Poverty, Disease and Disability: Britain, 1795-1930

Code

HIST2046

School

History

Level

2

Credits

20

Semesters

Spring UK

Summary

This module explores the role of the poverty, disease and disability in shaping lives between 1790 and 1930, and how these intersected with ideas of and attitudes to health and welfare. It also examines representations of poverty, disease and disability in museums and on TV.
Themes include:
 ⁃ understanding poverty, disease, disability in an age of progress and reform
 ⁃ the problem of the poor? Poverty, the poor law and workhouses
 ⁃ studying poverty, disease and disability: sources and representations
 ⁃ Town versus country - the healthy countryside?
 ⁃ Housing conditions: the slum
 ⁃ Disease
 ⁃ Working conditions 
 ⁃ Disability 
 ⁃ ‘Madness’: mental illness in an age of reason
 ⁃ Hygiene and health care
 ⁃ Unrest and dissatisfaction: resistance, rebellion and riot

Target Students

Students must have taken HIST1001 or HIST1002. Also available to exchange students hosted by the Department of History and Liberal Arts students.

Classes

• One 1-hour seminar each week for 10 weeks
• One 2-hour lecture each week for 10 weeks

Assessment

• 50% Coursework 1: Piece of individually assessed coursework
• 50% Coursework 2: Piece of individually assessed coursework

Assessed by end of spring semester

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes

a. knowledge and understanding
- identify major forces that shaped the health and welfare of Britain, 1790-1929
- demonstrate an understanding of poverty, disease and disability in age associated with progress
- be able to make connections between local developments and broader regional, national and international trends

b. intellectual skills
- think critically and imaginatively about the subject matter and address key problems arising from it
- critically engage with historiographical interpretations of the subject
- construct coherent, independently researched and balanced arguments of their own

c. professional/practical skills
- select, organize and evaluate information from a wide and varied range of primary and secondary sources
- demonstrate appropriate footnoting and bibliographical skills
- use IT to access primary and secondary sources and to complete written assignments
- convey research as both academic and public history outputs

d. transferable skills
- manage large, disparate and often incomplete bodies of information
- further develop oral and written communication skills
- work collaboratively with others
- manage and take responsible for own learning
- improve and utilize their IT skills in presentation of coursework
- convey complex ideas and material to both specialist and general audiences
 

Conveners

• Dr Sarah Holland