History or Ancient and Medieval History and Culture ?

emrys

can anyone offer advice pros/cons for either single honour history or ancient and Medieval history and culture?

I am mature student, luckily offered place on both courses but 24 hours to confirm acceptance on one or the other.

From a subject matter POV I like both equally (history was my first choice and on cao) but I got a better ‘vibe’ from the interview for the ancient and medieval course.

Any advice from current or former students would be much appreciated!

Aghoney

I am a mature student and I just finished the second year of AMHC. AMHC includes modules on art history, focused on the period from early middle ages to the renaissance. When I started in first year I thought that I would not be interested in that at all, but I found that the amazingly good lecturers in the art history department and the topics covered make medieval art history a very interesting topic that fits very well with the history modules. On the other hand, the history modules available depend on what the history department offers each year, which in some years is not much. This year we only had one 10 credit module on the Hundred Years War, which was quite good, after two other 5 credit modules (one on Chivalry, the other one on primary sources) were cancelled due to lecturers on sabbatical or moving to other universities. About one third of the credits should be modules from the classics department, covering Roman and Greek history and archaeology, as well as literature from the ancient era, which I am personally not as interested as the medieval history and art history modules, but they are good.

AHMC only has 15-16 students each year, and there are a few modules that are AMHC-only that are quite interesting.

Single Honour History covers history to the modern day. This also means that you would get a lot more exposure on historiography methods and techniques with 60 credits a year compared to the 10-20 credits in the AHMC.

Overall, I am quite pleased with AMHC. The art history component is absolutely excellent, the history component good but limited (each year will be different) and the classics component is good but not of interest to me.

emrys

Thanks for the feedback. My main area of interest is Medieval History. Roman and Greek classics are potentially interesting to me and it’s actually the art history that I am unsure about (although you make it sound very intriguing!)

The Single Honour History is (was?) my first choice (and on my cao). The modern world history I don’t mind at all although 19th/20th century Irish history I could do without.

The plan, ultimately, is to do a m.phil in Medieval history and I’m unsure of the best route.