English

Perhaps no single art movement within Western modernism is as constitutive and contested as cubism. While the artists under this label introduced crucial new paradigms for artistic production, they did so in ways deeply entangled with violent histories of European imperialism and colonialism. Accordingly, this seminar pursues three primary tasks. First, students develop a working understanding of cubism as it first unfolded in Paris between the years 1906 and 1917. Next, the seminar critically examines prominent theoretical models for interpreting cubist practices, among them formalism, social art history, structuralist semiotics, feminist critique, and postcolonial theory. Finally, the course turns to artists who both engaged with cubism—including Sonia Delaunay, Diego Rivera, Tarsila do Amaral, Wifredo Lam, and Faith Ringgold—and challenged its foundational tenets, premises, and exclusions.

One of the main features of Asian politics and government is the complex nexus of ethnicity, religion, and the state. This course focuses on the colonial formation and postcolonial continuation of these ethno-religious features of politics, known as the politics of identity in Asia. The course explains some major ethnic and religious conflicts in Asia; their impacts on national politics, party systems, state structures, and government policies; and the role of the state in this regard.

The course introduces students to practical elements of Irish-language culture through a 4-day, residential course based in the Waterford Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area), one hour from UCC. Through classes and field-trips, the students participate in cultural activities relating to famine- and agrarian-history, landscape, music, dance, storytelling etc. in an Irish-speaking environment.

Project management practices are increasingly important to organizations across a range of sectors. Projects are the main vehicles by which organizations (public and private) embark on deliberate and proactive strategic change. This course explores the practicalities of managing projects from a value creation and lifecycle perspective.

What is the sound of Korea? This course explores Korean diasporic music and sound from Korean traditional folk songs (minyo) to BTS (K-Pop). This interdisciplinary course looks at Korean music, sound, and culture through historical, political, and cultural lenses, exploring them as visual and sonic narratives without boundaries. The course provides fresh perspectives by utilizing performances, music videos, archives, urtext music scores and bilingual text (Korean and English). Furthermore, students engage broadly not only with music and sound but also with Korean visual arts, philosophies, film, and literature.  

This course is intended for students who wish to acquire a deep understanding of systems of many particles. The course considers the fundamentals of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics and is a prerequisite to advanced statistical mechanics. It covers topics including: the laws of thermodynamics, thermodynamic functions, ideal gases, and heat engines; microcanonical ensemble, canonical ensemble, Boltzmann distribution, and partition function; and an introduction to quantum gases.

This course examines fundamental and advanced topics in social psychology. Students look at the topics of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination and how these manifest in the world today. They also cover how these can be challenged and reduced. After covering these topics, students examine in depth a range of specialist areas of social psychological research such as dehumanization, objectification, and the ways in which people think about animals.

In their struggle for survival, organisms have to adapt continuously to changes in their abiotic and biotic environment. This course focuses on the molecular mechanisms and consequences of these adaptations for individual organisms and interactions among organisms. Attention is paid to various (a)biotic factors including temperature, drought, feeding conditions, photoperiodicity, intraspecific competition, symbiosis, and parasitism. Common mechanisms and key concepts across kingdoms underlying adaptation and plasticity are analyzed in depth. Examples show how environmental conditions affect signal transduction pathways leading to adaptive changes in ecology, behavior, and phenology.

This course in public economics analyzes the design of taxes and transfers. The first part of the course introduces key concepts in public economics. The second part is dedicated to the analysis of particular policies covering the environment and climate change, social insurance, redistribution, and capital and firms taxation. Course sessions include student presentations on actual policies in particular countries; for example, carbon taxes in Sweden, unemployment insurance in the United States, housing benefits in France, or corporate taxation in Germany.