International History MA

Program Overview

This innovative MA in International History explores the global implications of interactions between states, societies, and transnational actors over the last century. Students gain research and analytical skills through core modules on international history and methods, and can choose from a wide range of optional modules spanning nations, continents, periods, and themes. The program culminates in a 15,000-word dissertation, preparing graduates for careers in journalism, policy making, research, and academia.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This innovative course offers specialist investigation of the history of world affairs from the late nineteenth century until today. It focuses on the global implications of interactions between states, societies and other international actors, and on the impacts of transnational phenomena on international affairs over time. Leading scholars in the field of international history will guide your study of the origins and significance of some of the key challenges we face in our times, including conflict, security, diplomacy, migration, refugeedom, international co-operation, and transnational activism. The course also offers the chance to work with some of our experts in global history and tackle issues such as empire, decolonisation, and global public health challenges. By studying the most important changes in the global arena over the last one hundred years, you will develop a portfolio of skills to help you pursue your career goals and compete strongly in your chosen professional field. You'll take core modules that cover major themes in international history and the methods and approaches used by international historians. You'll also be able to choose from a wide range of optional modules spanning the history of nations, continents, periods, and themes. Your degree will be completed by a dissertation which will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your skills as a historian. This will be a 15,000 word project, completed under the supervision of one of our expert international historians, and based on your own research.

Outline:

The course has two core modules (worth 30 credits each); a 15,000 word dissertation on a topic of your choice (worth 60 credits) and you will choose a further two optional modules (worth 30 credits each). The course can be taken on a full-time (12 months) or a part-time (24 months) basis. Full-time students will take two 30-credit core modules in semester 1 and two optional modules in semester 2. The dissertation will be submitted after 12 months of study. Part-time students take one 30-credit core module and one 30-credit option module in each year of study, with the dissertation submitted after 24 months.

Compulsory Modules:

• International History in Action (30 Credits): How do different understandings of history shape current affairs?
International history lends itself to uses (and abuses) by different practitioners and in diverse settings. The module examines the relationship between international history and global actors such as state leaders, activists, journalists, think tanks, NGOs, and combatants. Using a variety of methods and sources, it examines how different protagonists shape and frame international relations. The module advocates the role of the historian in public debates and policymaking.
• Global Challenges and Diplomacy (30 credits): While the process, methods and outcomes of diplomacy have long been debated, ‘diplomacy’ itself remains a significant component of interaction on the international stage.
Moreover, across the period from the early twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, it has become a more diverse and multifaceted practice than academic distinctions between ‘old’ and ‘new’ perspectives have implied. This chronological module will use broadening conceptions of diplomacy to examine changes in the international system, from the World Wars and the Cold War of the twentieth century, through the post-Cold War years and the course of the twenty-first century. It will further reflect on the broadening of international agendas towards more multilateral frameworks, institutions, international organisations, and other fora. And it will consider, for example, the diversification of diplomacy through sporting, cultural or other means, and its application to problems such as migration and refugees, environmentalism and green diplomacy, and ‘Third Worldism’ and South-South solidarities.
• 15,000 word Dissertation (60 credits): Students will complete a 15,000-word dissertation based on historical methods relevant to the study of international history using appropriate primary sources for the subject and discipline.
The dissertation will address a topic of the student’s choosing, subject to School approval and the availability of sufficient resources and relevant experience/expertise for supervision. It is expected that students will aim to produce work which offers an original contribution to existing knowledge.

Optional Modules:

• Foreign Fighters and War Volunteers: Past and Present (30 credits): Despite the general trend towards the 'nationalization' of military forces, foreign fighters have remained a nearly constant facet of modern warfare.
How do states and the international community respond to foreign volunteering? What impact do foreign fighters tend to have on the conflicts? What happens with the volunteers after conflicts end?
• Revolution and Rebirth: Eastern Europe and the USSR, 1985-99 (30 credits): This module explores the collapse of communism and its aftermath in Eastern Europe and the former USSR during the 1980s and 1990s.
The first part of the module examines the causes of collapse and the ways in which different revolutions played out during 1989-1991. This was a period not just of great change, but also one of high aspirations for the future, clashes of ideas and ideals, as well as a range of important continuities that spanned the ideological divide between the communist and post-communist eras.
• Stalinist Terror (30 credits): Between 1936 and 1938, the Stalin regime murdered the majority of its senior Party and state officials and then hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens.
What could have provoked such a violent assault on the state and society? Was it part of a campaign, planned in detail by Stalin, to destroy all real and potential opposition to his leadership (Conquest)? Was terror applied to overcome bureaucratic resistance to central policy (Getty, Origins)? How have Getty's ideas changed since then? Was it a response to growing social disorder (Hagenloh)? Did the regime inadvertently reveal, in the course of the Moscow Trials, what appeared to be a conspiracy against it (Harris)? Can the Terror be explained in terms of a generalised fear of conspiracy (Rittersporn)? What have we learned since the archives opened in 1991, and in what directions should historians be taking their research in order to uncover the sources of the Terror?
• Britain in the World: A 'Force for Good'?
• (30 credits): By history and habit, Britain has long been considered a world power.
But British foreign policy at least since the end of the Second World War is also associated with arguments of decline: of forced adaptation to diminished status on the world stage; of reluctant withdrawal from empire; of a limited role between the superpowers during the Cold War, and of an uneasy relationship with European Community partners from the 1970s. At the same time however, and increasingly since the end of the Cold War, new narratives have been sought to advance Britain’s standing in the world. New Labour’s declaration for an ethical foreign policy was noteworthy; more recent reiterations of ‘Global Britain leading by example as a force for good in the world’ sit in a similar vein. Using a variety of case studies, predominantly from outside the familiar ‘special relationship’ and European spheres, this module will pose searching questions about British aspirations and interests on the world stage; about capabilities and constraints; and about identity and values in portrayals and perceptions of foreign policy.
• Creating History: Political Memoirs and the Construction of British Political History (30 credits): This module explores the use of political memoirs and autobiographies as an historical source.
But how far can we trust politicians to give a reliable account of their own role in the events they describe? Are memoirs just about making money, self-justification, and settling scores? How should we respond to different politicians giving completely opposed accounts of the same events? This module will allow students to think critically about political memoirs as a historical source. It will do so by considering what the memoirs tell us about particular events or themes in post-war British political history, setting the construction of events in the memoirs against other primary sources and the historical scholarship on those events, and allowing students to make their own judgements on how far we should use memoirs as a source in the creation of political history. The module encourages you to develop your awareness of the complex relationship between archivists and archives and how they create and shape history and heritage. This work placement module provides a stepping stone to work in museums, archives or heritage, as well as preparation for an academic career, by developing transferrable skills around public engagement, digital engagement, and education.
• Latin America and the Cold War (30 credits): The real Cold War was hot.
In Latin America, it was a period of unprecedented violence, mass mobilisation, and foreign interventions. This module delves into new research and debates on the Cold War in a Latin American context. You'll discusses how and with what consequences Latin Americans challenged Western hegemony and explored the possibility of South-South collaborations. By centring Latin America rather than the superpowers, this module offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War. It asks how the Cold War started and ended in Latin America, who its main protagonists were, and the conflict’s impact on different scales, varying from local activists to international organisations. You will be encouraged to analyse the Cold War in Latin America from transnational, international, and global perspectives.
• Global Health: Decolonising Histories, Politics, and Practice (30 credits): What is global health?
Is it about the development of ideas in one location and their transfer to another? Or is it about national and sub-national units coming together to work with different forms of international governance? You will examine the development of international ideas and actions in health – from its connections to European and US imperialism, through post-war political decolonisation, to the impact of postcolonial states within the new multilateral infrastructure created by the United Nations’ specialist agencies. The analysis of global health will permit a more complex understanding of colonialism and decolonisation, in which states and societies were multi-layered, and the production of knowledge and political process was not always centred on Europe and North America. You will also discuss postcolonial trends within diplomacy and implementation, analysing the distinctive role played by global health within international history. Finally, you'll examine global health as both a collaborative and a competitive space. Through critically examining the development and implementation of policies from above and below, you'll consider how community engagement and feedback redesigns projects and programmes in often unimaginable ways.

Assessment:

Students will be assessed through a variety of methods, which may include essays, dissertations, book and literature reviews, or podcasts. Fairness and inclusivity will be ensured through opportunities for formative assessment, and in the provision of training where skills and support are required. You might also be offered a choice of assessment, for example between an essay and a podcast or between a presentation and a literature review. The assignment tasks you will complete have been designed to help you develop critical skills that are valued by employers. In the course, you will need to be able to research independently in order to evaluate claims and arguments to come to a reasoned conclusion. Your lecturers will use a marking scheme to ensure fairness in assessing your work, which will also be considered by a second colleague and by an external examiner.

Teaching:

This course will connect you with the latest research and thinking in international history. Our staff are dedicated teachers as well as experts in this field, and their teaching is informed by their own cutting-edge research. Most of your optional modules will be taught through weekly two-hour seminars, where you’ll discuss major concepts, debates, and sources with a small group of students and your tutor. Independent study also forms an important part of this degree, giving you the space to develop into a researcher in your own right. The school has a rich culture of research seminars, which bring together our staff and students, as well as historians from other universities and organisations giving papers which you can attend. Listen to the School of History podcast – a series of interviews with our academic staff about their latest ground-breaking publications, their research interests and how they bring them into the classroom, and what inspired them to become historians in the first place. You may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

Careers:

This course will enable you to gain high-level research, analysis and communication skills, which will prove valuable in a wide range of careers. History MA graduates have found success in a wide range of careers in journalism, policy making, research, and the private sector. Many others have continued with their studies at PhD level. In addition, the Brotherton Library’s recently refurbished Special Collections Research Centre holds a wealth of relevant original archive material and documentation for you to use in your research. Some of its major collections in international history include the Papers of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; the Leeds Russian Archive, a key resource for the study of Anglo-Russian relations in the 20th century; and the Liddle Collection, which contains the personal papers of thousands of people who lived through the world wars of the twentieth century. The British Library also offers a reading room with access to its vast holdings just outside the City of Leeds.

| ----------- | ----------- | | UK fees | £11,500 (Total) | | International fees | £24,500 (Total) | | Currency | GBP |