Welcome events for the School of Humanities

READ

Scholarship

• Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, Peter Barry
• This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle
• Literature and the Critics: Developing Responses to Texts, Richard Jacobs 

Literature

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Salman Rushdie, East/West
• William Shakespeare, The Tempest
• Jeff Vandermeer, Borne

WATCH

• The Tempest (2010)
• LA Review of Books Radio Hour
• New Yorker Fiction Podcast
• Poetry Off the Shelf: Poetry Foundation podcast 
• University of Kent English Channel

DO

• Visit: Library Exhibit, ‘Treasures of the British Library’, Sir John Ritblat Gallery, British Library, London
• Visit: Museum Exhibit, ‘The Making of Marlowe: Poet, Playwright, Provocateur’, The Beaney Museum, Canterbury 
• Write: Begin a learning journal (hand-written are the best) and record your responses to the texts you are reading and the other resources you engage with. Reflect on your learning processes and reactions and make note of any questions you have as well as the connections you make to other texts.
• Browse: Digital resource, ‘English Literature Through the Ages’, Online Exhibition

READ:

Scholarly overviews

• The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens
• A Companion to the Roman Republic
• The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature

 Ancient Authors

• Herodotus, The Histories
• Homer, The Iliad or the Odyssey
• Any Greek tragedy
• Ovid, Metamorphoses

Popular History

• SPQR (Mary Beard)
• Emperor of Rome (Mary Beard)

Fiction

• The Alexander Trilogy (Mary Renault)
• The King must Die (Mary Renault)
• Women of Troy series (Pat Barker)

Mythology

• Mythology (Edith Hamilton)
• Mythos (Stephen Fry)

Further reading on mythology, with modern retellings.

WATCH/LISTEN:

Podcasts:

• In Our Time
• The Ancients
• The Classics Podcast
• Kentiquity

DO:

• Visit the British Museum
• Browse digital resources
• Take a look at the Perseus digital library (sources in English, Greek, and Latin)
  
• Browse "Where can Classics take you?" Bloomsbury site for lots of digital resources.

READ

The following books can be obtained relatively cheaper from sellres on bookfinder.com or Ebay. These books are all available in paperback and many have gone through numerous reprints:

• M. S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1618-1789
• Ian Beckett and David Chandler, The Oxford History of the British Army
• Ian Beckett, The British Army: A new short history
• Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870
• Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History
• Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe, 1870-1970
• Elizabeth Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War 
• Matthew Hughes and W. J. Philpott (eds.), Modern Military History
• Stephen Morillo with M. F. Pavkovic, What is Military History?
• Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army
• Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
• Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War
• Vanda Wilcox, Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War
• Geoffrey Wawro, Warfare and Society in Europe 1792-1914

One important academic journal, which focuses specifically on military issues, the British Journal for Military History, is available as an Open Access journal, so you should have a look at some of the article published in it over recent years to get a flavour of what academic journals look like and how you might use them in your research.

(Continued)

WATCH / LISTEN

Radio 4: ‘In Our Time’

This is, normally, a weekly programme, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, when he brings together a panel of experts to discuss a particular topic. Many of these are on historical themes, and we would particularly recommend, the following which each run for about 45 minutes and can be downloaded as podcasts:

• ‘The Siege of Paris, 1870-1871’
• ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
• ‘Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow’
• ‘The Thirty Years War’ (1618-48)
• ‘The Mexican American War’ (1846-48)
• ‘Garabaldi and the Risorgimento’
• ‘Frederick the Great’
• ‘The War of 1812’
• ‘The Zulu Nation’s rise and fall’
• ‘The Indian Mutiny’
• ‘The Siege of Vienna’
• ‘The Boxer Rebellion’
• ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’
• ‘The Opium Wars’
• ‘The Jacobite Rebellion’
• ‘The Spanish Civil War’
• ‘Napoleon and Wellington’
• ‘War in the 20th Century’

Gresham College, London

The College, founded in 1597, hosts public lectures by distinguished academics. These are generally open to the public and are recorded. Those of particular interest to military historians are:

‘World War I: Ending and Aftermath’

‘War, health and medicine’

‘War and Peace in Europe from Napoleon to the Kaiser’ 

DO

If you live in or near London, you should visit the Imperial War Museum and National Army Museum (assuming that you haven't already done so). If not, you should visit your local regimental museum. 

You might also want to visit the Naval Museums at Greenwich or Portsmouth or RAF Museum at Hendon.

You should also try to visit a battlefield site, many are in the UK and may be closer to home than you think.

READ

Medieval & Early Modern

• The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe — Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry (2022)
• Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages Through the Women Written Out of It — Janina Ramirez (2022)
• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century — Barbara Tuchman
• The World Turned Upside Down — Christopher Hill

Social & Cultural

• What Is Cultural History? — Peter Burke
• The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson (extracts)
• A History of the World in 100 Objects — Neil MacGregor

Imperial

• Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson
• Insurgent Empire — Priyamvada Gopal
• The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World — Maya Jasanoff
• Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam — Fredrik Logevall

American

• A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn
• These Truths: A History of the United States — Jill Lepore

Environmental & Medical

• Beastly Britain: An Animal History — Karen Jones
  A look at animals and us, from one of our own environmental historians.
• Silent Spring — Rachel Carson
  The book that kicked off the environmental movement.
• An Introduction to the Social History of Medicine: Europe Since 1500 — Keir Waddington
  A survey of the major debates and themes in the history of Western medicine, from the early modern period to the present.

WATCH

• The Last Duel (2021)
• The Northman (2022)
• An Inconvenient Truth — Al Gore’s landmark study of climate change
• Silkwood and Erin Brockovich — classics on environmental advocacy and women activists
• The Zone of Interest (2023), dir. Jonathan Glazer
• Podcasts: In Our Time (History episodes), The Rest Is History, and American History Tellers
• YouTube: University of Kent History channel and open lectures
• Podcast: Imperial War Museum, Conflict of Interest (Season 2, Episode 5, featuring our own Dr Aurelie Basha)
  
• Documentary: Empire (Channel 4/Netflix, dir. various)

(Continued)

DO

• Visit: The British Museum’s Sutton Hoo room.
• Visit: Canterbury Cathedral’s free current exhibition, Smashed, Bombed, Lost – Recovered: Tales of Canterbury’s Stained Glass.
• Visit: The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury — local and social history collections.
• Visit: The Natural History Museum, London — a feast for all things environment and animals.
• Explore: Go for a walk in your local park — urban space or country estate, each with its own history of recreation, health, class, community and horticulture.
• Browse: The National Archives online catalogue and education resources
  
• Browse: Old Bailey Online — searchable court records, useful for social and cultural history.

WRITE

Start a learning journal recording:

• your responses to what you read and watch;
• questions that arise; and
• connections you notice between different periods and themes.