Trinity College Dublin

In this course, students study the main cycles into which Early Irish literature is divided for purposes of analysis; the varying views of modern scholarship regarding the nature and function of early Irish saga; the main features of heroic biography and apply the template to the sagas read; the underlying moral or message of the sagas studied; and the relevance of Early Irish saga for the modern reader.

In this course, students state and prove some standard theorems in number theory, use standard theorems to solve problems in number theory including some classes of Diophantine equations, and learn to use the following: divisibility and factorization of integers: prime numbers, gcd and lcm, Euclidean algorithm, Bézout's theorem, multiplicative functions such as sums of divisors; arithmetic in the ring Z/nZ and the field Z/pZ, Euler's totient function, Chinese remainder theorem, multiplicative order and primitive roots; sums of squares, quadratic forms, discriminant, class number; and continued fractions, expansion of rationals and quadratic irrationals, Diophantine approximation, and Pell-Fermat equations.

This course focuses on the methods and techniques for efficient management (modelling, manipulation, and retrieval) of data and information. It provides a foundation for later courses in database management and advanced information management. Students describe and use UML for information modeling; describe and use XML techniques for data modeling and querying; describe techniques for exposing and retrieving information on the web semantic web/linked data approaches; and understand the ongoing collaborative process of eliciting ethical implications which influence technology design.

On this course, students read a variety of Victorian texts from across many genres to explore many different issues and themes including print culture; periodicals and serialization; religious, sexual, national, and ethnic identity; the women’s movement; the crisis of faith; industrialization and the city; ecology; human and non-human animal identity; imperialism. Although the course is structured around the work of major representative writers, students consider a variety of literary and non-literary texts to get a sense of the dynamism and variety of writing and debate in the period. This course examines a range of English writing across the Victorian period, some of it very familiar and some of it neglected or forgotten work. Authors studied vary from year to year, but representative authors include the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Braddon, and H. G. Wells. A major focus of this course is the exploration of relationships between literary texts and the historical, social, and political contexts which shaped their imaginative creation. Essentially, this is a course about setting Victorian writing in its intellectual and cultural context. 

Topics include Islamic Reformism (al-Afghani and Abduh), the Arab Renaissance (Tahtawi, Amin), nationalism (al-Husri, Arslan), national culture (Hussein and Mahfouz), Pan-Arabism (Aflaq, Nasser), communism and leftism, Palestine Question (Zurayq, Kanafani), 1967 Critique (al-Azm, Laroui, Mernissi), Islamic Revival, Political Islam, and Arab Liberalism (Jabri, Ibrahim, Saadawi).

Topics in this course include an overview of the early Irish legal system (Brehon law), the structure of early Irish society and its institutions – in particular: the early Irish system of law enforcement in the absence of a centralized state and associated police force; the status of women in early Irish society, including marriage arrangements; Irish family structures; an overview of farming and food in early Ireland, and the nature and background of Irish "sacral" kingship and the concept of truth.

In this course, students look closely at one point in the very distant past and at the early origins of Western civilization, at Homer and the Greeks, at ancient Greek language and culture, at its strange and yet (as we shall see!) familiar words, its structure and its thought. Homer and the ancient Greeks are part of our world, our language, our thought, and our lives. If you are studying chemistry or English, history, economics, or maths, and want to know why the past, Greek, and the Greek culture matter, this Trinity Elective is the course for you.

A century of politeness and Enlightenment, but also one of revolution and filth, the 18th century was a period of excitement and change. The literature of the time both reflects and shapes this perception, and the Irish literary scene is particularly striking for the variety and richness of its literary productions. Many of the 18th century’s greatest writers attended Trinity College Dublin – Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Jonathan Swift – while many also attended the city’s brothels and taverns, as well as frequenting Smock Alley Theatre or visiting Marsh’s Library. Different urban and rural venues provide the setting, the stage, or the inspiration for a variety of literature across genres, including poetry, plays, life writing and novels. Many of the male and female writers on this course also had cosmopolitan aspirations, and several moved to London to pursue careers there. The course will highlight these connections between Ireland and England, and indeed France, investigating the realities of authorship and readership across the 18th century. As well as familiarizing students with the literary developments taking place in Ireland, and Dublin in particular, the course also engages with issues such as gender, sexuality, and the commodification of the female body; performance and the self; and politics and national identity. It also draws on the wonderful richness of built literary heritage from eighteenth-century Dublin, and includes a research visit to Marsh's Library. 

As critics including Eric Hayot have pointed out, it can be difficult to analyze and write about contemporary culture because we lack the critical distance to gain perspective on works that depict our own historical moment. This course provides some of that critical distance, or "leverage" as Hayot describes it. Through its comparative approach, the course explores how socio-political topics that are of pressing concern to writers, artists, and thinkers now were also examined in earlier periods. The course illustrates how studying the ways in which these themes and issues were represented and understood in the past enables us to enrich our engagement with the contemporary iteration of those topics today. The course considers a different socio-political topic each week, examining how it has been explored in a pair of texts. The course covers a range of creative works, critical concepts and cultural theories from the 20th and 21st centuries. The genres covered by the course include novels, films, essays, autofiction, memoir, a play, TV episode, and photo-text book. 

This course traces the blues from its birth in the late 19th century to the present day. Sweeping through America in the early 1910s, the genre was a pervasive influence on the popular mainstream until the 1970s and continues to be played and heard today. The course draws on social history, cultural studies, and musicology. Topics include the blues’ musical characteristics, its verbal lexicon, its performance standards, its ties with African-American culture, and its intersection with other popular music genres. Alongside a historical approach, lectures also consider some of the blues’ regional variants (Chicago, Mississippi, Memphis), along with its most significant artists, such as pre-eminent pre-war performers like Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith, stars of the electric era like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and the genre’s most notable acolytes in the 60s and beyond.