• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Kristin Hussey

• Owning School: History, Classics and Archaeology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 48 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Did you get enough sleep last night?

We spend a third of our lives sleeping – and yet sleep has not been a serious area of study for historians until recently. While we may think of sleeping as an absence of action, whether we get enough sleep has enormous impacts on how we feel, how we work, and how we view the world. Who can sleep, when, and how much can reveal societal attitudes towards power, efficiency, class, race, sexuality, community and more. Sleep might be a biological need – but does a factory worker in a lodging house after a night shift have the same experience of sleep as an aristocrat in a feather bed? Insomnia in a Prime Minister is a problem of national security – but do we care about a mother who hasn’t slept in six months? In this module, we will dive into the history of sleep by focusing on the problem of sleep (and not sleeping) from the 1500s to the present day.

Through this module, students will be introduced to key issues in the historiography of sleep in the modern period right up to our contemporary moment. We will work with medical and scientific approaches to sleep as well as cultural and environmental perspectives. We will focus particularly on cultural and scientific attitudes towards sleep in America, Britain and the British Empire. We will ask what sleep is, what role it plays in our lives, and whose sleep matters. Students will obtain a close understanding of this exciting area of historical research as well as its closely connected areas like the history of medicine, labour history, environmental history and imperial history. We will use postcolonial theory, spatial theory, and embodied approaches to develop a more nuanced understanding of how to approach sleep in the past. We will pay particular attention to the challenge of drawing sleep from the historical record by considering how to identify and interpret sources related to sleep practices from a wide variety of periods including objects, places, and scientific texts. If available, we will also hear from scientists at Northumbria University sleep laboratory about their contemporary research.

This module aims to:
- Consider sleep as both a cultural and biological phenomenon
- Introduce students to sleep as an exciting area of historical enquiry through the study of its historiography and key debates
- Provide students with critical approaches for analysing sleep including scientific, postcolonial, cultural, anthropological and environmental approaches
- Investigate in-depth case studies and acquire a general knowledge of the subject by reading primary and secondary sources
- Improve the student's capacity for independent study, research and writing through assessments.


By the end of the module participants will:

- Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the history of sleep in the modern period in Britain and America
- Analyse and evaluate the contributions made to the history of sleep in interdisciplinary perspective (labour history, cultural history, environmental history, history of medicine, colonial history)
- Generate and communicate ideas through the analysis of a broad range of primary source materials in the form of an oral presentation.
- Communicate ideas and findings in the form of historical essay writing
- Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.

Outline Of Syllabus

Outline syllabus, intended as a guide only; week-by-week topics may be slightly different to the following:

- What is Sleep? Introducing sleep as a cultural and biological phenomenon
- Sleeping for health in the early modern world
- Creating insomnia: Victorian medical theories of sleep
- The Lazy Natives: Sleep in colonial India
- Where I lay my head: Sleep in the 19th century city
- The night shift: Labour and sleep practices in the 20th century
- Into the Lab: The birth of sleep science
- Into the Bunker: Sleep and chronobiology in the late 20th century
- The Future of Sleep: Sleep tracking, optimization and the body clock

We will also use a workshop format to more closely examine key debates related to the history of sleep as well as preparing for assessments.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The combination of in-person lectures, seminars, and workshops are designed to encourage an active and student-led approach to learning. Lectures provide a foundational knowledge of core themes. Workshops provide students with the skills to analyse and locate primary sources and delve into complex historiographical debates. Seminars allow for the discussion of relevant historiographical interpretations, encourages independent study, and promotes improvement in oral presentation, interpersonal communication, problem-solving skills, and adaptability. Preparation for seminars and workshops requires students to read and critically analyse a wide range of primary sources and secondary literature. A drop-in surgery period provides additional support for students undertaking a final piece of written work.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The assessments have been designed to support students in writing their final essay.
The 25% assessment will be an oral presentation lasting between 8 to 10 minutes [equivalent to 1,000 words written] in which the student will analyse a primary source material. Students will be provided with a list of sources to choose from. A close assessment of a singular source will provide students with an opportunity to practice the complex thinking skills required for the final essay. The oral presentation format also provides a key transferable skill in sharing information in a spoken format. Students will be asked to submit a PowerPoint via Canvas.

The formative essay plan will allow students to receive feedback on their ideas for their final essay early on in the module to support their success in the final summative assessment.

The 75% essay will give the opportunity to work with primary source materials, engage with historiography and develop their own arguments related to historical materials. The essay will assess the students’ ability to make a clear and compelling argument, write clearly and critically, and synthesize different interpretations. Students will be allowed to pursue their own topic of interest for this essay, although a list of potential topics will also be provided for inspiration.

Reading Lists

• HIS3368's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• HIS3368's Timetable