University College Dublin

Cities are very important spaces within which complex economic, political, cultural, and environmental processes are produced and experienced. This course introduces students to urbanization from a global perspective. The objective is to understand contemporary processes of urban change in historical perspective from both the global north and the global south. The course draws on case studies and examples from South America, North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia to exemplify key themes in urban studies including industrialization, suburbanization, global cities, inequality, and sustainability.

The key question of this course is how freedom is compatible with the authority of the state. During the course, students look at some classical responses to this question as well as to the related questions of how to organize statehood in a way that balances concerns for liberty, equality, and community. In exploring the theoretical foundations of today’s debates on these issues, students initially focus on a selection of historical thinkers from the pre-Enlightenment period onwards, later bringing the debate more up to date with scholarship by more modern thinkers.

This course introduces students to the Earth, to its environmental systems, and to the ways in which these systems operate and change both spatially and temporally, producing distinctive physical geographies. Topics include: the history of physical geography; the theory of plate tectonics and the rock cycle; and the atmosphere, the hydrological cycle, glacial, fluvial, and coastal systems.
 

This course provides students with both a thorough introduction and an experiential immersion in the music of Ireland, and encompasses all its richness and variety. No previous knowledge of Irish musical history is required and neither is it necessary to be able to read musical notation. The course engages with the music of Ireland from the medieval period to the present day and encompasses three principal types of music – traditional, classical, and popular. The music of Ireland is examined in its historical context and is situated within the wider international context. The music's historical, social, cultural, and political dimensions are discussed.

Students develop their understanding of many dimensions of the relationship between gender and social policy. In the first section of the course, students become familiar with the fundamental concepts necessary for gender policy analysis, including how gender operates as a social structure and its intersectional relationship to other social structures such as race, class, and disability. Students develop their understanding of the concept of patriarchy in both its familial and non-familial meanings and ideas about post-patriarchal welfare states. Students learn about prevailing approaches to measuring gender inequalities, including indicators. Next, students focus on gendered typologies of welfare states and the importance of varieties of capitalism to gender inequalities in work, organizations, and families. In the final part of the course, students focus on how the concept of care is becoming increasingly significant for policymakers and private sector employers.

What made Ireland the country it is today? The course addresses that question by examining Irish history, culture, and society in an interdisciplinary and interactive manner. Students are introduced to key themes, debates, personalities, influences, and events that help to provide a greater understanding of how Ireland evolved into the country it is today. From the arrival of Christianity to post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, attention is focused throughout on fundamental issues related to religion, gender, sexuality, language, literature, politics, society, music, sport, film, and material culture. The course is structured around key topics which address a series of relevant issues relating to Ireland. Each topic is addressed in an associated lecture by an expert in that particular field. 

This course enhances students' understanding of "The Forgotten Irish" by addressing various sectors of society which have often been cast aside from the stereotypical view of what it means to be Irish. Topics such as religion, colonial connections, gender, and sexuality, traveler culture, and the role of "New Irish" immigrant communities are explored in a multi-modal context including literature, print, film, art, music, and original source documents.

This course considers key themes, topics, debates, and controversies in Irish culture, focusing particularly on the representation of Irish-ness and Irish culture in literature, film, drama, and art history. Key issues explored include cultural nationalism; the literary revival; the myth of the West; Dublin in cultural representation; gender and nation; commemoration and memory; institutional abuse scandals; race and immigration; and class prosperity, recession, and austerity.
 

This course examines expressions of popular or vernacular religion and associated practices which exist apart from, but alongside, the strictly theological and liturgical forms of official religion. Ideas, beliefs, and narratives about the Christian supernatural as well as supernatural beings outside of (but often influenced by) the Christian pantheon, will be discussed, as well as fairy belief and legends. Possible explanatory frameworks for folk belief in the supernatural, and the relationship between belief and narrative creativity, is also examined. The course examines a wide range of verbal genres, including apocryphal stories about Christ and the saints, humorous anecdotes about religion, fairy legends, religious laments, prayers, and charms. A variety of traditional practices associated with folk religion and belief are also dealt with.

This is an elective course designed as an introduction to Italian culture from a variety of perspectives. It is designed for non-specialists, so students do not need to be familiar either with Italian language or with the country of Italy before taking this course.