Londinopolis  essays in the cultural and social history of early modern London (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000).
• Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter (eds.), Remaking English society : social relations and social change in early modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013).