Film and History

Film and history is a pairing that reflects the deep connections between cinema and the ways human societies record, narrate, and interpret their pasts. Film is itself a historical artefact: a document of the time and place in which it was made, shaped by technology, economics, ideology, and culture. History, meanwhile, has long grappled with how moving images function as primary sources and how cinema shapes public memory, national identity, and popular understanding of the past.

Studying both together trains you to be a more rigorous viewer and a more imaginative historian.

At the University of Southampton, this three-year full-time programme explores these connections across cinema history and historical inquiry. You will study film from a range of perspectives: as popular art, as commercial enterprise, and as a cultural record that both reflects and constructs how societies understand themselves and their histories. Alongside this, you will develop your skills as a historian, engaging with primary sources, archival research, and historical interpretation across a wide range of periods and themes.

Southampton's approach recognises that film lovers and history enthusiasts alike bring valuable passions to the study of this combination, and the programme develops your critical and analytical skills across both disciplines.

You will learn to read films closely, to situate them in their historical and industrial contexts, and to evaluate them as evidence for broader historical claims. You will also develop the research and writing skills that both film studies and history demand, building the capacity to produce sustained analytical arguments from complex and varied sources.

Graduates of film and history go on to careers in journalism, archiving, heritage, broadcasting, education, film criticism, cultural policy, and arts administration. Many also move into the wider range of careers that history and humanities graduates typically pursue. Postgraduate study in film studies, history, archive and records management, or cultural studies is a well-supported route.