| Unit name | Brief Encounters: Love, Labour, and Loneliness in Modern London |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HIST20099 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Koole |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
For urban sociologist Georg Simmel, early twentieth-century cities were places of heightened sensory stimulation and social breakdown. As migration and urban expansion brought more people closer together, those people became emotionally and socially pushed further apart. In James Vernon’s terms, city dwellers became ‘distant strangers’ to one another—and to themselves.
This unit questions Simmel’s account of the modern city as a space of anomie. Focusing on London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it instead examines the many new forms of intimacy emerging over this period and how these intimacies shaped broader trends in the history of modern Britain. Using photographs, early films, court records, and other sources, students will explore the histories of public sex, tube and taxi travel, stress and urban neuroses, love letter writing and lonely hearts advertisements, and new spaces of commercialized leisure such as cinemas, nightclubs, and teashops. In so doing, they will examine not only the shifting historical possibilities for intimacy but also how those possibilities reshaped the very nature of love, personal space, and desire.
Successful students will be able to:
1.Identify and analyse a number of key themes and contexts in the history of intimacy in twentieth-century London.
2.Critically engage with contemporary and historical theories of modern selfhood and social relations.
3.Discuss and evaluate the key historiographical debates surrounding the histories of emotion, sexuality, and the senses.
4.Understand and interpret primary sources and select pertinent evidence in order to illustrate specific and more general historical points
5.Present their research and judgements in written forms and styles appropriate to the discipline and to level I.
Classes will involve a combination of class discussion, investigative activities, and practical activities. Students will be expected to engage with readings and participate on a weekly basis. This will be further supported with drop-in sessions and self-directed exercises with tutor and peer feedback.
1 x 3500-word Essay (50%) [ILOs 1-5]; 1 x Timed Assessment (50%) [ILOs 1-5]
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. HIST20099).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the Faculty workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. If you have self-certificated your absence from an
assessment, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (this is usually in the next assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any extenuating circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
