university of bristol history dissertations

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University home > Unit and programme catalogues in 2023/24 > Unit catalogue > Faculty of Arts > School of Humanities > English and History Dissertation

Unit information: English and History Dissertation in 2023/24

Unit information.

The English and History Dissertation is an exercise in extended independent research. Students are required to identify their own topic, informed by their engagement with the disciplines of English and History. It is expected that they will deploy literary criticism and source analysis in their dissertations. Students will formulate questions to be asked, identify main primary sources, set the research questions in context of issues arising from the secondary literature, and carry through an analytical study to the highest standards. Guidance will be provided in the form of lectures on devising a research topic and using primary sources. Students will also be assigned a supervisor (from either the English Department or the History Department, depending on the disciplinary orientation of the project) who will discuss with them a draft dissertation proposal and an introductory chapter, as well as the particular challenges of the chosen topic. Students will receive guidance from their supervisors in meetings, which should not normally exceed three hours in each teaching block. Students are also free to consult other lecturers with relevant expertise.

Your learning on this unit

By the end of the unit successful students will be able to demonstrate:

• a deep understanding of a chosen subject
• the ability to produce an extended piece of analysis in accordance with high scholarly standards
• advanced proficiency in identifying and in forming their own questions
• advanced bibliographical skills
• the ability to work with primary sources, demonstrating an awareness of the provenance and nature of those sources and how to draw reasoned and considered conclusions from them
• the ability to work almost entirely independently in producing an extended piece of research

How you will learn

• A series of lectures (c.8-10 hours) • regular small and medium-sized group meetings (c.6-10 hours) • one-to-one tuition with the designated dissertation supervisor (up to 3 hours) • access to tutorial consultation with academic staff in consultation hours

How you will be assessed

10,000 word dissertation (100%). All intended learning outcomes identified above are assessed in this exercise.

If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.

If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. HUMS30003).

How much time the unit requires Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks, independent learning and assessment activity.

See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.

Assessment The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit. The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period). The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes .

Related links

• Units available in the School of Humanities

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Dissertations and theses

To find a university of bristol thesis:.

Use  Library Search  as if you were trying to find a book, using either the author's name, the title or a combination of the two. When your search results display, you can refine your search by using the 'Resource type - Thesis' option.

If the thesis you wish to consult is not held on open shelves, you can request it using the 'reserve a copy' button.

To find theses from other institutions:

UK’s national thesis service providing records of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions and free access to the full text of as many theses as possible. Please note: UK theses not available on EThOS can be requested via the Inter-Library Loan service.

Includes citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day. Full-text is available for most dissertations added since 1997. The official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress, it also includes UK & Ireland content.

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Home > USC Columbia > Arts and Sciences > History > History Theses and Dissertations

History Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Cashing the Check of Democracy The American Revolution and Citizenship in the Black Freedom Struggle 1960-1970 , Zachary Earle Clary

“All the Rights of Native Cherokees”: The Appearance of Black People in Cherokee Society , Ayanna Goines

“We Are Created Inferior to Men”: Leveraging Horsemanship to Reinforce Gender Expectations, 1830-1861 , Gabrielle Marie McCoy

The Widened Hearthstone Urban Playgrounds as the Infrastructure of Public Mothering, 1900-1930 , Alexandra Miller

Piratical Transportation: Highlighting Silences in Carolina’s Enslavement and Exportation of Native Americans , Jordan Stenger

Lunatics, Liberals and Bloodthirsty Haters: The South in the 1972 Presidential Election , Thomas Clayton Strebeck

In Her Possession and Keeping Revolutionary War Widows and the Politics of Family Archives, 1820–1850 , Riley Kathryn Sutherland

Colored Lawyer, Topeka: The Legend and Legacy of Elisa Scott , Jeffery Scott Williams

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

The Presbyterian Exception? The Illegal Education of Enslaved Blacks by South Carolina Presbyterian Churches, 1834-1865 , Margaret Bates

Roy Acuff, Democratic Candidate , Henry Luther Capps III

Before the Storm: Youth Hockey in North Carolina Ahead of the NHL’s Arrival , Sarai ShareI Dai

Flying Saucer of the Smokies: The Debate Over National Park Architecture and Wilderness Values in Clingmans Dome Observation Tower , Michelle Fieser

“I Like a Fight”: Margaret Sanger and the First Birth Control Clinic in the United States , Rebecca Linnea Hall

Who Has the Right to Reproduce? Forced Sterilization in South Carolina in the Early Twentieth Century , Kathryn Pownall

Sex (Work) And the City: Sex Work in Columbia, South Carolina, 1860-1880 , Presley McKalyn Ramey

Resurrecting a Nation Through Silk and Diplomacy: American Material Culture and Foreign Relations During the Reconstruction Era , Paige Weaver

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Building a New (Deal) Identity The Evolution of Italian-American Political Culture and Ideology, 1910–1940 , Ryan J. Antonucci

“It Seemed Like Reaching for the Moon:” Southside Virginia’s Civil Rights Struggle Against The Virginia Way, 1951-1964 , Emily A. Martin Cochran

“We are Going to be Reckoned With”: The South Carolina UDC and the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Museum, 1986-2000 , Caitlin Cutrona

Enslaved Rebellion and Abolitionist Imperialism in Britain’s Atlantic World, 1807-1884 , Lewis Eliot

Religion, Senses, and Remembrance: Brooklyn’s Sumter Club in Postbellum Charleston, S.C. , Michael Edward Scott Emett

Praying Soldiers: Experiencing Religion as a Revolutionary War Soldier Fighting for Independence , Roberto Oscar Flores de Apodaca

Engraved in Prejudice: How Currency Displayed the Mindset of the South , Holly Johnson Floyd

The Governor’s Guards: Militia, Politics, Social Networking, and Manhood in Columbia, South Carolina, 1843-1874 , Justin Harwell

Patients’ Rights, Patients’ Politics: Jewish Activists of the U.S. Women’s Health Movement, 1969-1990 , Jillian Michele Hinderliter

Joshua Gordon’s Witchcraft Book and The Transformation of the Upcountry of South Carolina , E. Zoie Horecny

“The Once and Future Audubon:” The History of the Audubon Ballroom and the Movement to Save It , William Maclane Hull

A Culture of Control: Progressive Era Eugenics in South Carolina as a Continuation of Created White Supremacy , Hannah Nicole Patton

Shaping a Queer South: The Evolution of Activism From 1960-2000 , A. Kamau Pope

The Robber Barons of Show Business: Traveling Amusements And The Development of the American Entertainment Industry, 1870- 1920 , Madeline Steiner

Charlotte's Glory Road: The History of NASCAR in the Queen City , Hannah Thompson

Foxy Ladies and Badass Super Agents: Legacies of 1970s Blaxploitation Spy and Detective Heroines , Carlie Nicole Todd

Media Combat: The Great War and the Transformation of American Culture , Andrew Steed Walgren

“Hungering and Thirsting” for Education: Education, Presbyterians, and African Americans in the South, 1880-1920 , Rachel Marie Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Gendering Secession: Women and Politics in South Carolina, 1859- 1861 , Melissa DeVelvis

The Chasquis of Liberty: Revolutionary Messengers in the Bolivian Independence Era, 1808-1825 , Caleb Garret Wittum

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Learning Church: Catechisms and Lay Participation in Early New England Congregationalism , Roberto O. Flores de Apodaca

Useful Beauty: Tiffany Favrile, Carnival Glass, and Consumerism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century , Chelsea Grayburn

Restoring America: Historic Preservation and the New Deal , Stephanie E. Gray

For the Common Man: An Analysis of the United States Space and Rocket Center , Patrice R. Green

Made to Be Forgotten: The Chevalier DE Saint-Sauveur & the Franco-American Alliance , Katelynn Hatton

Leaders in the Making: Higher Education, Student Activism, and the Black Freedom Struggle in South Carolina, 1925-1975 , Ramon M. Jackson

Exclusive Dining: Immigration and Restaurants in Chicago during the Era of Chinese Exclusion, 1893-1933 , Samuel C. King

Complicating the Narrative: Using Jim's Story to Interpret Enslavement, Leasing, and Resistance at Duke Homestead , Jennifer Melton

“Unknown and Unlamented”: Loyalist Women in Nova Scotia from Exile to Repatriation, 1775-1800 , G. Patrick O’Brien

Raising America Racist: How 1920’s Klanswomen Used Education to Implement Systemic Racism , Kathleen Borchard Schoen

Learning the Land: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Southern Borderlands, 1500-1850 , William Cane West

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Beyond Preservation: Reconstructing Sites Of Slavery, Reconstruction, And Segregation , Charlotte Adams

Reading Material: Personal Libraries And The Cultivation Of Identity In Revolutionary South Carolina , Gabriella Angeloni

Politics and the Built Environment: Civic Structures of Eighteenth Century Williamsburg, Virginia and Charles Town, South Carolina , Paul Bartow

The Lost Ones: The Cold War State, Child Welfare Systems, And The Battles Over The Rosenberg Children , Megan Bennett

“Catering To The Local Trade”: Jewish-Owned Grocery Stores In Columbia, South Carolina , Olivia Brown

If This Be Sin: Gladys Bentley And The Performance Of Identity , Moira Mahoney Church

“I Hope They Fire Me:” Black Teachers In The Fight For Equal Education, 1910-1970 , Candace Cunningham

Constructing Scientific Knowledge: The Understanding of the Slow Virus, 1898-1976 , Burke Hood Dial

Ayatollahs And Embryos: Science, Politics, And Religion In Post-Revolutionary Iran , M Sadegh Foghani

Of Cannonades and Battle Cries: Aurality, The Battle of The Alamo, and Memory , Michelle E. Herbelin

Anti-Sabbatarianism in Antebellum America: The Christian Quarrel over the Sanctity of Sunday , Kathryn Kaslow

A Divisive Community: Race, Nation, And Loyalty In Santo Domingo, 1822 – 1844 , Antony Wayne Keane-Dawes

“Remember Them Not for How They Died”: American Memory and the Challenger Accident , Elizabeth F. Koele

Garagecraft: Tinkering In The American Garage , Katherine Erica McFadden

Black Power And Neighborhood Organizing In Minneapolis, Minnesota: The Way Community Center, 1966-1971 , Sarah Jayne Paulsen

The Popular Education Question in Antebellum South Carolina, 1800-1860 , Brian A. Robinson

Perks Of Perkins: Understanding Where Magic And Religion Meet For An Early Modern English Theologian , Kyle Sanders

Black Men, Red Coats: The Carolina Corps, Race, and Society in the Revolutionary British Atlantic , Gary Sellick

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Skin Deep: African American Women and the Building of Beauty Culture in South Carolina , Catherine Davenport

Funding South Carolina’s Monuments: The Growth of the Corporate Person in Monument Financing , Justin Curry Davis

Sex and the State: Sexual Politics in South Carolina in the 1970s , Jennifer Holman Gunter

Within the House of Bondage: Constructing and Negotiating the Plantation Landscape in the British Atlantic World, 1670-1820 , Erin M. Holmes

Odor and Power in the Americas: Olfactory Consciousness from Columbus to Emancipation , Andrew Kettler

From Rice Fields to Duck Marshes: Sport Hunters and Environmental Change on the South Carolina Coast, 1890–1950 , Matthew Allen Lockhart

Potential Republicans: Reconstruction Printers of Columbia, South Carolina , John Lustrea

Lamps, Maps, Mud-Machines, and Signal Flags: Science, Technology, and Commerce in the Early United States , James Russell Risk

Rebirth of the House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home , Jennifer Whitmer Taylor

Buy for the Sake of your Baby: Guardian Consumerism in Twentieth Century America , Mark VanDriel

Environmental Negotiations Cherokee Power in the Arkansas Valley, 1812-1828 , Cane West

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

A Call To Every Citizen: The South Carolina State Council Of Defense And World War I , Allison Baker

National Register Nomination for the Waikiki Village Motel , Jane W. Campbell

“Antagonistic Describes the Scene:” Local News Portrayals of the New Left and the Escalation of Protest at the University of South Carolina, 1970 , Alyssa Jordan Constad

Ahead of Their Time: Black Teachers and Their Community in the Immediate Post- Brown Years , Candace Cunningham

Deserts Will Bloom: Atomic Agriculture And The Promise Of Radioactive Redemption , Chris Fite

Restoring the Dock Street Theatre: Cultural Production in New-Deal Era Charleston, South Carolina , Stephanie E. Gray

In Search Of Granby: A Colonial Village Of South Carolina , Kathryn F. Keenan

Preserving The Architectural Legacy Of Lyles, Bissett, Carlisle & Wolff, 1948-1976 , Casey Lee

Looking for Remnants of Rice Cultivation at Manchester State Forest Through the Use of LIDAR , Sarah Anne Moore

Uncle Sam’s Jungle: Recreation, Imagination, And The Caribbean National Forest , Will Garrett Mundhenke

G.I. Joe v. Jim Crow: Legal Battles Over Off-Base School Segregation Of Military Children In The American South, 1962-1964 , Randall George Owens

Radioactive Dixie: A History of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Waste in the American South, 1950-1990 , Caroline Rose Peyton

A Culture Of Commodification: Hemispheric And Intercolonial Migrations In The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660-1807 , Neal D. Polhemus

Rediscovering Camden: The Preservation of a Revolutionary War Battlefield , Gary Sellick

The “Forgotten Man” of Washington: the Pershing Memorial and the Battle over Military Memorialization , Andrew S. Walgren

Proslavery Thinking In Antebellum South Carolina: Higher Education, Transatlantic Encounters, And The Life Of The Mind , Jamie Diane Wilson

Colonialism Unraveling: Race, Religion, And National Belonging In Santo Domingo During The Age Of Revolutions , Charlton W. Yingling

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

"Very Many More Men than Women": A Study of the Social Implications of Diagnostics at the South Carolina State Hospital , Clara Elizabeth Bertagnolli

Forgotten Science of Bird Eggs: The Life Cycle of Oology at the Smithsonian Institution , Katherine Nicole Crosby

Shifting Authority at the Confederate Relic Room, 1960-1986 , Kristie L. DaFoe

Boundary Stones: Morbid Concretions and the Chemistry of Early Nineteenth Century Medicine , Edward Allen Driggers Jr.

Main Street, America: Histories of I-95 , Mark T. Evans

National Register Nomination for St. James the Greater Catholic Mission , Diana Garnett

They Held Their Fists Up: The Myth of the Violent Black Panther and the Making of the Angola 3 , Holly Genovese

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• Researching your dissertation

When it comes to thinking about dissertations, it's useful to know how and where to look for material, both within Cambridge and further afield. The following is some guidance on finding various different types of material, whether primary or secondary.

Finding books in Cambridge

Finding books outside cambridge, finding articles.

• Unpublished material

Online sources

Subject gateways.

For further help our LibGuide has lots of information about how to carry out research in History.

Finding secondary material

The best place to begin looking for secondary material is a specialist bibliographical database covering your area of interest, eg. the Bibliography of British and Irish History . Teaching staff will be able to advise on what databases there are in your subject area. There may not be a specialist database covering your topic, in which case a more general literature search may be the best way to begin. Literature searches may also help you to find supplementary material, and to identify what is available within Cambridge.

Literature searches will help you to identify a viable topic of research, or a new angle from which to approach a subject, and they will also ensure that you do not duplicate work in progress. You will need to be compiling lists of material to consult at the same time as taking organised notes and writing; you should not wait to complete the reading before beginning to write.

For searching across library catalogues in Cambridge, use iDiscover ; as well as searching library holdings it also retrieves records for ejournals and ebooks, and can be extended to search databases such as JSTOR . You can also turn searches into RSS feeds (for alerts when any relevant items are added to the catalogue).

The University's ebooks@cambridge team subscribe to thousands of ebook titles, including key resources such as the Cambridge Histories and Cambridge Companions. These are searchable through iDiscover; if there is an electronic copy of the book you are looking for, it will have the phrase "[electronic resource]" in the record after the title, and you can follow the link in the record directly through to the text. Ebooks are easy to use, can be accessed from home and can normally have several users accessing the text simultaneously, so access is almost always available.

You may need to extend your search beyond Cambridge, to see if there is material available elsewhere which is not held by any of the libraries in the university. Library Hub Discover  is the best way for finding material held in libraries in the United Kingdom; it is the combined catalogue of the UK's major research libraries (including the British Library, National Library of Scotland and National Library of Wales), as well as various specialist research libraries and collections. The catalogue contains over 32 million records. It is possible to search by subject, author, title or keyword, and you can restrict your search by date, place published, type of material (eg. periodicals, maps), or language. Search results will display where an item is held, and provide links to an electronic copy, if there is a freely available one. 

The Document Delivery Service is available to help support students access difficult to locate material. This includes Inter-Library loan and Rapid Inter-Library loan.

If you are working away from Cambridge (for example, during the vacation), you may be able to get access to other higher education libraries in your area; visit SCONUL Access  for more information.

For catalogues of libraries outside the United Kingdom try WorldCat , a catalogue of over 10,000 libraries, which indexes 1.5 billion items.

You will need to look at journal articles as well as books, as journals are often where the latest, most up-to-date historical research is published. There are several citation databases which you can search for articles which might be relevant to your topic. As well as general historical databases, there are also more specialised ones, covering various regions, periods and topics. (Most of these will require a Raven password for off-campus access.) To search across the full range of electronic journals Cambridge subscribes to go to the ejournals@cambridge page. It is also possible to search across popular databases for article titles (as opposed to journal titles) on iDiscover.

Key general databases

• Historical Abstracts: This covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Published since 1954, it indexes over 3,100 academic historical journals in more than 40 languages; thousands of new citations are added every year.
• Scopus: This database is by far the largest citation database available to members of the University. It covers a range of disciplines and includes information about where articles have been cited.

Digital journal archives

• JSTOR: A digital archive of over 1,000 journals; it can be subject-searched and gives immediate online access to articles in titles to which the University subscribes.
• Project Muse: Full-text access to nearly 500 journals from over 130 scholarly publishers.

Region/country databases

• America: History and Life: A companion title to Historical Abstracts. There is not online access, but the print copy can be found in the University Library (North Front, Floor 6, classmark: P660.b.31).
• Bibliography of British and Irish History: A bibliographical database of historical writing dealing with the British Isles, the British Empire and the Commonwealth, from 55 B.C. to the present, containing over 500,000 records. (It is worth noting that it is not an exhaustive bibliography of works relating to the British Empire and the Commonwealth; it covers the relations of those countries in the Empire and the Commonwealth with Britain.)
• Bibliography of Asian Studies: A bibliographical database covering articles and book chapters on all parts of Asia published since 1971.
• Index Islamicus: A bibliographical database of books, articles and reviews on Islam and the Muslim world.

Chronological databases

• International Medieval Bibliography: A bibliographical database covering medieval civilization, containing over 440,000 records.

Topical databases

• ATLA Religion Database: A bibliographical database covering theology and church history, containing over 1.7 million records.
• Bibliography of the History of Art: A bibliographical database on European and American art from late antiquity to the present, covering material published between 1975 and 2007.
• History of Science, Technology & Medicine: amalgamation of a few separate bibliographies. Includes historiography and the role of science in society and culture from prehistoric times onwards.

Unpublished material (dissertations and theses)

There are several different databases for searching for university dissertations and theses, whether produced in the United Kingdom or further afield.

• History Online: Contains a directory of history theses and research Masters produced in the U.K. since 1970, along with a list of theses currently in progress.
• EThOS: The national thesis service: a British Library-administered database of over 300,000 theses from U.K. universities.  Those which have already been digitized can be downloaded for free, but if the thesis you want to look at has not yet been digitized, you will have to pay a fee.  (Cambridge dissertations are listed on Ethos but not supplied by the service.
• ProQuest Digital Dissertations: A database of 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from 700 academic institutions worldwide, offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997.
• Apollo: Cambridge University's institutional repository.  Includes a collection of voluntarily deposited Ph.D. theses.

Finding primary sources

You can access more online resources through iDiscover and the UL's eresources@cambridge page , which includes links to visual and sound resources, film and video services, and newspapers (both archives and current).

Some examples of online collections of primary source material:

• American Memory (Library of Congress): online collection of documents for American history, comprising written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music.
• British History Online: digital library of primary and secondary sources for medieval and modern history of the British Isles
• Empire Online: online collection of original documents relating to empire studies, including exploration journals, periodicals, government papers, maps.
• First World War: Personal Experiences: database of digital images of original documents, including diaries, letters, personal narratives, scrapbooks, and visual sources.
• German History in Documents and Images: digital collection of original historical materials documenting German history from the beginning of the early modern period to the present.
• UK Parliamentary Papers includes over 200,00 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715, with supplementary material back to 1688.

In Cambridge

ArchiveSearch  provides finding aids and links to digital records for the majority of archives located in the city of Cambridge., including the archives of many colleges, and of the Churchill Archives Centre .

In the United Kingdom

You may need to visit archives outside Cambridge as part of your research. To find out what archival material is held where, there are various union catalogues of archive material:

• National Archives: Formerly the Public Record Office, this repository holds the national archives for England, Wales and the United Kingdom (there are separate national record offices for Scotland and Northern Ireland). They have extensive online catalogues , which can be searched by subject, and you can access their online collections and download copies of documents.
• National Register of Archives: A register of over 44,000 unpublished lists and catalogues, detailing the nature and location of manuscripts and historical records relating to British history. These are "non-official" archives covering the holdings of local record offices, national and university libraries (including Cambridge), specialist repositories, museums and other bodies in the United Kingdom and abroad, as well as papers held privately by individuals, firms and institutions. The research guides on the website explain how the National Register of Archives can be used for locating material on particular topics.
• Archives Hub: A national gateway to descriptions of archives of over 180 UK repositories (including Oxford and Cambridge); again, you can search by subject.

To search the holdings of archives outside the United Kingdom, try Archive Grid , a major catalogue of historical documents, personal papers and family history material held in repositories around the world; you can search for collections by topic.

Subject gateways are online portals to subject-specific resources, and can be excellent places to look for more information on your topic. Some gateways where the sites have been evaluated by experts include:

• History Online: Created by the Institute of Historical Research, this initiative indexes books and journal articles, details history lecturers in the U.K., digital history projects, and current and past historical research.
• History Data Service: This project collects, preserves, and promotes the use of digital resources, which result from or support historical research, learning and teaching.
• Connected Histories: A collection of digital resources on early modern and 19th century British history.
• Online resources
• Electronic resources by paper
• Libraries, archives, museums, galleries
• Keeping up-to-date

Department of History

Yale history dissertations.

During the late 1800’s, only a trickle of dissertations were submitted annually, but today, the department averages about 25 per year. See who some of those intrepid scholars were and what they wrote about by clicking on any of the years listed below.