HR930-7-AU-CO:
History, Power, and Identity
2025/26
Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies (School of)
Colchester Campus
Autumn
Postgraduate: Level 7
Current
Thursday 02 October 2025
Friday 12 December 2025
20
24 April 2025
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
MA V10E12 History, Power, and Identity,
MHISV199 History,
MHISZV98 History (Including Placement Year),
MHISZV99 History (Including Year Abroad)
What is at stake in histories of power and identity? This module helps students to negotiate debates through examination of crucial concepts and consideration of different approaches to researching and writing histories of power and identity.
In each session, we explore historical case studies illustrating the resonances of power and agency, conflict and cooperation, and oppression and resistance in diverse times and places. We consider how certain identities can reinforce as well as challenge power structures, and the inescapability of gender, 'race', class, nationhood and sexuality in shaping experiences of everyday life.
The aims of this module are:
- To ensure that students are familiar with a range of concepts, approaches, and theories used in contemporary writing about history, power, and identity.
- To enable students to critically assess and engage with diverse theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches to the study of history, power, and identity at an advanced level.
- To support students in developing the appropriate skills to successfully apply differing concepts, approaches, and theories to the study of history, power, and identity.
- To support students’ development of critical understanding of how the questions that historians ask about power and identity relate to concepts, sources, and methods, as well as previous scholarship.
- To enable students to compare different concepts, approaches, and theories to the study of history, power, and identity across and between different chronological and geographical contexts.
By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:
- Demonstrate understanding of concepts, approaches, and theories used in studies of history, power, and identity.
- Show insight into debates concerning the ways in which histories of power and identity are written, including critical knowledge of historical concepts, theories, and methods.
- Critically examine the use of concepts, theories, and methods in practical historical writing about power and identity.
- Ask sophisticated questions in their own specialist field of study.
- Examine the ways in which approaches have been used in fields beyond their own.
- Display methodological rigour in the formulation of questions and hypotheses, the choice of methods appropriate to answering and evaluating those questions and hypotheses and the treatment of evidence.
- Present, accurately, succinctly and lucidly, and in written or oral form their arguments in accordance with appropriate scholarly conventions.
The module introduces students to some key concepts in the history of power and identity, including gender, race, social class, nationhood and sexuality. After two weeks considering what is at stake in these histories, and how historians can approach power and identity, each week is then focused on a case study that enables us to explore these concepts in specific times and places. Case studies vary according to staff availability but might include, for example, nationhood in Nazi Germany, gender and nationalism in India, and histories of the Gay Liberation Movement.
This module will be delivered via:
- One 2-hour seminar per week.
All Module information will be available via Moodle. Key readings will be digitised an available on Talis Aspire.
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Trouillot, M.-R. and Carby, H.V. (2015)
Silencing the past: power and the production of history. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. Available at:
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=846508.
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Kishwar, M. (1986) 'Gandhi on women',
Race & Class, 28(1), pp. 43–61. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1177/030639688602800103.
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Geddes, J.F. (2008) 'Culpable Complicity: the medical profession and the forcible feeding of suffragettes, 1909–1914',
Women's History Review, 17(1), pp. 79–94. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020701627977.
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Tickner, L. (1987) The spectacle of women: imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-14. London: Chatto & Windus.
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Hay, D. (2011) Albion's fatal tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England. London: Verso Books.
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Gurney, P. (2015)
Wanting and having: popular politics and liberal consumerism in England, 1830-70. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Available at:
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1272978&site=eds-live&authtype=sso&custid=s9814295.
The above list is indicative of the essential reading for the course.
The library makes provision for all reading list items, with digital provision where possible, and these resources are shared between students.
Further reading can be obtained from this module's
reading list.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
| Coursework |
Concept study (1000 words) |
|
20% |
| Coursework |
Essay (4000 words) |
|
80% |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Prof Lucy Noakes, email: l.noakes@essex.ac.uk.
PHAIS Postgraduate Queries: phaispg@essex.ac.uk
Yes
Yes
No
Prof Rohan McWilliam
Anglia Ruskin University
professor of Modern Hritish History
Available via Moodle
Of 20 hours, 20 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.
* Please note: due to differing publication schedules, items marked with an asterisk (*) base their information upon the previous academic year.
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