Dr Regina Poertner

Research Highlights

1. Poertner, R. (2021). Great Christian Jurists in English History, ed. Mark Hill and R.H. Helmholz. The English Historical Review, 136(578), 199-201.

   https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaa357, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa56447
2. Poertner, R. (2020). Zwischen Konfessionalisierung und Toleranz: Staat, Kirche und religioese Minderheiten im Erzbistum Salzburg und in der Steiermark im Zeitalter der Aufklaerung. Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler/Rudolf Hoefer/Alois Ruhri (eds.), Religion im Wandel. Von der Reformation zur Toleranz. (pp. 16-24 (notes on p. 118)). Edition

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa54333
3. Poertner, R. (2019). Family Fortunes: Marriage, Inheritance and Economic Challenges in Scotland c.1660–1800. Family Life in Britain, 1650–1910 (pp. 23-46). Palgrave MacMillan

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04855-6_2, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa45958
4. Poertner, R. (2018). Review of: Karl Gunther, Reformation Unbound. Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History), Cambridge 2014, Cambridge University Press, x + 284 pp

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa39395
5. Poertner, R. (2009). 'The highest of time': Verfassungskrise und politische Theorie in England 1640-1660 (transl.: 'The highest of time': Constitutional crisis and political theory in England, 1640-1660) Duncker and Humblot Publishers, Berlin.

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa39394

All Research

• Redeeming Death: Mortality, Portraiture and the Quest for Salvation in Tudor England and Wales (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Prof John Spurr

  Other supervisor: Dr Regina Poertner

• The Peanut Kingdom: People & Policy in Caddo County, Oklahoma (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Dr Dion Curry

  Other supervisor: Dr Regina Poertner

• 'The Rational Apocalypse of Latitudinarians in Restoration England.' (awarded 2018)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Dr Regina Poertner

  Other supervisor: Prof John Spurr

• HIH124 Britain and the World, 1800 - 2000

  This module will provide an overview of the history of British politics, society, culture, and the economy from c. 1800 to the present, from a national and international perspective. The lectures and seminars for this module will give students the opportunity to engage closely with events, processes, and people - both male and female, from diverse ethnic backgrounds - who contributed to the making of the modern British state and society, and who defined Britain¿s relationship with the wider world. We will discuss the transformative impact of warfare, Empire and colonialism, industrial and technological change. We will also consider the significance of race, class, and gender, and how they relate to national sentiment and social and political emancipation movements in Britain and beyond.

• HIH237 The Practice of History

  The purpose of the module is to encourage you to think more deeply about how historians work and, in particular, about how we as historians can locate and use primary historical sources effectively as a means of interpreting and understanding the past. During the module we will learn about the survival of historical evidence, how it is organised and made accessible to historians to undertake their research, and how to effectively locate and interpret it in your studies. We will consider how the process of doing historical research changes over time, in particular with the impact of recent developments like digitization. At the core of the module will be the work you undertake with others in your seminar group using a range of primary sources which your seminar tutor will introduce to you. As part of the module assessment you will also undertake your own primary source based research project using items from these collections. The module is designed strengthen your analytical skills and to help prepare you for the more extensive uses of primary evidence which you will encounter in final year special subjects and dissertation.

• HIH3300 History Dissertation

  The History dissertation is a free-standing, 40-credit module that runs across both semesters of Level Three. Candidates conduct research upon a subject of their choice, devised in consultation with a member of staff teaching for the degrees in History, and concerning a topic that falls within staff research and teaching interests.

• HIH3364 The Great Depression and New Deal America 1929 -1941

  This module will explore one of the most exciting and in many respects exceptional periods in US history: to combat the devastating economic and social impact of the Great Depression that had started at the l ate 1920s, the new administration led by President Franklin D Roosevelt carried out an ambitious program of bold and rapid legislative reform and social engineering in the years 1933 to 1938. In spite of a political and legal backlash in 1937-39, and significant shortcomings, these reforms created an influential source of inspiration for future federal governments¿ responses to social and economic policy issues such as social security, health care, and industrial relations. Quantifying the New Deal¿s contribution to ending the Great Depression remains a disputed subject among historians, not least because the war-related employment boom the US economy experienced after 1941 makes it harder to separate out any long-term effects of specific New Deal policies. There is, however, consensus about the profound political impact of the New Deal¿s use of federal government-led intervention, often at the expense of individual states¿ powers, and the contribution it made to social change. As will be shown, some of these social shifts were unintentional, e.g. in race relations: unlike his wife Eleanor, F D Roosevelt was not a champion of legally enforced racial equality. The module will study in depth the different components of the New Deal and its ideological foundations, as well as the motives and aims of its chief supporters and opponents. We will use a representative selection from the vast array of primary sources that are readily available for this topic to investigate how the New Deal affected the lives of the rural and urban population in different parts of the US, why it continues to be controversial, and in what sense it can be said to have changed American politics and culture permanently.

• HIH396 From Machiavelli to Mussolini: Government and society in Western political thought

  This module offers a guide to the history of ideas on government and society which continue to influence political thought and action in the 21st century. The lectures will start by looking at the origins of democratic thinking in Athens, 5th Century BC, and will then give a brief account of medieval political thought and the impact of Christian-Muslim encounters. The main part of the course will deal with modern ideas on government as developed by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, the political authors of the Enlightenment and American Revolution, and Marx and Lenin. The final part will focus on the Italian and German national socialists' assault on the liberal state and Western democratic tradition. Students will have the opportunity to read and discuss a representative selection from the 'classics' of Western political thought and reflect on their contemporary political relevance. As will be shown, some of today's best-known early modern texts on the nature of state power were misinterpreted by contemporaries and brought into disrepute by fascist ideologues who claimed them in defence of dictatorship.

• AHRC CDP 'Redeeming death: mortality, portraiture, and the quest for salvation in Tudor England and Wales' 2016 - 2020

  , with Dr Tarnya Cooper, National Trust/Portrait Gallery London. Professor John Spurr, Swansea, £ 76,590