My History Degree Essay Titles

Before University, I really didn’t know what to expect, especially with regard to my Degree. So today’s blog is all about my Degree Module titles and the essay titles I have written so far!

I hope this can shed some light on the wide array of History Modules Warwick has to offer and what the sort of formative and non-formative essay titles look like!

We had four modules, two compulsory, two optional. Here are the modules and the essay titles I chose.

1) Making of the Modern World (compulsory)

• How Totalitarian were Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany?
• What changes occired in ‘domestic ideology’ in the 18th and 19th centuries?

2) Making History (compulsory: slightly different course, more based on primary sources and analysis)

• To what extent was the use of media as propaganda more effective for first wave feminism than second wave feminism?
• A Journal Review of: “If You Eat Their Food…”: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America
• A presentation with voice over on: How successful and in what way does the Handmaid’s Tale represent the past?
• A Review of a source from the Modern Record Centre: ‘1979 Was a Turning Point in Modern British History’

3) North America, Themes and Problems

• What was the most important factor in the destruction of Eastern Native American Cultures?
• To what extent was Martin Luther King more effective in achieving African American Civil Rights than Malcolm X?

4) Kill or Cure: The History of Medicine and Health

• Has pregnancy and birth been viewed as ‘natural’?
• Was the role of eugenics in Nazi Germany exceptional?

We had four modules, two compulsory and two optional.

1) The European World, 1500-1750 (compulsory)

• How did early modern people display their status?
• To what extent did the religion practised by the Catholic laity change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

2) Social History of England

• Long Essay , 4,500 words: (going towards Degree): Why were Radical Politics and Radical Religion so appealing in the period between 1630-1660?
• Book Review: Jennifer Heller’s ‘The Mother’s Legacy in early modern England’

3) From Cradle to Grave: Health, Medicine & Society in Modern Britain

• Long Essay, 4,500 words: How did attitudes towards exercise and women’s health change between 1880- 1930?
• How have expectations of women and their families changed with regard to childbirth in the twentieth century?

4) Nation and Memory: Russia, Poland and Ukraine

• Long Essay, 4,500 words: How did Nicholas II try to legitimise his rule and why did he fail?
• Did Russian nationalism strengthen or weaken the Russian Empire?
• “Socialist in content and national in form”. Did the Bolsheviks solve the nationality problem of the Russian Empire?

We have two compulsory, including dissertation, and two optional.

(These are the titles or themes that I am working on this year already for my formative essays due in just under two weeks)

1) Dissertation (compulsory)

2) Historiography (compulsory)

• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Micro-History

3) Sexualities, Ethnicities, Class: Reinterpreting the Holocaust

• Attitudes towards the handicapped during the Holocaust

4) Medicine, Empire and the Body, c.1750-1914

• What stereotypes about non-European peoples emerged in the eighteenth century?

I hope this is interesting for anyone looking to do a History Degree, or even just with an interest in the sort of titles we use. As you can probably see, my History Degree has really inspired my passion for the History of Medicine, which I shall also be doing my dissertation on. It’s funny, I never came to University expecting to love it so much, my Mum actually encouraged me to put it as a second choice option and I’m so glad I did.

These are just my modules, we have a choice of about 15 modules a year to choose from, which vary immensely.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave them and I will do my best to answer them.

Bronwyn