University of Galway

Course Module Information

Course Modules

HI2123: Life and Death in Victorian Britain

Semester 2 | Credits: 5

This module provides a survey of the social and cultural history of Britain in the long nineteenth century. This was an age that transformed everyday life through the unprecedented and celebrated expansion of trade, transport, communications and empire. But it was also one that witnessed grinding child labour, draconian workhouses, pathologies and neuroses associated with rail travel and scientific innovation, poor sanitation and deadly diseases, and the Victorian 'invention' of death.
(Language of instruction: English)

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate a knowledge of the main themes in the history of Victorian Britain
2. Demonstrate a firm grasp of historiographical issues
3. Formulate a coherent and well-structured argument
4. Apply scholarly conventions in the citation of relevant literature or primary sources

Assessments

• Written Assessment (67%)
• Continuous Assessment (33%)

Teachers

•  HELENA CONDON 🖂
  
•  LAURENCE MARLEY 🖂
  

Reading List

1. "The Great Exhibition of 1851" by Jeffrey A. Auerbach
   ISBN: 0300080077.
   Publisher: Yale University Press
2. "The Victorian studies reader" by edited by Kelly Boyd and Rohan McWilliam
   ISBN: 0415355796.
   Publisher: London ; Routledge, 2007.
3. "Family fortunes" by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall
   ISBN: 0415290651.
   Publisher: London ; Routledge, 2002.
4. "The mid-Victorian generation, 1846-1886" by K. Theodore Hoppen
   ISBN: 019873199X.
   Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 1998.
5. "Death in the Victorian family" by Pat Jalland
   ISBN: 0198208324.
   Publisher: New York ; Oxford University Press, 1999.
6. "Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870-1914" by Julie-Marie Strange
   ISBN: 9780521168625.
   Publisher: Cambridge University Press
7. "Rise of Respectable Society" by F. M. L. Thompson
   ISBN: 9780674772861.
   Publisher: Harvard University Press