University of Galway

The course introduces students to basic concepts in the study of human sexuality from a psychological perspective and encourages students to think about the personal, social, and cultural dimensions of human sexuality. It covers topics such as clinical sexology, the context of sexuality in Irish society, sexual health promotion, and a critique of contemporary issues including “hooking up,” pornography and sexualization, and sexuality, with a particular focus on youth and emerging adulthood.

This course provides an introduction to sensory and perceptual processes, blending classical and contemporary approaches to basic information processing. The course uses a flipped-classroom approach with the explicit aim of combining Information Transfer Teacher Focused (ITTF) and Conceptual Change Student Focused (CCSF) approaches. In the first case, and mainly via readings as well as pre-recorded lectures, students learn "facts" related to perception; in the latter case, via both class Buzz-group activity as well as a theoretically-oriented Capstone Project, students learn that perception is a complex multidimensional topic that is not completely understood . In Buzz groups, students present and discuss some of the key theoretical issues and methodological contributions in perception science. The course also touches areas in which the application of knowledge of sensory and perceptual processes is applied to other areas of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

This course explores four plays by four different writers from the Renaissance period: Christopher Marlowe’s THE JEW OF MALTA, William Shakespeare’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Kyd’s THE SPANISH TRAGEDY, and Jonson’s VOLPONE. Students examine the development of theatrical drama during this era and invigilate many of the concerns of the day that were addressed by said theatre: power, race, gender, revenge etc.

The Celtic languages remain the media of communication to a greater or lesser extent in communities scattered on the western fringe of 21st-century Europe, in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany. These are the survivors of a history traceable over two and a half thousand years encompassing, at one time, nearly the whole of western Europe and much of central and eastern Europe. The modern Celtic languages interact in various ways with the societies in which they are embedded, the official and unofficial institutions of those societies (government, legislation, industry, etc.), and with the wider cultures of the countries where they are used. This course introduces students to the study of the Celtic languages in these contexts and the sociolinguistics of the Celtic languages, and considers the ways in which they are endangered as languages of the lives and thoughts of the people who use them. Students also examine ways in which their existence and status can be strengthened and expanded, through language planning, looking also at the cases of Cornish in Cornwall and Manx in the Isle of Man, where, though technically dead languages, vigorous revival movements work to prove that news of their demise was premature.