HIS4317 – Class struggle, gender trouble, and everyday life: 20th-century social history

Course content

Focusing on examples from the US, Britain and Germany, the course offers an introduction to central issues of twentieth-century social history as well as to concepts and methods to study them. It understands social history as the study of social relations, of inclusions, exclusions and identities in the past. The course invites students to think about how changes in markets, politics, technology and culture affected distinctions of class, gender, race and age during the period. Traversing the century chronologically, the seminar first asks how the use of money affected social relations in and around the working class around the turn of the century and then looks at encounters between the sexes and races in early twentieth-century metropolises. It then assesses the effect of mass media on people`s self-perceptions and collective orientations, searches for those excluded from mass societies of the 1930s and early 40s, and studies the role of the military in society. In the post-war period, the course turns to the consumer society and its countercultural critics as well as the history of new social movements and the effects of social housing and ‘gentrification’ on urban communities.

Learning outcome

  • an overview of trends and issues in twentieth-century social history in the West
  • an understanding of historiographical arguments and the ability to discuss them critically
  • the skills to develop, implement and finish a small historiographical research project

Admission to the course

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

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30 credits in humanities or social sciences.

A good ability to read, write and understand English is required for this course.

Overlapping courses

Teaching

The course consists of a) lectures providing historical background and historiographical interpretations and b) discussion-led meetings where students have the opportunity to debate research literature and work with primary sources. Participants are asked to prepare the texts from the syllabus for discussion.

Qualifying exposé: In order to qualify for the exam, students need to submit an exposé for their proposed term paper of up to 3 standard pages (plus bibliography), complete with a rel