HIS-30119 - Module Specification
School of Humanities
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2020/21

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2020/21

`Urban Lives in Modern Europe 1890-1914¿ investigated how urban elites began to imagine a new future for Europe¿s cities before the First World War. This module examines how the inter-war period provided the opportunity to put many of their ideas into practice. Yet if anything, cities in the inter-war period proved to be even more difficult to govern than they had been before the war. Political tensions ran high across Europe, and many historians have characterised Germany¿s Weimar Republic in particular as being in an almost permanent state of crisis. More recent analyses have also seen its cities, and especially Berlin, as a `laboratory of modernity¿, in which new forms of urban living were tested, and it is on these approaches that this module will concentrate.
While the rise of right-wing politics and the concomitant emergence of Fascism has often been seen as the defining element of the period, the module will also develop an understanding of how the spaces of Europe¿s cities contributed to changing cultures of sex, violence, work and consumption. A particular emphasis will be placed on how measures to identify and control urban problems may have exacerbated existing tensions or produced new ones. While exploring these aspects, you will be asked to consider approaches which emphasise the role of the state in attempting to order and control the city, providing continuities with both totalitarian regimes and the `permissiveness¿ and welfare states of post-war Western Europe.

To introduce students to the history of the city in early-twentieth-century Europe; to appreciate the divergent aspects of European interwar histories; to consider the interaction between changing urban experiences, new definitions of urban problems, and technical solutions in urban cultures; to critically interrogate the usefulness and limitations of online archives in urban historical research.

Intended Learning Outcomes

explain how the application of measures to improve and control urban space often differed from theory, and produced different outcomes from those intended: 1,2,3
recognise and explain the difficulties faced by urban reformers
: 1,2,3
critically appraise the opportunities and limitations of using online archives
: 1,2,3
demonstrate awareness of the shared history of totalitarian and social-democratic Europe: 1,2,3
demonstrate awareness of the role of emerging subcultures in creating urban identities in the interwar period
: 1,2,3

Study hours

Ten two-hour seminars = 20 hours
Seminar preparation = 60 hours
Assessment preparation and completion = 70

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment