Seminar in British History: Histories of Shopping

HIST 4500A:
Seminar in British History: Histories of Shopping
Fall 2026 / Winter 2027

The above image is from the Empire Marketing Board campaign in the 1930s.
Instructor: Danielle Kinsey
Course Description: While this is a seminar about modern British history (ie/ from about 1750 to the present), the theme for the course is “Histories of Shopping.”
Long has it been assumed that industrialization was the backbone of British development and that histories of production drove imperialism, militarization, and the rise of parliamentary governance in Great Britain. This course will take a step back from that assumption and investigate how consumption, distribution, marketing, and consumerism were just as much a part of the story as production. Napoleon famously characterized England as a nation of shopkeepers; this course will explore how “shopping,” or the practice of buying goods from shops, became a constitutive element of modern life and driver of economic, political, social, and cultural change in Britain and its empire.
In the Fall semester, we will read and discuss scholarship about consumerism and shopping in modern Britain. Readings will likely be about: the cotton trade, racial capitalism, museums and exhibitions, glass shopwindows, department stores, worker cooperatives, consumer boycotts, kleptomania, fashion, the advertising industry, sensationalism, shopping districts, rationing, mass culture, Cold War culture, and the neoliberal citizen-consumer. Students will be asked to think historiographically about how and why scholars made their arguments about the past in addition to learning basic narratives of what happened in the past. The Fall semester will be evaluated on discussion participation, reading responses, a historiographical analysis of a particular topic of each student’s choosing, and a midterm on the readings in that semester.
In the Winter semester, as a class we will choose a specific area or theme to focus on and students will develop an original research topic of their own. We will discuss how to: generate topics and research plans, write a proposal, find and analyze primary sources, find and analyze secondary sources, write in drafts, and craft arguments and argumentation. We will also engage in peer review and students will be asked to make an oral presentation on their research findings. The output format for the research project will probably be a formal written essay but I am open to other modes of presentation.
Class Format: This is a 1.0 credit seminar that will meet in-person once per week for three hours. All students are expected to attend every class.
Evaluation: Attendance and participation will be graded in both semesters and is mandatory. There will also be reflective assignments in both semesters in addition to the assignments already discussed in the course description. The summative paper for the Fall semester will be a historiographical essay. The Winter semester will revolve around students producing aspects of their research project in a timely manner and engaging in constructive feedback with their peers.
Prerequisites: Students should complete either HIST 3810 or 3820 before taking this class so that they have been introduced to the concepts and content of historical theory and historiographical analysis.
Required readings: Readings for this course have not yet been set. Having said that, students should be prepared to read and discuss about 120 pages of academic writing per week. This reading load will come in the form of academic journal articles, monograph chapters, and theoretical texts, some of which will be challenging.
Email the instructor if you have any questions or concerns.