University of Edinburgh

This course focuses on the politics and government of the contemporary Russian Federation. The format of the course varies each year but follows the following general outline. It first analyses the nature of a Soviet "legacy." It then looks in detail at Russian state and institution-building. Foci generally include party systems, civil society, nationalism and social movements, comparative post-Soviet government, and the international relations of the post-Soviet space.

Renaissance art is often seen as the conceptual anchor for a conservative type of art history that focuses on great male artists and their revival of a classical past. This course uses recent research to challenge the idea, showing how old master painting can speak to current issues of sexual, gender, and political identity. Focusing on different roles for women, students investigate how visual culture promotes and challenges ideas of what it means to be female. Students look at women as archetypes of beauty, as wives, prostitutes, artists, patrons, poets, and witches. Students consider medical beliefs in women's inferiority; the notional link between male creativity and reproductive processes; and how the separation of 'art' from 'craft' denigrated traditional areas of women's expertise, notably textiles, to a lesser form of making.

The course encourages students to trace the development and dissemination of Greek culture in Athens and other Greek city states in the period from the Peloponnesian War to the formation of the Hellenistic Kingdoms. The course also explores the rise of Macedon, the reign of Alexander the Great and its aftermath, to the period of the rise of Rome. The course is structured around the essential integration of diverse materials, ranging from the study of archaeological sites, key aspects of the development of Greek art and architecture, important historical events, notions of historiography, and major literary works in drama, poetry, and rhetoric.

This course introduces students to the study of Scottish history in the period from 1560 to the present. The program of lectures and tutorials emphasizes key themes of political, religious, economic, social, and cultural change. The course encourages students to think about the multiple transitions between early modern and modern Scotland, and to consider the forces shaping contemporary politics and culture. It analyses the main political developments, social transitions, and cultural shifts in Scotland since 1560. Beginning with the Reformation and the union of crowns of 1603, the course tracks the enormous political and religious changes in early modern Scotland. It then examines the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 and post-union Scotland, including such themes as Jacobitism, the Scottish Enlightenment and imperial expansion. The course encompasses 19th-century industrialization, political reform and social change, before turning to the radical political and cultural upheavals of the 20th century. It culminates in the present day, addressing such topics as gender, the arts and the debate about devolution, and independence.

This course introduces students to the pervasive nature of animation by examining key texts in both historic and contemporary culture and to interrogate the significance of the form. Drawing on current discourse in animation studies, the course enables students to think about the connection between animation and other moving image and visual cultural artefacts in a critically engaged way.

This is a course in abstract algebra, although connections with other fields will be stressed as often as possible. It is a systematic study of the basic structure of groups, finite and infinite. Topics include homomorphisms, isomorphisms, and factor groups; group presentations and universal properties; Sylow theorems and applications; simple groups and composition series; classification of finite abelian groups and applications; and solvable groups and the derived series.

All engineers make use of fundamental scientific principles to design and construct the future. They work in inter-disciplinary teams to solve complex problems within the ever-changing environmental, economic, societal and policy landscape. In this context, this course provides an insight into what it is to be an engineer and showcases how engineering is done.