History: Recent Episodes
University of Southampton
This series introduces two of the unique and renowned archive collections relating to British history that are held at Southampton: the Broadlands and the Wellington archives. Audio recordings offer insight into some of the research themes and activities across the subject area of History, exploring past societies and their lessons for today. Thinking of studying a combined History programme? Watch our student experience video for insight into a combined History and Archaeology programme, and the learning culture at Humanities.
Almost 70 years after the liberation of the concentration camps, the future of Holocaust studies has been discussed at a unique conference at the Universities of Southampton and Winchester, organised by the Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations. Uniquely, it featured talks by around 60 academic researchers from countries including Israel, the USA and China, museum professionals and 40 teachers from the south of England. Topics covered included the role of interactive story-telling in Holocaust education, children’s memories and treatments of genocide stories in popular film and television.
Professor Barbara Yorke discussed new developments in biography writing at the 2013 University of Southampton Reuter Lecture. She reflected on the recent renewal of popularity of biographies and talked about the challenges of researching and writing about people from earlier centuries.
The Professor Emerita of Early Medieval History, University of Winchester and Honorary Professor, Institute of Archaeology, University of London also held a biography master class with postgraduate research students before the talk.
The lecture is held each year in memory of Tim Reuter, formerly Professor of Medieval History at Southampton. His conference in 1999 to mark the 11th centenary of King Alfred’s death was one of his last academic activities.
Before the lecture, copies of Professor Reuter's monumental last book, Das Briefbuch Abt Wibalds von Stablo und Corvey, completed by Dr Hartman from Munich, were presented to Professor Chris Woolgar, who represented the University of Southampton library.
What do people hear in music? How might that change over time? Why should that be of interest to historians? This lecture explores such questions by asking how Germans listened to Richard Strauss' work after 1945. In doing so it seeks to engage from a historian's perspective in and with the new cultural history of music, a field which has hitherto been pioneered mainly from within the institutional and disciplinary frameworks of musicology rather than history. Its wider argument pleads less for dialogue across a particular interdisciplinary interface than for a greater focus on those problem spaces which lie between literatures of common interest across the Humanities and beyond - in this case literatures on the senses, on the emotions and on memory. At its centre, however, is an attempt to open up new perspectives on an overtly historical subject: the visceral legacies of the Second World War.
Established in 1989, from an endowment from the Spanish Ambassador, the Wellington Lecture is given each year on the aspects of the life and times of the first Duke of Wellington.
This year we were delighted to welcome writer and TV broadcaster Peter Snow. The former ITN defence correspondent and Newsnight presenter will draw from his book To War with Wellington, a riveting account of the campaign that culminated in the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
Bringing together analysis of Wellington’s political and military strategy and the detailed and often moving accounts of those who fought under him, Peter paints a vivid picture of the brilliant commander who once described his men as the ‘scum of the earth’, yet led them to one of the most important victories in British history.
Find out more about the multidisciplinary research opportunities, and world renowned archive resources of the Parkes Institute and the learning culture at Humanities. Bettina Codrai gives insight into her research project, combining the subject areas of Jewish Studies, Languages and History that explores the wider question of contemporary German Jewish literature as a counter discourse and the link between identity and social change amongst the minority, and how this has impacted on German Jewish identity in the 21st Century.
Student Joseph Lee talks about his experience of studying a combined degree in Archaeology and History at Southampton.
Sixty years ago, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was played at the first Bayreuth Festival to be staged after the Second World War. Did it symbolise European unity or something darker? Professor Neil Gregor has been investigating its meaning as part of his research into post war Germany.
This short video introduces the Wellington Archives, and the on-going conservation project to preserve this unique collection. The papers of Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) are one of the most prestigious collections of primary documents relating to British history in the first half of the nineteenth century. They are the Duke’s principal archive and cover his military and political career from 1790 until his death.
For more than 20 years, the University of Southampton Library has held in its Special Collections Division the Broadlands Archives. The archive contains some 4,500 boxes, dating from the sixteenth century to the present, centred on the Temple (Palmerston), Ashley, Cassel and Mountbatten families.
Professor Anne Curry talks about sexual violence in Medieval warfare; historic perspectives through the centuries and their lessons for today.