English

This course introduces the central problems and issues in contemporary philosophy of religion. Among the questions that students will consider are: Are there any persuasive arguments for the existence of God? Is religious belief rational if it is not supported by evidence? Is it reasonable to believe that just one religious tradition is true? The aims of the course are: Help students to engage with some of the most central and enduring problems in philosophy of religion; Enhance students' power of critical analysis, reasoning and independent thought, and ability to bring those powers to bear on important philosophical issues; Familiarise students with some of the most interesting and provocative texts in contemporary work on philosophy of religion.  

The period from the French Revolution to the end of the 19th century witnessed extraordinary transformations in just about every area of Europeans’ lives. New ideas of democracy, nationalism, socialism and women’s rights animated successive generations of radicals and produced major revolutions such as those that shook the continent in 1848. The rapid rise of industrialization and new technologies like the railway changed the face of European cities like Paris and Vienna, forced societies to confront problems like poverty and epidemic disease, and even altered basic conceptions of time and space. Artistic movements like romanticism and realism jostled with an emergent mass culture founded on widespread literacy, cheap books and daily newspapers. This course addresses these and other dimensions of the social and cultural history of Europe in order to ask both what drove the major changes of the 19th century and, just as importantly, how people responded to and made sense of them. 

This course examines the relationship between ideas and social changes in modern Europe. It also explores the impact of modern European thoughts on contemporary culture in a cross-cultural perspective.

This course introduces the history of Hong Kong by focusing on its “fields”. It examines how various field sites (such as temples, museums, historical trails, and renovated historical buildings) could be used to understand the history of different places, events, and people in Hong Kong from the ancient period to the present. After a brief introduction to the historical development of Hong Kong, the course discusses aspects of rural Hong Kong history before moving on to urban Hong Kong. The last section of the course explains the diversity of Hong Kong’s communities, cultures, and religions. The course organizes several day trips to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories.

The course provides students with an understanding of the pharmacological actions of a selection of the main classes of drugs in current therapeutic use. Lectures provide insight into the use of drugs in the treatment of a variety of human diseases ranging from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, through to inflammation, allergy, and pain. The drug treatment of the diseases is considered against the backdrop of the underlying disease processes, focusing primarily on the mechanisms by which the drugs bring about therapeutic relief. 

This course provides opportunities to develop proposals for new products and services, using emerging technologies. The class formulates predictive scenarios for strategic decision making, based on the application of the appropriate statistical models. Students apply representation techniques to generate digital graphic reports that will facilitate decision making, using computer tools and visual techniques. The course also distinguishes financing sources, considering their cost, risk and impact on organizations’ financial structure while identifying market needs by obtaining and analyzing primary and secondary multiplatform information. 

This course brings together frameworks and methods from multiple disciplines to think about crisis, a hegemonic and deeply polyvalent concept. Using seminal ideas from queer, trans, and cultural theory, students consider how moments of crisis are often rife with contradictions and ambivalences and how the language of crisis has become ubiquitous in the contemporary world. Students also discuss seminar theories that situate crisis as endemic to capitalism, and think about how we might think about crisis as ordinary rather than exceptional. Throughout the course, students work through myriad texts and disciplines to consider the notions of crisis and catastrophe, and use different examples to research how crises often unfold in drastically different ways. Topics may include climate change, migration, epidemics and pandemics, moral panics around trans rights and bodies, and settler colonialism.

This course explores international conflicts; their causes and consequences, as well as actors' interests, positions, and strategic decisions. It provides opportunities for students to analyze causes of conflicts; perform simulated international negotiations, and solve cases to develop their capacity for negotiation strategy design and international agreement implementation. 

The course requires prior knowledge of the evolution of the international system and international relations theories. 

This course consists of a series of lectures, film viewings and workshops, and explores the different genres and practices of the cinematic non-fiction film form. Topics include a brief history and theory of the documentary as political propaganda, investigative essay, personal journal, and cinema verité observation, through the study of documentary auteurs. Students develop an understanding of the ethical precepts and an appreciation of the aesthetics and intellectual rigor of the documentary form. Through practice, students learn the fundamentals of documentary filmmaking. Students develop the ability to identify, conceptualize and research a topic, negotiate access to characters or events, manage a production through efficient budgeting and scheduling, and create a short non-fiction cinematic narrative with coherent artistic vision and intellectual purpose. Students create a documentary film project working in groups of two, where teams write, shoot, direct and edit a video documentary no more than 60 minutes of video per group with the finished film at 4-6 minutes long, complete with titles and credits. This includes oral pitches. The films are to be submitted as self-contained MOV files. Continuous assessment components include both written and studio-based exercises.

The Romantic movement originated in the 18th-century revival of balladry and romance and later absorbed the political and intellectual energies of the French Revolution, transforming received modes of expression and sparking a far-reaching debate on the power of the imagination and the nature of authorship. Studying male and female writers from 1760 to 1830, this course traces the development of the Romantic aesthetic, highlighting national and regional strands within British Romanticism while also exploring its engagement with the wider world. The Romantic revolution in poetry features prominently, along with the broad variety of other forms characteristic of the period, including the novel, autobiography, political pamphlets, and literary theory.