Trinity College Dublin

The course examines how values, social relations and institutions have changed in European societies. Are there similar trends in all or at least most European societies? Have European societies converged, i.e., become more similar over time, or are there persisting divergences and cleavages? The course identifies the forces that drive changes in values, social relations, and institutions in European societies and the structures that shape particular regional and country-specific responses. It deals with a variety of topics such as religion, gender relations, and friendship patterns. While the course does compare a few countries at one point in time, it tends to look at many European countries (and occasionally countries beyond Europe) for longer periods to identify common patterns and the main differences between them.

This course covers the topic of food to explore the history of Mexico and its diaspora from the time of the Conquest, with a particular focus on food as national and cultural identity as reflected in cinema and literature. It will also explore how food provides a multifaceted lens through which to examine issues such as food and poverty, food as a transnational site of both community and exclusion, and ecological issues, such as control of natural resources essential to food production and security. Students examine the topic of food as both a political issue and a source of creative inspiration through our analysis of texts, art, films and television series.

This course focuses on understanding organizations in terms of structures, shared beliefs, identities and practices, concepts of efficiency and power and the implications of these insights for how we intervene to change organizations. The course helps students build their understanding of organizing beyond simplistic, functional frameworks and provides them with the necessary sociological and psychological concept to help them make sense of why organizations act in certain ways.

The imagining of history is such a prominent trend in popular culture that students need to be equipped to deconstruct representations of the past and to interrogate their own working assumptions about history imbibed from film and literature. This course explores three examples of how historical events and themes have been imagined in the world outside of professional historical scholarship. Students will examine how these subjects have been "brought to life" in film and literature. Students also have the opportunity to consider wider questions and problems which link together the three subjects addressed in the course. This is not a course designed to test the accuracy, in a narrow sense, of "historical fiction" in literature and film. Students rather examine the ways in which the past has been presented, interpreted, and re-interpreted in various genres; to uncover the assumptions or agendas that shaped creative decisions and the responses of audiences to genuinely popular representations of the past; and to reflect critically upon the qualities that make for a great work of historical imagination or reconstruction, qualities which cannot easily be replicated by the conventional methods of historical inquiry.

There are so many topics to explore: generic status; thematic inclusiveness; the incorporation of contemporary epistemology—and the ongoing ethical and environmental concerns that Melville raises. Students discuss the content of the "novel" and its shifting tones from the comic to the tragic, but there’s no end to the sense of things that the book raises. Students reflect on topics such as political dictatorship, obsession, absolutism, oil, modernity, etymology, capitalism, Christianity, slavery, and the roots of belief systems. 

Our increased longevity is one of the major achievements of modern humans, however this increase in lifespan does not necessarily mean an increase in health span – healthy, disease-free years. Students will explore some of the key challenges and opportunities associated with the expanding ageing population. They will use a multi-disciplinary approach (biological, clinical, societal) to explore several key questions such as: what happens the body during ageing that leaves us more susceptible to developing diseases such as cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive decline and cancer in later life? Why do some people age faster than others? How do we manage this challenge clinically? Can new models of care and novel technologies facilitate independent living in later life? What is it like for someone to get older in Ireland today? How can we ensure that everyone has the opportunity to age successfully in our society? What are the legal, ethical and economical challenges that we will face?

Students learn how the scientific analysis of fossil bones and stone tools, combined with the study of modern and ancient genetic codes, can be used to unlock the hidden history of our species. In this course, students discover the relative strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of data, and the sorts of questions that a scientific approach can (and cannot) answer. Students learn to be able to explain how an understanding of our past can provide unique insights into topical issues such as diet, human health and disease, migration, "race," language and national identity.

This course focuses on early (i.e. pre 12th-century) Irish saga literature in which a variety of texts, mainly from the Ulster, Mythological and King cycles, are read in translation and discussed in class. 

To write a letter – whether a formal, public composition or a private letter to a friend – is to create an image, consciously or unconsciously, of oneself as writer and of ones relationship with the letter’s recipient. In this sense, Roman letter-writing can be seen as a partial equivalent of interaction via social media in our contemporary world. This course explores aspects of self-presentation through published and unpublished letters and other media of communication surviving from the Roman world. Students read the correspondence of two major literary figures – Cicero and Seneca – alongside rare examples of written exchanges from ordinary people in Roman Antiquity.

This course builds students’ understanding of the causal mechanics underlying conflicts across a variety of settings and periods, the character of the violence in these conflicts, and the prospects for resolution. Drawing on major theoretical approaches to the explanation of violence, students apply these theoretical frameworks to an empirical examination of political violence in a range of periods and settings, including Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Syria, Ireland, Sierra Leone, and others. Students explore how and to what extent the major approaches in the scholarship explain the reality of conflict in different regional, cultural, and historical contexts.