Week I: Britain at the Start of the 20th Century
Jan 16: Introduction / The Edwardians and the dusk of the Pax Britannica
Jan 18: Cultural and literary history of the London Underground

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, “Domestic Life,” in The Long Week-End, 160-164
Jon Lawrence, "Paternalism, Class, and the British Path to Modernity" in Gunn & Vernon (eds.), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain
Ronald Hyam, "The British Empire in the Edwardian Era" in Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. IV
Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (1913)
Virginia Woolf, "Jinny" in The Waves (1931)

Week II: The Great War: Trauma and Memory
Jan 23: War poets, manifestos, and visual arts
Jan 25: Counting the cost: The aftermath of war and British society

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, "Armistice, 1918" and "Revolution Averted, 1919," 1-25
Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier" (1914)
Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" (1917), "Parable of the Old Man and the Young" (1917), "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1920)
Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska (1916), "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920)
Wyndham Lewis, Blast (1915)
D.H. Lawrence, Letters from Cornwall

Image:
Death notice for Lt. W. D. Tull (1918)

Websites:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
First World War Centenary Project (Imperial War Museums)

Week III: Bright Young Things
Jan 30: The London avant-garde and Bloomsbury
Feb 1: The Lost Generation

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, "Amusements," 102-121
Waugh, Brideshead Revisited [Prologue, Book I]

MAP EXERCISE DUE JAN 30

Week IV: A Twitch Upon the Thread
Feb 6: Romantic Moderns
Feb 8: Discussion: reading Waugh

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, "Education and Ethics," 198-213
Waugh, Brideshead Revisited [Books II and III, Epilogue]

ESSAY #1 DUE FEB 8

Week V: Between the Acts
Feb 13: Discussion: reading Woolf
Feb 15: Woolf’s critique of Fascism

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, 237-240, 300-307, 373-379
Woolf, Between the Acts

Film:
Harry Watt and Basil Wright, "Night Mail" (1936)

Week VI: The Crisis Years
Feb 20: Diplomacy, appeasement, and rearmament
Feb 22: Britain and the Spanish Civil War

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, "The Days of Non-intervention," 323-326, 328-329
W.H. Auden, "Spain" (1937), "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1939)
Louis MacNeice, "Nature Morte" (1933), "An Eclogue for Christmas" (1935)
John Strachey, Neville Chamberlain, Oswald Mosley, Ernest Barker, Speeches and writings regarding interwar politics (1918-1935)
Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Speeches regarding European diplomacy and disputed territorial claims (1936-1939)
George Orwell, "Spilling the Spanish Beans" (1937), "Notes on the Spanish Militias" (1938), "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)

Audio:
H.M. Edward VIII, Abdication Speech (1936)
Neville Chamberlain, "Peace for Our Time" (1938) and "We are at War" (1939)

Week VII: Their Finest Hour
Feb 27: World War II, Mass Observation and documentary film
Mar 1: Special guest: Prof. Benjamin Kohlmann

Reading:
Graves & Hodge, "Social Consciences," 389-390
Benjamin Kohlmann, "Social Facts and Poetic Authority: The Political Aesthetic of Mass Observation" in Committed Styles (2014)
David Reynolds, "The Churchill Government and Black American Troops in Britain in World War II," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, v.35 (1985)

Audio:
H.M. George VI, Speech upon declaration of War (1939)
Winston Churchill, "Britain Stands Alone" (1940), "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat" (1940)

Film:
Crown Film Unit, "Listen to Britain" (1942)
Ministry of Information and US War Department, "A Welcome to Britain" (1943)

Music:
Vera Lynn, "We'll Meet Again" (1939), "There'll Always be an England" (1941),
"The White Cliffs of Dover" (1942), "When the Lights Go On Again" (1942)

Week VIII: Austerity and Promise
Mar 6: Britain in recovery / Building the welfare state
Mar 8: MIDTERM EXAMINATION

Reading:
Marwick, Part I: "Social Consensus, 1945-1957" in British Society Since 1945
Peter Hansen, "Coronation Everest: Empire and Commonwealth in the 'Second Elizabethan Age'" in Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (2001)
Virginia Woolf, "Thunder at Wembley" (1924)
John Maynard Keynes, "Art and the State" (1936)
William Beveridge, "Report on Social Insurance" (1942)

Audio:
Winston Churchill, "The Sinews of Peace" (1946)

Image:
Grounds of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (1924)

Video:
Crown Film Unit, "Festival in London" (1951)
Pathé News, Coronation of Elizabeth II (1953)

ESSAY #2 DUE MAR 6

Week IX: Twilight of Empire
Mar 13: Decolonization and its aftermath
Mar 15: Discussion: reading Emecheta

Reading:
Emecheta, Second Class Citizen [first half]
Una Marson, selected poems

Video:
Movietone News, Crisis in Suez (1956)
Pathé News, State funeral of Winston Churchill (1965)

Week X: The Windrush Generation
Mar 20: Immigration and postwar British society
Mar 22: Review day

Reading:
Emecheta, Second Class Citizen [second half]
Enoch Powell, "Rivers of Blood" speech (1968)
Salman Rushdie, "The New Empire within Britain" in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism (1982)

Website:
Black Cultural Archives

Week XI: You Never Had It so Good
Apr 3: London in the Swinging Sixties
Apr 5: British subcultures

Reading:
Marwick, Part II: "Roads to Freedom, 1958-1973"
Dolly Wilson, "A New Look at the Affluent Worker: The Good Working Mother in Postwar Britain," Twentieth-Century British History, 17:2 (2006)
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style [excerpts] (1979)
Philip Larkin, selected poems

Music:
The Beatles, "Penny Lane" (1966)
The Kinks, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" (1966), "Shangri-La" (1969),
"We are the Village Green Preservation Society" (1968)

Video:
ITV, Ready Steady Go! (1963-66)

ESSAY #3 DUE APR 3

Week XII: The Winter of Discontent
Apr 10: The 1970s, integration and disintegration
Apr 12: British cinema

Reading:
Marwick, Part III: "The Time of Troubles, 1973-1982"
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go [Part One]

Music:
The Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen" (1977), "Anarchy in the UK" (1976)
The Clash, "London Calling" (1979), "The Guns of Brixton" (1979)

Week XIII: The Lady's Not for Turning
Apr 17: Discussion: reading Ishiguro
Apr 19: Thatcherism and the 1980s

Reading:
Marwick, Part II: "Privatization, Polarization and IT, 1982-1989"
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go [Parts Two and Three]
Margaret Thatcher, Downing Street Years [excerpts] (1993)

Website:
BBC "In Depth," Statistics for the Thatcher Years

Video:
First Edition TV, The Battle for Brixton (1981)
BBC Panorama, Falklands War Outbreak (1982)
Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the House of Commons on the European Council (1990)

Week XIV: The Rise and Fall of Cool Britannia
Apr 24: Britain and "Britishness" at the end of the century
Apr 26: Conclusion

Reading:
Marwick, Part V: "A Free Society at Odds with Itself, 1989-1997" and Part VI: "A Faltering Return Toward Consensus? 1997-2002"
David Cannadine, "Diana, Princess of Wales" in History in Our Time (1997)
Laura Oldfield Ford, Savage Messiah [excerpts] (2005-09)
Alice Oswald, selected poems

Video:
H.M. Elizabeth II, Statement on the Death of Princess Diana (1997)

ESSAY #4 DUE APR 26

FINAL EXAMINATION: MONDAY APRIL 30, 8:30-11:30 am