English

This course focuses on histories of Palestine, beginning in the seventh century and ending in the twenty-first. It is based on a comparative approach that engages with primary sources, secondary historical texts, literary narratives, material culture, and cinematic representations. The course provides the historical and theoretical tools to learn about and engage formations of nation and history in Palestine. Its main purpose is to center Palestinian voices and experiences, both before and after 1948. By recovering such narratives, the course contributes to countering the comprehensive erasure of Palestinian history.

This course considers a range of recent novels produced by Irish writers considering the relationship between writers and the state, north and south. Students explore what kind of difference literature can make to a society’s growing consciousness of itself. Issues to be addressed include modernity in an Irish context, sexuality, violence, the fantastic, religion and its aftermath,  the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and the connections between literary production and the imagined "nation."  The course treats Edna O’Brien’s debut novel THE COUNTRY GIRLS (1960), as its founding text. O’Brien has said that the Archbishop of Dublin and Charles J Haughey (who was at that time Minister for Justice) characterized the book as “filth” that “should not be allowed in any decent home”. Her first three novels were subject to multiple public burnings. The course also considers works by writers such as Brian Moore, John Banville, Anne Enright, Kevin Barry, Niamh Campbell, Colm Tóibín, Eoin McNamee, Anna Burns, and Sally Rooney. 

In this course, students glimpse into the Mediterranean world, using real examples of Archaic sculpture in the British Museum as touchstones and maintaining an emphasis on first-hand inspection and close-looking through gallery visits and handling sessions. Moving beyond Greece, students consider the interconnected development of Archaic art across the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, and Magna Graecia, informing these discussions with new discoveries and scientific testing. Readings engage with current scholarly debates about periodization, gender, and polychromy in Archaic Sculpture. This course requires self-directed study and presentations in museum contexts, culminating in a final essay. All ancient texts are provided in both Greek and English. Numbers will be capped because of museum visits/handling sessions.

This course looks at the vast socio-economic changes that have occurred in China, the most populous and fastest-developing country in the world, a country that was a "blank sheet of poverty" in 1949 and is the second largest economic power in the world now.  

This course explores viruses and viral disease by examining viral structure and function. It explains how viruses subvert host cell function to generate viral factories. Citing examples such as the influenza and HIV viruses, students examine details of the pathogenic mechanisms used by viruses to cause disease. The course also covers the design of viral vaccines and their use in eradicating viral infections such as polio.

This course focuses on the language, but also on the history, geography, artistic works, traditions and current events of the Spanish-speaking countries and their communities. Language learning constitutes the 75% of the course assignments, whereas Culture assignments constitute 25% of the final grade. Tasks in various forms related to language and cultural topics are performed individually and in groups. Contact hours focus on language practice in line with the textbook chapters. Students mainly work in pairs and small groups. All participants have to complete obligatory self-study assignments before class. Students are expected to take part during the lessons as well as in group tasks.

Early Greece was the age of beautiful poetry and cutting-edge philosophy. The course explores the diversity of early Greek thought at the crossroads of poetry and philosophy, from the 8th to the 5th century BCE starting with Hesiod's struggle to re-order the world of gods and humans: Hesiod's work stands side by side with Homer's poems as foundational works of ancient Greek epic. We then consider the exciting literary and intellectual experiments of lyric poets and philosopher poets, who saw poetry as a way of writing philosophy, exploring love and attacking enemies. Authors to be studied include Sappho, Theognis, Solon, Xenophanes, and Empedocles. All texts are studied in translation.

This course is designed to reflect upon the relationship between humankind and nature through the study of selected literary works ancient and modern, mostly drawn from the English, French, and American traditions. 

This course examines developments in finance. Possible topics include security trading and market making, venture analysis, financial contracting, investment strategies for local markets and other current issues in finance. 

Since World War I, millions of soldiers, civilians, and suspected terrorists have died as a result of aerial bombing. Conventional and atomic bombings, moreover, have resulted in the destruction of countless military targets and the incineration of vast square kilometres of urban landscapes. What factors have made this possible, accepted, and “legal”? Throughout this course, students will explore the technological and military developments that have made such killing and wanton destruction possible. Moreover, students will examine the ideological, political, and doctrinal thought from Douhet to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that has not only attempted to legitimate, but advocate, the targeting of civilians from above. Students will also be asked to investigate why legal proscriptions or conventions against aerial bombing never materialized in the pre-World War II era and examine why many nations have still refused to adhere to any restrictions on aerial warfare.