Studying at York
Dream Merchants: British Advertising 1880-1980 - Semester 1 - HIS00194H
- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
Since the end of the nineteenth century advertising has been an ever-increasing part of everyday British life. Whether on crowded hoardings, in magazines, on the street, in the home on television screens, in the cinema, for more than a century advertising has been. Advertising helps to shape not just what goods people buy, but what they aspire to, how they structure their lives and compare their existence to others’. Governments have used advertising techniques to encourage people to go to war, improve their health and to ‘Buy British’, whilst political parties have used it to get people a dream of a better Britain. This has led to advertising being known as the ‘art of persuasion’, but getting people to change their mind or their behaviours has rarely been straightforward.
This course examines the history of advertising in Britain following a period of rapid expansion after 1880. It explores the changing nature of advertising practice and techniques, and considers advertising’s relationship with major events such as the World Wars, economic depression, the arrival of new technologies, and the decline of Empire. Students will also learn the different techniques employed by historians to interrogate and analyse historical advertisements, as well as how to identify and locate additional source materials beyond the common or most famous campaigns.
Related modules
Students taking this module must also take the second part in Semester 2.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To introduce students to in depth study of a specific historical topic using primary and secondary material;
- To enable students to explore the topic through discussion and writing; and
- To enable students to evaluate and analyse primary sources.
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Grasp key themes, issues and debates relevant to the topic being studied;
- Have acquired knowledge and understanding about that topic;
- Be able to comment on and analyse original sources;
- Be able to relate the primary and secondary material to one another; and
- Have acquired skills and confidence in close reading and discussion of texts and debates.
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 and a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- An introduction to advertising and using advertisements as sources
- Early Advertisements
- Edwardian Expansion
- Advertising and the First World War
- Economic Depression and the Changing Empire
- Advertising under fire
- The 1930s: Advertising’s ‘Golden Age’?
- Advertising Travel
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative assessment, students will be given the opportunity to produce text commentaries in seminar, including a written commentary.
For the summative assessment students build a portfolio of two parts, to be submitted together:
a) Two text commentaries of 500-750 words; and
b) One 1,500-word essay which reflects on the significance of the chosen texts in light of scholarship and sources from across the module.
The commentaries comprise 50% and the essay 50% of the overall mark for this module. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Formative work will be live marked in seminar and supplemented by the tutor giving 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 summative assessment tasks, 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 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:
- Winston Fletcher, Powers of Persuasion: The Inside Story of British Advertising: 1951-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- Sean Nixon, “‘Salesmen of the Will to Want’: Advertising and its Critics in Britain 1951–1967,” Contemporary British History 24, no. 2 (2010): 213-233.
- Anandi Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders: Images of Africa and Asia in British Advertising (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).