King's College London

This course introduces key works of modernist literature, mostly written in English, though several are by émigré writers. It examines the ways in which modernists developed new forms, whether narrative, poetic, or dramatic, through which to reimagine the representation of consciousness, character, personality, subjectivity, memory, and time. The first half of the course focuses specifically on modernist experiments with narrative voice, exploring the ways that modernist writers such as Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce playfully complicated the relationship between reader and narrator. In the second half of the course students think in more depth about experiments by writers such as T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf with time, memory, and un/consciousness. 

The course provides students with a theoretically-grounded understanding of the role of the European Union as an international actor. Using theories of international relations, European integration and Foreign Policy Analysis, it analyzse and evaluate the EU’s evolving external identity and policy capabilities across a range of external relations, including membership conditionality, trade and development, international crime and terrorism, asylum and immigration, foreign, security and defense policy, and democracy and human rights promotion. The course then examines the nature of key bilateral relationships between the EU and selected countries (US, Russia, and China) and regions (former colonies, regional groups), explaining the extent to which they have been institutionalized and the challenges that define them. It will end by assessing what sort of international actor the EU ‘is’ and ‘wants to be’ – namely civilian, normative or military – and evaluating the likelihood of the EU emerging as a global superpower in the future.

This course introduces students to theories and practices of international human resource management (IHRM). The course helps students critically examine the influence of national institutions and culture on the choice and effectiveness of HRM practices. Building on a discussion of the challenges and opportunities firms face in managing people and workplaces at the global level, the course helps students reflect about the role of HRM policies and practices - including global hiring, training, performance, and reward management - in achieving desired employee and organizational outcomes.

This course offers a theoretical and practice-based approach to exploring the nature of digital gaming. It is eclectic in scope and students are guided to make their own digital games and to critically reflect upon what their games are able to achieve. Students then explore the relationship between games, narratives, and stories, including the famous ludology versus narratology debate that characterized the birth pangs of game studies as a field. Can games tell stories? If so, what kind of stories are they most suited to telling? Next, students consider the distinctive but also varied practices that characterize gaming. These include counterplay, transgressive play, casual play, competitive play, speedruns, etc. Games are also considered as philosophical texts that can prompt us to rethink and question reality, agency, time, and our relationships with our in-game avatars. 

This course engages with some of the key theories that explore how language and social interaction underpin organizational life. It draws on an interdisciplinary research field to interrogate the unique properties of "organizational discourse" and "institutional talk." The course is structured around studies of organizational texts (e.g. recruitment brochures, mission statements, websites, and adverts), as well as studies of social interaction in organizational settings (e.g. business meetings, call centers, healthcare delivery, and sales encounters).