Course details
- Entry requirements: 2:1 degree in a relevant discipline
- Full-time: 12 months
- Part-time: 24 months
The Eighteenth-Century Worlds pathway will take you on an investigative journey through the history, literature and visual and material culture of Europe and its interactions with the wider world, from the Atlantic to Asia.
This highly original interdisciplinary postgraduate course gives you the opportunity to study in one of Britain’s leading Atlantic ports; a city rich in eighteenth-century history, architecture and culture. The city is also home to more national museums and galleries than any other English city outside of London.
The expertise of our research-active tutors and the combination of modules makes this a unique course, following the trajectory to a global world during the eighteenth century.
ERASMUS Exchange with Paris Diderot
There is an opportunity for students to spend semester 2 studying at the University of Paris-Diderot, taking modules there while preparing their feasibility study. Further details are available on request. For students who do not choose to go abroad, the course is enhanced by the presence of a visiting lecturer from Paris in each academic year.
Eighteenth-Century Research Centre
All MA students are encouraged to take part in the activities of the Centre. These include research seminars with invited speakers, workshops, and conferences, some designed specifically for postgraduates.
Please note: when applying for this programme, please choose ‘MA History’ on the online application form. You should specify the specific pathway which you wish to study in your personal statement.
This programme will appeal to a wide range of students, including those who’ve recently graduated in History or a related discipline or have decided to return to university later in life. The structure of the course provides a good grounding for those intending to proceed to doctoral research.
It will appeal particularly to those with a keen interest in history and culture of Europe and its interactions with the wider world. It will also appeal greatly to students who want to enhance their learning with cross-cultural exchanges outside the UK.
Taking the Eighteenth-Century Worlds MA will:
Discover what you'll learn, what you'll study, and how you'll be taught and assessed.
International students may be able to study this course on a part-time basis but this is dependent on visa regulations. Please visit the Government website for more information about student visas.
If you're able to study part-time, you'll study the same modules as the full-time master's degree over a longer period, usually 24 months. You can make studying work for you by arranging your personal schedule around lectures and seminars which take place during the day. After you complete all the taught modules, you will complete your final dissertation or project and will celebrate your achievements at graduation the following term.
Studying part-time means you can study alongside work or any other life commitments. You will study the same modules as the full-time master's degree over a longer period, usually 24 months. You can make studying work for you by arranging your personal schedule around lectures and seminars which take place during the day. After you complete all the taught modules, you will complete your final dissertation or project and will celebrate your achievements at graduation the following term.
As well as the compulsory modules in Semester one, students will be required to choose 15 credits of optional modules.
Optional modules are taken from an approved list of modules available from across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and can be provided on request to the pathway contact.
This module introduces students to key themes and methodological approaches in studies of the eighteenth century. It offers a range of disciplinary perspectives, including social, cultural and intellectual history and literary study, and encourages students to adopt an interdisciplinary approach.
Historians draw many of their theoretical frameworks from the social sciences, including sociology,economics, and political science, and from literary and gender studies. This module investigates the role of theory in historical inquiry, both in framing research questions and in informing historians’ approaches to primary sources. It explores some of the major theoretical influences on historical research in recent decades, including Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism, and encourages students to reflect upon the theoretical and conceptual foundations of current research relating to their potential dissertation topics.
The aim of this module is to read Shakespeare’s plays and poetry in company with others’ works and writings, and thereby to consider a ‘comparative’ approach to reading and interpreting Shakespeare both within and beyond his own time, and against eighteenth-century ideas of him as the great English poet of ‘Nature’, ‘Nation’, and ‘Genius’. Particular attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s contemporaries – especially Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson – as well as to his Restoration and eighteenth-century adapters and ‘improvers’, critics and performers, such as David Garrick and Samuel Johnson. Material studied may include Shakespeare’s critics: Jonson to Johnson; Shakespeare and Marlowe; Shakespeare, Milton, and Ovid; Hamlet and its ‘ghosts’; Richard III – sources and adaptation; and collaborative dramas in which Shakespeare is a co-author, such as All is True and Sir Thomas More.
The Renaissance and eighteenth-century heralded not only the flowering of English drama as a medium of intellectual, political, and social comment, but also ‘revolutions’ in scientific and medical knowledge that relied upon new methods of witnessing nature, and provoked radical ways of thinking about the self. Exploring science and the stage within their reciprocal cultures of spectacle and display, this module will consider the theatrical representation of various kinds of scientific knowledge and practice. Reading science as performance, and theatre as experiment, the module will locate plays such as Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) and John Gay’s Three Hours After Marriage (1717), alongside alchemical and natural philosophical ideas and writings, in order to think through the mutual issues they raise about secrecy and public demonstration, curiosity and observation, audience, and space.
This module explores the relationship between literature and science in the Renaissance and Eighteenth Century, through the works of authors such as Spenser, Bacon, Milton, Boyle, Cavendish, Newton, Swift, Thomson and Barbauld. It will pay particular attention to how emerging ways of knowing and seeing influenced accounts of cosmology and creation, discovery and imagination, and politics and poetics. We will use electronic resources such as EEBO and ECCO, together with the University Library’s Special Collections and Archives, to examine how literary and non-literary texts of the period engaged with ideas prevalent in ‘scientific’ discourses, and how writers were inspired by or set against different narratives of nature, from simple conceits to grand visions of the cosmos.
This module familiarises students with a broad range of historical systems of slavery and forced labour, across a number of geographical and chronological settings. By considering systems comparatively, students are encouraged to think not only about differences and similarities between historical forms of slavery, but also to consider competing research questions, different methodologies and conceptual definitions.
As well as the compulsory modules in Semester two, students will be required to choose 15 credits of optional modules.
Optional modules are taken from an approved list of modules available from across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and can be provided on request to the pathway contact.
The subject of this module is revolution and social change in British, European and colonial North American societies between 1688 and 1840, and the ways in which the processes of change were informed by and shaped relations between Western society and the wider world. The period witnessed an explosion of trade, warfare and the development of a commercial culture that had a profound impact upon both European and colonial cultures. How did all this impact upon changing lifestyles, political discourse, protest and the material world? Taking the political revolutions in America and France as its starting point, the module examines revolution as an interdiscursive event. It not only analyses the impact on British and Continental European societies of the American and French and Haitian revolutionary wars (financially, politically, socially) but also how these events were used to define competing models of statehood and society within and outside the sites of revolution, including contested notions of gender and race. The module will also analyse the ‘afterlife’ of these events and how they were used to define emerging national identities. We also examine changes in material life to which the term ‘revolution’ has been applied, and we assess and critique the ways in which those developments have been used to distinguish Western modernity from Eastern backwardness at the time and by historians.
The Feasibility Study is an extended research proposal for the subsequent MA Dissertation. The study should therefore be focused on the topic that the student proposes to address in their dissertation. The Feasibility Study is designed to ensure that students are able to undertake their dissertation project successfully. It will ensure that they are well prepared when they start writing thier dissertation over the summer.
What did it mean to travel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to encounter people whose difference from the English traveller was etched into their very skin? What happened when encounter turned into domination, and the great debates about slavery began to take shape in the eighteenth-century? The story of British contact with Africa and the Caribbean forms the focus of this module, its imaginative, historical, philosophical, and economic impact decoded through our examination of maps, images, slave narratives, travel accounts, and literature. In the process, we will explore one of the key issues with which writing about travel has always struggled; the anxiety and the challenge of negotiating the difference as well as the similarity between oneself and that which is foreign, alien, and ‘other’.
This module will focus on writing about travel in Renaissance and eighteenth century England, and will explore texts of both real and imaginary travel produced in these periods. It will investigate the ways in which such texts engaged with real cultural and political changes, including England’s connections with other nations in both the Old world and the New, and the construction of concepts such as ‘Englishness’ and the ‘foreign’. By juxtaposing texts from England’s pre-colonial encounters with other nations to the records of eighteenth century Grand Tours and colonial engagements, and by looking at maps and images as well as texts, we will explore questions such as the relationship between travel writing and nationalism, the influence of travel on literary genres, as well as the involvement of such textual records in the formation of England’s imperialist ambition in these periods.
This module provides students with an advanced understanding of a variety of approaches to history, across a number of geographical and chronological settings. With a focus on comparison, local / global perspectives and forms of circulation, students are encouraged to think not only about differences and similarities between thematic approaches to history, but also to consider competing research questions, different methodologies and conceptual definitions.
Sessions on research skills and methodologies will be held as part of the core modules offered by History. MA students will discuss the feasibility of their chosen topic and the implementation of the research with a member of staff with the appropriate knowledge and understanding of the proposed topic during the period June to September. MARM students will have tutorial sessions and produce a feasibility study as part of the preparation for the dissertation before formal supervision begins in the period June to September.
Most modules, except HIST504, take the form of small seminar groups, supplemented by independent study. Most seminars are weekly two-hour sessions, and all are taught in small groups. We consider small group teaching essential to the learning and teaching experience at postgraduate level. Students lead discussions in class, and receive guidance on further reading from the module tutor.
The Feasibility Study (HIST504) and Dissertation (HIST550) demands a higher degree of independence, with guidance and advice from a dedicated supervisor through up to five 45 minute meetings.
Ongoing assessment is linked to work done primarily in seminars and through individual tutorials and supervisions.
Written assessments will vary according to the nature of the modules, research project and the needs of the student, but may include source analyses, written reports, critical reviews, feasibility studies, annotated bibliographies, historiographical review essays and formal research proposals.
We have a distinctive approach to education, the Liverpool Curriculum Framework, which focuses on research-connected teaching, active learning, and authentic assessment to ensure our students graduate as digitally fluent and confident global citizens.
Studying with us means you can tailor your degree to suit you. Here's what is available on this course.
The Department of History is based in the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, an ornate Georgian property located on historic Abercromby Square. Students have access to extensive library facilities, special collections, and Liverpool’s renowned museums, libraries, and galleries, including the University’s own Special Collections and Archives.
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Our History taught programmes are designed to meet the training requirements of the AHRC and the ESRC so equip you for further study towards an MPhil/PhD.
However, our MA students go into a wide range of professions, including media, public sector management, business consultancy, the civil service, NGO and development work, as well as academia.
Possible career prospects
Your tuition fees, funding your studies, and other costs to consider.
UK fees (applies to Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland) | |
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Full-time place, per year | £10,150 |
Part-time place, per year | £5,075 |
International fees | |
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Full-time place, per year | £21,400 |
Part-time place, per year | £10,700 |
Tuition fees cover the cost of your teaching and assessment, operating facilities such as libraries, IT equipment, and access to academic and personal support.
If you're a UK national, or have settled status in the UK, you may be eligible to apply for a Postgraduate Loan worth up to £12,167 to help with course fees and living costs. Learn more about tuition fees, funding and Postgraduate Loans.
We understand that budgeting for your time at university is important, and we want to make sure you understand any course-related costs that are not covered by your tuition fee. This could include buying a laptop, books, or stationery.
Find out more about the additional study costs that may apply to this course.
We offer a range of scholarships and bursaries to help cover tuition fees and help with living expenses while at university.
The qualifications and exam results you'll need to apply for this course.
My qualifications are from: United Kingdom.
Your qualification | Requirements |
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Postgraduate entry requirements |
To apply for one of our History MA programmes you should normally have a BA in History, Ancient History, English Literature, Modern Languages, Art History, Classics or a related discipline (UK classification 2:1 or above, or international equivalent). A Personal Statement which clearly demonstrates an interest in the programme and an understanding of the context of the programme is also required. Applicants may be called to interview and, if so, will be requested to submit a sample of their historical analysis (between 1500 and 2500 words) in English for discussion during the interview. Please note that being asked to interview is no guarantee of being offered a place. |
International qualifications |
If you hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, but don’t meet our entry requirements, a Pre-Master’s can help you gain a place. This specialist preparation course for postgraduate study is offered on campus at the University of Liverpool International College, in partnership with Kaplan International Pathways. Although there’s no direct Pre-Master’s route to this MA, completing a Pre-Master’s pathway can guarantee you a place on many other postgraduate courses at The University of Liverpool. |
You'll need to demonstrate competence in the use of English language. International applicants who do not meet the minimum required standard of English language can complete one of our Pre-Sessional English courses to achieve the required level.
English language qualification | Requirements |
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GCSE | C |
IELTS |
C View our IELTS academic requirements key. |
International Baccalaureate |
Standard Level(Grade 5) |
INDIA Standard XII | 70% or above from Central and Metro State Boards |
WAEC | C4-6 |
Hong Kong use of English AS level | C |
Cambridge Proficiency | C |
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Liverpool bursts with diversity and creativity which makes it ideal for you to undertake your postgraduate studies and access various opportunities for you and your family.
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Professor Mark Towsey
Last updated 19 April 2023 / / Programme terms and conditions /