Trinity College Dublin

In this course, students explore a broad range of texts in the Irish literary tradition. It encompasses material from the 18th century (Jonathan Swift) to the present (Emma Donoghue and Kevin Barry), and, in the process, engages with some of the most innovative and exciting literature to be produced over the last 300 years. The course is generically diverse, and includes work by a variety of poets, novelists, playwrights, and short-story writers. It is not organized chronologically, rather, material is clustered around a number of concepts or ideas (satire, history, violence, and place), with several lectures given over to a discussion of each of these issues.

This course provides an overview of theoretical approaches as well as various analytical strategies related to internationally comparative research in general and across Europe. Lectures contour European societies based on selected topics related to social and demographic change. The discussion of comparative sociological research on Europe (and beyond) will be illuminated by drawing upon pertinent comparative studies adopting different modes of research methodology and design (e.g., small-N vs. large-N, cross-sectional vs. longitudinal). The course presents common issues in applying qualitative as well as quantitative techniques of comparison and possible solutions as found in the literature.

The first part of the course introduces students to Kant’s theoretical philosophy as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason. The course focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on topics from the first half of the book, and examine core topics such as the Copernican Turn, Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism, the analytic/synthetic distinction, the nature of space, the problem of causation and the response to Humean scepticism, and Kant’s theory of the self.   The course aims to show the centrality of Kant’s thought both to an understanding of the development of the history of philosophy and as a source of philosophical interest for contemporary epistemology and metaphysics.