English

This course introduces the concept of global public health program development and explains how Global Citizenship Education (GCED) can serve as a critical aspect in developing public health programs and the public health workforce.

Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined human populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and provides evidence that impact on both personal decisions about our lives and public policy for preventing and controlling diseases in the population. This module course covers key concepts in epidemiology, including how we measure disease burden, how we study risk factors for disease, how we evaluate interventions like new vaccines and therapies, and how to critically appraise research evidence to inform public health policy.

The course explores key works from the Irish Literary Renaissance, otherwise known as the Irish Cultural Revival, or the Celtic Revival: an extraordinary period of literary endeavor during a time of intense cultural and political transformation. The texts on the course are key works of Irish literature, of literary modernism, and would also come to be hugely influential on post-colonial writing through the rest of the 20th century. Students explore how the texts shaped and contested ideas of identity and history; how Ireland's push for freedom from English rule coincided with the context of modernity; and students close-read our primary texts, discussing how they challenge conventional notions of style, form and genre, asking how their formal innovations related to historical and political change.

This course explores the history of emotions in the Greek and Roman world through literature and their relevance to the modern world. It focuses on emotions like wrath, eros and love, jealousy, fear, loss and separation, affection, happiness, sadness, surprise, contempt, disgust, pity, sympathy, pain and on how these emotions have been represented in Greek and Roman cultural systems and literary examples (both Greek and Roman literary texts will be explored and compared). How were these emotions born and what is their influence in the modern world? How does Greek and Roman literature relate to these emotions? And more generally, what is the relationship between these emotions and the Greek and Roman life and thought? After an overview of major Greek and Roman sources on the role of emotions in human life, the course explores the complex debate around emotions, their value and their use for philosophical, religious, political, and educational purposes. 

This political theory course considers whether the end of climate change denial leads to climate justice or new forms of fascisms. It takes seriously the emergence of new ecofascist tendencies as complex phenomena to be critically studied, analyzed, and contested. The course is divided into three parts. The first part explores various conceptualizations of fascism and climate change generally. It then analyzes the tendency from climate change denial towards realism about (anthropogenic) climate change and the forms of fascism that may follow from it. Finally, it discusses democratic responses to the emerging phenomena. The course draws on political theories concerning climate change, democracy, and fascism. It presents ecofascist, neo-Malthusian, petro-masculinist, and collapsologist movements that in some cases convey racist, misogynic, and homophobic ideas and critically discusses them within materialist, new materialist, and critical theoretical frameworks.

This course introduces local, traditional and/or modern aspects of Japanese culture through field trip visits to cultural heritage sites, museums, and theaters. Special attention is given to comparing one's own culture with that of Japan in discussion with peer students. In addition, students examine how seeing Japanese culture firsthand has impacted their view of Japan. 

This course discusses a range of advanced topics in normal and abnormal development, in order to illuminate the processes underlying children’s development. Students learn about diverse cognitive, social, and biological determinants of development, and how the contribution of such factors depends on the domain of development. Students learn about recent theoretical approaches to child cognitive and social development and come to appreciate the conceptual link between views of the adult mind (the end state of development) and theories of how we develop towards this end state. The first section considers typical cognitive development, in particular the development of “higher” reasoning skills and the development of memory. The second section explores a variety of topics in typical and atypical socio-emotional development. There is a focus on the role of the care-giving environment, the importance of both nature and nurture, and longitudinal approaches to studying psychological development.

The course introduces students to the political economy of global health. It evaluates the underlying social, political, and economic causes of ill health and the role of various policies in responding. An emphasis is placed on analyzing the role of institutions, aid flows, corporations, and macroeconomic changes in global health. The course gives students an understanding of core concepts, issues, and debates in global health. Students apply social and political science perspectives to the analysis of health problems and identify research questions and designs on global health topics. The course requires students to have completed an elementary statistics course as a prerequisite. The course is split into three parts. Part I offers an introduction to Global Health topics. The first two sessions introduce the main debates in global health: the global burden of disease project, Primary versus Selective Health Care, horizontal versus vertical health systems, Universal Health Coverage, DALYs, and the theory of epidemiological transition. The next six sessions evaluate in more specific detail the history, epidemiology, and economics of leading sources of death and disability worldwide. Part II focuses on better understanding the wider causes of ill health and potential modifying factors. It covers different methods for measuring and mapping the scale of health inequalities across countries and over time. It also reviews the ongoing debates about whether inequality is a causative factor in health outcomes. This component of the course reviews evidence on the impacts of financial crises on health, from the Great Depression through to the recent economic downturns in Europe and North America, as well as implications for health of radical populism and fascist political movements. Finally, it evaluates the roles of health and social security systems in responding to these health determinants. Part III maps key players and actors in global health. This part of the course evaluates the political economy of global health. It assesses who holds power, covering the role of the World Health Organization, Private Philanthropic Foundations and other non-state actors, International Financial Institutions, and Multi-National Corporations. It reviews debates on alternative forms of redistribution, from charity to aid to lending programs. Finally, this section evaluates the histories of engaging with commercial determinants of health and alternative regulatory systems.

This course provides a pluralistic introduction to philosophy and education though a broad survey of the diverse philosophical perspectives, problems, and approaches to education and educational research around the world.

This course examines Dada and Surrealism, two hugely influential international art movements of the 20th century, and focuses not only on the links between them in terms of their membership and artistic concerns, but also on establishing key differences in their approaches to social and political change and their ideological and philosophic positions. The course includes the study of a diverse range of Dada and Surrealist practices including: collage and photomontage; literary texts and publishing; chance and found objects; live performance; film; and photography.