Students will be well equipped to competently approach British cultures and societies from a historical perspective in an academic framework and to draw essential diachronic and synchronic connections between geography, historical events, social as well as cultural phenomena in Britain.

Lecture inputs and open discussion.

This introductory lecture addresses the special geopolitical situation of the British Isles and how it has affected the rise of England (and later the UK) to be the largest empire in human history, as well as the specific cultural discourses that dominate the British collective imagination until today, or contest that domination. We follow major historical developments in Britain from prehistory up to the 21st century, before we focus on contemporary British society and politics in detail. The notion of British insularity and traumatic shifts in (Post-)Brexit Britain form the endpoint of our deliberations.

All relevant literature will be made available on Moodle.

Written on-campus open-book exam with thematic combinations of multiple choice and open answers:There are twelve question combinations, one for each of the thematic sessions, and each of them is worth a maximum of 10 points in total:Multiple choice questions have three possible answers and exactly one is correct: 4 points if the correct answer is ticked off; 0 points if answered incorrectly or emptyOpen answer questions require a short paragraph of max. 100 words each: they score 0 to 6 points each, depending on the quality of your answerYou must choose exactly 10 of the 12 combinationsPoints-to-Grade Key: 100 – 91 points = 1A, or First Grade 90 – 81 points = 2B, or Upper Second Grade 80 – 61 points = 3C, or Lower Second Grade 60 – 51 points = 4D, or Pass Grade 50 points and below = 5F, or Fail GradeCheating is a serious offence and will result in an automatic 5F on the exam!Students who fail to sign up for the exam in the system (ZEUS) beforehand cannot participate in a sitting!Sitting 1: January 30, 2024Sitting 2: Week 8, 2024Sitting 3: Week 10, 2024

Only materials discussed in class will ever be part of the exam.

MC questions ask students to reproduce basic information from the sessions.OA questions require the ability to contextualise and critically reflect upon information.The use of AI support or AI-generated text is prohibited in all of my courses!In order to check whether this ban is respected, there is the possibility of a compulsory, individual, and oral follow-up defence of submitted or presented work. Should the use of AI be detected in any assignment, or a follow-up defence not be sufficient, the task concerned will automatically receive a fail-grade and your violation will be reported to university leadership, just as is the case with any other form of academic dishonesty or cheating.