English

This course introduces students to two ways of making sense of public health. The first is by exploring some of the key sites that are central to the making of public health. The second is through acknowledging that whilst public health (and its sidekick, epidemiology, the study of health across populations) sounds like it would be about actually existing people, it is often about people at the aggregate. In other words, statistics. This course takes a different approach: students study the observable behavior and attitudes of actually existing people—whether in the present or the past. This course introduces students to some key research methodologies in the social sciences and humanities-doing fieldwork, using archives, and unlocking the mysteries of university libraries in order to enable students to understand and master key concepts in the anthropology, history, and social science of life, death, and illness as part of the practice of medicine; to familiarize students provide students with key debates in the anthropology, history, and social science of life, death, and illness; to familiarize students with how medical understandings of life, death, and illness have changed over time; to familiarize students with how medical practice and understanding of life, death, and illness differ across cultures.

In this course students are introduced to the anthropological study of kinship, with an added focus on gender given the close relationship between the two. The study of kinship has been foundational in social anthropology, and early anthropologists often sought to categorize and rank societies according to their kinship system. Since then, the study of kinship has moved considerably from charting "systems" to understanding the full complexity of concepts and practices of relatedness, and even questioning the universality of "kinship." While acknowledging the historical foundations of the field, this course focuses on more contemporary aspects of the study of kinship and gender. Questions about race and ethnicity also figure prominently throughout the course. Through ethnographic examples from a wide range of social contexts, students reflect on the socially constructed nature of ideas of kinship and gender and debate key social issues of contemporary relevance.

The Early Modern period in England – by which we mean, very roughly, 1550-1660 – was a time of immense intellectual, geographical and literary expansion. The period offers us a double perspective: looking back to classical learning and achievement and using that as a model for the present, and offering us a glance forward to what we now think of as ‘the modern’ – that is, modern subjectivities, sexualities, politics and cultures. This course is designed to introduce texts from a period that stretched from the reign of Henry VIII to the English Civil War, with a focus on the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. The course tracks the creative intersection of individual writers, literary forms, and the spirit of the age, and opens up a set of new magnificent texts for students to immerse themselves in, through which they develop a sense of the culture out of which they emerged. The primary texts studied in this course are chosen to reflect a broad generic range typical of the Renaissance, including prose, drama, masque and lyric and epic poetry.  

This course gives students insights into the dynamics and effective leadership and management of teams within organizations. It provides students with the knowledge, skills, and analytical capabilities needed to practice teamwork in modern organizations and to lead teams to achieve successful outcomes. It explores the nature of teamwork in terms of how individuals effectively build agreement to shared goals and courses of action and facilitate organizational movement toward the achievement of these goals. In particular, it highlights theory and research that accounts for the characteristics, issues, and contexts of teams. Students make note of individual differences that contribute to team behavior and examine the situations that determine the salience of these differences. 

This course provides a thorough grounding in current themes and debates in Environmental Anthropology in the present period of accelerated environmental and climatic change that has been termed the Anthropocene. The course introduces a range of ideas and approaches, both historical and contemporary, in the anthropological study and theorization of human-environmental relationships. Students receive a detailed introduction to the field of Environmental Anthropology, and its place within the history of the discipline of Anthropology. The course explores classical approaches such as cultural ecology and ecological anthropology, before moving on to broach more contemporary approaches including environmental anthropology, political ecology, and the anthropology of nature, as well as recent attempts to incorporate nonhuman actors into anthropological analysis in more experimental ways. 

This course overviews the challenges and opportunities for the international community in contemporary Africa. Taught by a former ambassador with wide Africa experience, the course exposes students to the major themes in the world's interactions with Africa, ranging from humanitarian intervention to economic opportunity, from struggles against terrorism and instability to great power competition. The course is intended for future practitioners in diplomacy, business, or media with an interest in Africa and more widely for those seeking to understand global engagement with a great continent.

This course introduces students into the riches of the Latin literary tradition. It is designed in such a way as to cater primarily for the immediate needs of students coming up to university without any background knowledge of ancient literature and aims to offer a chronologically laid out, broad survey of periods, genres and best known authors of Roman literature and thought.

This course examines the modern origins and development of foreign aid. Specifically, it analyzes foreign aid administered by Western countries and transferred to developing countries, primarily in the Global South. Starting with the Marshall Plan, and the American transfer of funds to Europe, Western countries, post WW2, developed mechanisms for public financial transfers (i.e. state or IGO to state or substate) initially to allied countries and soon thereafter to industrializing countries and poor countries. Under the guise of “aid”, this relationship has mostly been considered interest-based rather than philanthropic. The course is centered around five central questions on the topic of foreign aid: 1. Who gives foreign aid? 2. Why give foreign aid? 3. Who benefits from foreign aid? 4. Does foreign aid cause more harm than good? 5. If economic restorative justice is the objective of foreign aid, are there alternative policies that can better accomplish these goals? In this context we examine the evolution of foreign aid in a post-WW2 global context: first, during the Cold War, and then during its aftermath. Central to the discussion, the course considers the economic impact of globalization on developing countries; the root causes of poverty and ways to reduce it; and the nature of North-South relations and neocolonialism. It studies issues animating foreign aid policy parameters and how these issues have changed. A focus on themes such as trade, immigration, human/gender rights, and climate change, illuminates the shifting nature of “aid.” The focus is on the methods and motivation of Western countries – examining “soft power” and the role of foreign aid in overall foreign policy of countries that administer it. Finally, the course examines the potential spread of aid as a tool for influence as it is adopted by new state actors (e.g. BRICS, China).

This course explores the role of cultural, creative, and media industries in shaping individual and collective memories of history. It examines the construction, manipulation, mediation, and transmission of personal, national, and transnational memories through various forms of media, including mobile and social, film, literature, the visual arts, performance, and participatory art. It explores how such mediated memories play a crucial role in the formation of individual and collective identities. The course introduces key theories of media memory studies and examines international examples of mediated memories of colonialism, war and activism, social, political, and technological change. It examines how mediated memories travel and change over time and how they are articulated differently within geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts and through different mnemonic technologies.

This course explores the significance of James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses and places it in its historical and cultural context. The course begins with two classes considering Joyce's work before its publication (specifically Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). The remaining eight weeks are devoted entirely to Ulysses. Through this study students will gain an awareness of the work's significance within the critical discourses of modernism and realism. The course assumes no prior knowledge of Irish history or culture but students will be expected to engage with these contexts as the module progresses. Recommended reading will be made available before each seminar.