Undergraduate History Curriculum
Students undertaking a History major in the Bachelor of Arts have the option of following one of three pathways: Politics and International History, Social and Cultural History, or Gender History.
The pathways give students the opportunity to focus on a particular aspect or era of History, meet students who share similar interests, and effectively plan their History major.
Follow a pathway or choose your own path
You can take one of these three structured pathways OR choose your own unique path: the pathways are optional and students can alternatively tailor their own History major program based on their areas of interest.
The pathways converge in the one overall capstone subject, Making History, where all History majors come together to work on research-based individual projects in themed workshops.
Four History subjects
Four History subjects provide entry points for the three pathways (students may of course take more than one first-year unit). These subjects are taught by teams of senior academics and serve as anchors for each of the pathways.
Pathway structures
Politics and International History pathway
Who is it for? You are interested in international relations, but want to understand them more deeply and historically. You want to know more about decision makers, leaders – why events happened the way they did and who was responsible. You are interested in the big picture of world history and in understanding how nations and leaders helped shape our world.
This pathway is anchored by two first-year subjects: a new first-year subject, Dictators and Democrats: The Modern World (HIST10015) and The World Since World War II (HIST10012).
- Stream: Asia and the Pacific
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Stream: Dictators and Democrats
Second year subjects
- Total War: World War II (HIST20060)
- Holocaust and Genocide (HIST20013)
- Red Empire: The Soviet Union and After (HIST20084)
- Rebels and Revolutionaries (HIST20065)
- The French Revolution (HIST20068)
- Indigenous History (HIST20088).
- Britain's Empire: Power and Resistance (HIST20089).
Third year subjects
Social and Cultural History pathway
Who is it for? You like immersing yourself in worlds far away in time, place and culture. Social history is about social relations, about class and gender and race, hierarchies of all kinds, but also about the ways people have organised and acted together to worship, eat, celebrate, perform. Cultural history is about meaning – what people said, thought and did in the past and how we can understand and interpret it now.
This pathway is anchored by a new first-year subject, Europe: From Black Death to New Worlds (HIST10016).
- Stream: Pre and Early Modern History
- Stream: Modern History
Gender History pathway
Who is it for? You are interested in gender relations and identities in the present and want a deeper understanding of how and why they have changed over time and in different cultural and national traditions. You may be most interested in the history of sexualities, or in the history of the politics of gender, or in movements for social change in gender relations, but you see the history of gender as an important and inescapable part of understanding the past, present and future.
This pathway is anchored by a new first-year subject, Gender, Rights and Leadership in History (HIST10017).
Second year subjects
- The History of Children and Youth (HIST20085)
- American History: 1945 to Now (HIST20071).
- Gender in History, 1800 to the present (HIST20090)