Blitzed Brits: Politics, Society and Culture in the Second World War

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• write speedily yet fluently for extended periods, clearly articulating your ideas
• skim, select and précis complex material
• display effective time management
• write in a mature and sophisticated style, with graduate-level prose and presentation
• work independently and unsupervised for extended periods of time on complex tasks

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the history of the Second World War in Britain
• the broad range of scholarship produced on the topic of the Second World War
• the key debates about British identity and the Second World War

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• demonstrate significant depth of knowledge and insight into the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of strategic approaches
• draw upon your acquired knowledge in discussion, essays and under timed conditions
• fluently comment upon complex debates, citing relevant evidence in support
• gather, assimilate, synthesise and interpret a range of primary and secondary material

The module will use a variety of primary sources – government documents, films and documentaries, newspapers, novels and poems, TV shows and radio programmes, songs and plays, advertisements and historical objects – to create a detailed history of the Second World War and answer a number of important questions. Why did the British government appease Hitler? How did the country slide into war? Was there really a Dunkirk Spirit, or a Blitz Spirit? How did women, people of colour, the working classes, refugees and other groups experience the war? Did people really Keep Calm and Carry On? Why did the British voters kick Churchill out in 1945? And how has the war become part of modern collective memory? List of indicative topics: The Second World War in Popular Culture Appeasement: The Guilty Men? Rearmament and The Road to War Mass Observation Diaries The Phony War The Ministry of Information: Wartime Propaganda Evacuation and Conscription Life and Leisure on the Home Front Alien Panics, Internment and Refugees The 'Miracle' of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain The Myth of the Blitz The War and the Empire Make Do and Mend – Mobilising the Home Front Defending Britain: The Home Guard Overpaid Oversexed and Over Here – the GIs in Britain Sex and the Home Front The Beveridge Report and Social Reform Victory! VE Day, VJ Day and Returning Home The 1945 Election The Second World War in Modern Memory

Teaching methods include: - Lectures which build a narrative of the Second World War and focus on specific case studies to build understanding of key themes - Seminars which focus on historiographical debates and the analysis of primary material - Essays, gobbet analysis and timed examination Learning activities include: • Analysis of selected key readings in the historiography • Preparatory reading and individual study • Individual participation in seminars and group work on seminar themes • Analysis of primary material, including using the Mass Observation database to select a key primary source and present it in the assessed gobbet exercise

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.