Dr Sarah Crook

Research Highlights

1. Crook, S. (2022). Looking Back, Thinking Forward: Grassroots Activism and Modern Histories. In Sarah Crook and Charlie Jeffries (Ed.), Resist, Organize, Build: Feminist and Queer Activism in Britain and the United States during the Long 1980s (pp. 331-334). SUNY Press

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60545

   https://sunypress.edu/Books/R/Resist-Organize-Build
2. Crook, S. & Jeffries, C. (2022). Introduction: Thinking through and beyond the 1980s. Resist, Organize, Build: Feminist and Queer Activism in Britain and the United States during the Long 1980s (pp. 1-30). SUNY Press

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60543

   https://sunypress.edu/Books/R/Resist-Organize-Build
3. Crook, S. & Jeffries, C. (Eds.). (2022). Resist, Organize, Build: Feminist and Queer Activism in Britain and the United States during the Long 1980s. SUNY Press.

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60542

   https://sunypress.edu/Books/R/Resist-Organize-Build
4. Crook, S. (2022). Patients, Practitioners and Protestors: feminist sources and approaches in the history of psychiatry. In Chris Millard and Jennifer Wallis (Ed.), Sources in the History of Psychiatry, from 1800 to the Present (pp. 181-196). Routledge

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60136

   https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003087694-12/patients-practitioners-protestors-feminist-sources-approaches-history-psychiatry-sarah-crook
5. Crook, S. (2020). Writing about Mothering and Childcare in the British Women’s Liberation Movement, 1970–85. In Laurel Forster and Joanne Hollows (Ed.), Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s–2000s (pp. 351-365). Edinburgh University Press

   SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa54509

   https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-039-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1940s-2000s-hb.html#:~:text=Women's%20Periodicals%20and%20Print%20Culture%20in%20Britain%2C%201940s%2D2000s%20draws,well%20as%20digital%20magazine%20formats.

All Research

• ‘A future without a past’? Social Mobility in South Wales between 1945 and 1999. (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Prof Martin Johnes

• Women and Sexual Deviancy in England 1760-1850 (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Prof David Turner

• An Oral History of the Archival Profession in Oklahoma (current)

  PhD

  Other supervisor: Dr David Anderson

• Reproductive Rights in the Trump Era and Beyond: A study of Latina Women (current)

  MA

  Other supervisor: Prof Stephen Mcveigh

• HI-M22 Dissertation

  Students produce a dissertation of up to 20,000 words on a historical topic, chosen in conjunction with their supervisor. This represents the culmination of the History MAs, and constitutes Part Two of the programme.

• HI-M38 Themes in History

  This module provides an introduction to advanced historiography. It is designed to develop students¿ awareness of traditional historiographical concerns alongside their knowledge current trends and new directions in writing and thinking about the past.

• HI-M39 Research Folder

  This module is designed to help students to identify a dissertation topic appropriate to their interests and expertise, and to tackle the problems of methodology, develop the research techniques, and undertake the project planning which are the necessary preliminaries to researching and writing a 20,000 word dissertation.

• HI-M82 Feminism and Queer Activism in Postwar Britain

  This module will explore feminist and queer activism in Britain in the years following the Second World War. Focusing on two liberation movements ¿ the women¿s liberation movement and the gay liberation movement ¿ it will look at the key areas around which activists mobilised, including the family, work, and sexuality. It will look at the ideas and key debates that shaped activism in the late twentieth century, encouraging students to investigate why feminist and gay activism emerged in the postwar period; to understand the strategies that feminist and LGBTQ movements used to agitate for change; and to think about how class and race have intersected with liberation campaigns. The module concentrates on Britain but draws out global connections, putting British movements in a broader context. Following two initial sessions on sources and methodologies, the module is structured into three parts. In the first sessions, students are introduced to the key developments of the 1950s and the 1960s and are encouraged to think critically about the organising concepts of radical histories. In the ensuing weeks, students explore the drivers, debates, and legacies of the women¿s liberation movement. Following this, we investigate the gay liberation movement and AIDS activism. Finally, the module concludes with a reflection on feminist and LGBTQ visibility in the 1990s. Students are encouraged to make use of the rich digitised and archival source material available on these topics, including the collection on the women¿s liberation movement housed at the West Glamorgan Archive as well as the materials available at the Miners¿ Library.

• HI-M88 Modern Medical Bodies: Major Themes in the History of Modern Medicine

  This module examines the changing conditions, roles, representations, and uses of bodies in modern medicine. It examines how historians have made the body a central focus of research to explore the interconnections of medical ideas, institutions and practices with histories of modern world and to address core problems of medicalisation, power, class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and empire. Surveying the intersections of bodies, medicine, and modernity, students taking this module will develop critical grounding in major themes, controversies and approaches in the history of modern medicine.

• HIH121 Europe of Extremes, 1789–1989

  The nineteenth century saw the rise of a western European civilization, characterized, as Eric Hobsbawm has noted, by capitalist economics, liberal politics, and the dominance of a middle class that celebrated morality and science. In the twentieth century this civilization faced unprecedented challenges from new political ideologies, and from a working class demanding the right to govern in its own name. The result was an eruption of violence not seen on the continent for centuries; in its wake, the Cold War divided the Europe with an Iron Curtain, and saw the continent become the client of two world superpowers ¿ the USA and the Soviet Union. This team-taught module relies on the specialist knowledge of its tutors to examine economic, political and social themes in the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe.

• HIH122 Making History

  History is an imprecise art and what historians say and write about the past is not the same as what actually happened in the past. Most people's knowledge about the past doesn't come from professional historians at all but rather from 'public history'. Public history is the collective understandings of the past that exist outside academic discipline of history. It is derived from a diverse range of sources including oral traditions, legends, literature, art, films and television. This module will introduce you to the study and presentation of the past. It will consider how the content, aims and methods of academic and public history compare and contrast and you will engage in your own small research project to investigate this. The module will also teach you about the fundamentals of studying and writing history at university. You will learn about essay writing, group work and critical analysis and employ these skills to understand and assess history today, both as an academic activity and as public knowledge.

• 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.

• HIH284 Disunited Kingdom? Class, Race, Gender and Social Division in Twentieth-Century Britain

  This module examines the dynamics and structure of British society over the course of the 20th century. Despite radical social, political and economic changes, the idea of a British nation, a British people and a British way of life remained powerful and persistent. Yet beneath a veneer of social and and national unity were profound divisions and inequalities. This module explores how categories such as gender, class, race, region, nation and religion evolved and persisted. In doing so, the module considers what causes social change and the extent to which there was anything resembling British society at all. The module will relate these historical contexts to the present day. It asks how history can be used to understand contemporary social divisions and seeks to empower and enable students to think critically about how Britain and `Britishness¿ are constituted in contemporary society.

• 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.

• HIH3377 A History of Sex and Gender

  This module explores the history of sex and gender across a multitude of sites since the Medieval period, examining how and why understandings and ideologies changed. This module looks at the history of sex and gender from a social and cultural perspective, drawing out connections with class and race. It explores how ideas of masculinity and femininity have changed over time, how gender has impacted on social, economic and political life, and how dominant ideologies of gender relate to the experience of men¿s and women¿s daily lives. The module will also analyse changing attitudes towards sexuality and demonstrate how modern sexual identities are the product of historical processes rather than fixed and unchanging. Students will be introduced to the key historiographical debates around the history of gender and to the core challenges that drive historians while researching these vital themes.