Students also pursue papers known as Themes and Sources, which, as the title suggests, cover wide-ranging themes in history on the basis of original source material. At the end of the second year, students are examined on each of their outline papers. Themes and Sources is examined on the basis of long-essay course work. The combination of these six marks makes up your Part I result. In the final year of the History degree, Part II, students pursue four possible lines of study.
All students choose a special subject.
These are highly specialized papers, designed to give students a feel for the practice of historical research at the cutting edge of the field. These papers cover subjects as diverse as the 'Diplomacy of World War II', 'European integration' and 'Laughter and politics in 18th-century Britain'. They are taught on the basis of a close reading of a substantial quantity of original source material. Many of these sources will be available in print, but in many cases Special subjects involve work on actual archival material held in Cambridge or in digitized form on the web. In addition to their special subject, all students do at least one specified paper, most students take two.