History/Modern History degree??

Hi,

Could anyone please tell me whether the History degree at Oxford is just a 'History' degree or a 'Modern History' degree. In the prospectus it just says its called 'History', but in other places it says its a 'Modern History' degree!

Hope that makes sense...thanks for any feedback.

Reply 1

Wez

14

Aren't they essentially the same thing?

I always thought Modern History = History and the degree only changed in content when it was called Ancient History?

Reply 2

-CBee-

Wez

Aren't they essentially the same thing?

I always thought Modern History = History and the degree only changed in content when it was called Ancient History?

Nah, sometimes courses that call themself 'modern' only cover the last 300 years or so, to distinguish them from courses that cover the early modern/medieval periods.

If this is Oxford though, I would expect 'modern' is used in the sense of 'not ancient' though, yeah. Look at the modules available, that should be able to tell you pretty quickly.

Reply 3

Milady de Winter

charlie47

Hi,

Could anyone please tell me whether the History degree at Oxford is just a 'History' degree or a 'Modern History' degree. In the prospectus it just says its called 'History', but in other places it says its a 'Modern History' degree!

Hope that makes sense...thanks for any feedback.

The undergraduate History degrees at Oxford are 'Ancient History' and 'Modern History'. Ancient History is akin to Classics (many people take the two as a joint school), and focuses on Greek/Hellenic and Roman history up until about the year 300-ish. Things like ancient Egyptian History come under the auspices of an Egyptology degree.

Modern History, or just plain History (they are the same thing), covers pretty much everything from the year 300. The idea is that you have a degree that is very, very broad, but within that course structure you have an incredibly diverse range of papers and topics to choose from. In your first year, your college might limit your choices slightly when choosing a General or British history paper, but in all the thematic papers you have complete freedom to choose.

There is one rule, which is that over the course of your three years, you must do at least one medieval/pre-medieval paper, one early modern paper (i.e. before 1800), and one modern paper. It's a good idea to get the periods you're not so keen on out of the way in the first year, because only the second and third years count towards your final exams. One final thing to remember is that some colleges offer Modern History as a joint subject with things like English or a modern foreign language (check with individual colleges). You can also do Ancient and Modern History as a joint school.

Reply 4

rkd

12

The Oxford degree used to be called Modern History, but even then it went back to the fall of the Roman Empire - they noticed that this looked a bit odd and as of 2006 or 2007 renamed it to just History (though the joint school is still called Ancient and Modern History). Some things still refer to it as Modern History, though (e.g. a letter from my Director of Studies in April did).

History/Modern History degree??

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you