University of Bristol

Students explore a range of different types of painting from a number of different cultural traditions, geographical, and historical contexts. They consider the ethical questions that arise through the global trade in different pigments and supports. Adopting a transhistorical approach, they also examine the possibilities and challenges these materials present for makers and conservators. One key theme is the issue of representation itself and how this is achieved through the medium of paint, as well as how the viewer interprets the painted surface.

The course examines how Ireland’s landscape has changed in the period 1850-present, and examines the sources and methods we can use to understand the history of landscape. Throughout this course students try to make sense of the overlapping influences of conflict, economic change, and social life on the making of the landscape and explore the impact that place and land has had on the creation of modern Ireland.

This course introduces students to the uneven scope, scale, and pace of change in contemporary Britain. Students interrogate the ways in which different narratives of continuity and change emerged in and about the 20th century in Britain, and the purposes they have served. By exploring different areas of life – from politics, voting, and protesting, to working, shopping, belief, and love – students engage with alternative ways of understanding this period in British history. In this course students tackle big historiographical debates in the field and develop a more complex understanding of the political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and social upheaval of the 20th century.

This course provides students with an understanding of the basic concepts used in the preparation of financial information and will introduce them to the forms of financial statements that managers need to be familiar with. In addition, the course introduces students to appropriate forms of finance and the means of raising money to fund enterprises, the financial planning this entails, and forms of feedback and accountability to actual and potential fund providers.

Students taking this course learn about the history, theory, and practice of decolonization. This includes a critical look at decolonization versus decolonial thinking in practice, including the institutionalization of calls to ‘decolonize’ which seek finalized end points rather than ongoing modes of decolonial critique. Students undertake specialized study through examples and case studies which may include topics such as decolonizing history, heritage, public history and museums, decolonizing universities, curricula and education, decolonizing environmental activism, art and art history, literature and public spaces.

This course explores one or more key issues in Value Theory through the close reading of two or more central works by key historical thinkers in the area and by the critical analysis of the ideas and arguments these works present. The course also introduces students to some of the key secondary literature on the relevant texts and consider how the ideas presented in these texts relate to each other and to issues in the modern philosophical debate.

The course offers an historical overview of the development of post-classical sociological theory such as functionalism, interactionism, and postmodernism, via an exploration of the work of a selection of key sociological theorists such as Talcott Parsons, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Ulrich Beck, and Manuel Castells. Key concepts developed by these thinkers are explored in relation to the themes of structure and agency, culture/ideology, and sociological understanding.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to analytic political theory from the 1970s to the present day, with a focus on leading liberal theorists and their critics. It does so via a discussion of normative theorising around key topics and themes, and shows how these theories bear on various applied questions. 

The course lays foundations in performance studies, introducing key concepts, theories and approaches. These are supplemented by seminars to focus on critical and textual analysis and small group tutorials. Students are introduced to a range of performance forms and methods of analysis. 

This course provides students with a grounding in classical and cutting-edge interdisciplinary social scientific theories of work and empirical developments in the study of how people and organizations relate. It helps students develop a strong set of critical analytical and conceptual frameworks and applies them to a series of contemporary issues in the organization of work, labor markets, and economic life. Critical social theories are used as a means by which commonplace understandings of work can be unpicked and unpacked to better capture and represent the experience of changing workplaces and careers. Applying different theoretical and conceptual frameworks in different empirical contexts, the course focuses specifically on the varied range of forms and locations in which work takes place, including work inside and outside the home, the gig economy, health and social care, the digital economy, migrant labor, and unemployment as they are experienced in social-psychological terms across lines of class, ethnicity, age, and gender.