University of St Andrews

This course explores the wide range of functions and representations of illness and disease in a variety of European literary and theoretical texts, primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, but drawing on works from earlier periods for contextual framing. It considers how the metaphorical employment of illness can reflect changing beliefs related to individual identity, socio-cultural codes, narrative construction, and the possibilities and limitations of language itself. Students start with a series of approaches to illness and literature, including a brief theoretical overview of modern canonical writings on illness by Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, which provide an introduction to common tropes of mythologizing and metaphorizing illness as well as the linguistic challenges to its representation; the field of disability studies; and the representation of plague through time. They then move on to focused thematic explorations of disease via close comparative readings of texts, considering both what literature can tell us about illness, and what the use and representation of illness can tell us about literature.

This course is dedicated to thinking about film as a physical material. Students explore what "film" (aka celluloid, film stock, or raw stock) is made from and how its materiality has informed the production, distribution, and consumption of the medium. Although often conceived as a medium of light, film is in fact produced from a host of raw ingredients (such as cotton, silver, and gelatin) that imbricate its production within networks of industrial agriculture, extractive mining, weapons manufacture, and the global chemical industry. Throughout this course, students therefore consider how the material demands of making and accessing film stock have informed the aesthetics of cinema and the politics of its consumption. They examine specific films that have been shaped by these material concerns and also look in detail at artists and filmmakers who engage with questions of materiality directly in their work.

"Sustainable Development" is a term that is very widely used internationally, nationally, and locally by academics, policy-makers, businesses, and NGOs, but what does it really mean? This course is designed to provide an introductory overview to underpinning ideas, such as social justice, human well-being, inter-generational equity, and environmental stewardship, which are embedded within notions of sustainable development as key areas of debate in defining and interpreting the concept. The course also provides an account of how sustainable development has emerged as such a powerful idea, and examines different disciplinary perspectives on what issues sustainable development should be trying to address, as well as exploring the value of an interdisciplinary approach in studying and facilitating sustainable development.

The Earth is unique in our solar-system by being both geologically active and hosting a myriad of life. This module introduces the study of Planet Earth, from planetary formation to the present-day processes that control our climate. The course covers topics including the dawn of the solar system, the dynamic nature of the solid Earth, and the surface processes that shape the planet. We introduce oceanography, atmospheric science and the cryosphere to understand how climate has and will continue to change with time. Fieldwork will be introduced as two half-day excursions and you will gain experience critically assessing scientific data, working in groups, and giving oral and written presentations.