King's College London

The course provides students with an overview of important topics in corporate finance. Topics include mechanisms of discounting, stocks and bonds, links between risk and return and their implications for corporate financial management, basic functioning of financial markets, implications of the firm’s capital structure, and key theories about market efficiency and behavioral finance. This is a technical module drawing heavily on mathematical techniques, although at moderate level. 

This course explores queer and trans screen cultures from film to television and digital media. Decentering white, cisgendered and male narratives that are often at the heart of studies of queer culture, the module introduces students to queer and trans stories that have been shaped – and often sidelined – by inequalities of race, class, (dis)ability, nationality, sexuality and gender identity. Drawing on debates about gendered and sexual fluidities and LGBTQ+ identity politics that have emerged from queer and trans studies, the course troubles the assumed relationship between visibility and progressive politics whilst considering questions of desire, authenticity, orientation, privilege, shame and pleasure. We ask: How do marginalised communities encounter and challenge the paradigms of dominant culture? (How) has digital production, distribution and exhibition transformed contemporary queer and trans representation? What are the conventions that shape understandings of queer and trans culture and the ongoing exclusions of multiply marginalised groups? Engaging with screen media alongside theoretical texts (and others that blur the lines between the two), students will consider radical approaches to the study of sexuality. Throughout, students will explore how contemporary media makers work through their attachments to and critiques of social movements of the twentieth century, with an attention to intersectionality, identity politics and the personal politics of social justice. 

Reflecting on the causes and consequences of war involves some of the most fundamental questions facing any student of conflict, and this course is an introduction to thinking about them. Students explore the theoretical and methodological questions that arise when studying the causes of war. They consider the definition of war, and examine the role of theory in explaining and understanding its causes. Students utilize historical case studies, explore contemporary international politics and explore political change over time. This is the fall-only version for study abroad students.

This course explores the idea that just as English painting is renowned for its representation of landscape, poetry in Britain and Ireland has been shaped by the nature of place. The course looks at a variety of 20th-century poetry from the standpoint of its complex engagement with place. Students examine topics such as poetry and landscape; poetry, the country, and the city; poetry and the idea of England (the “spiritual, the Platonic, old England,” as Coleridge called it); insularity and post-imperial retrenchment; travel and the foreign; and what Seamus Heaney has called “the place of writing.”

This course introduces students to the "experience economy" (Pine and Gilmore), experiential marketing, and a range of virtual and physical "experience-scapes." Research indicates that Generation Z tends to prioritize immersive, interactive, and highly personalized experiences, such as concerts, eating out, holidays, and other leisure activities, over actual products. This course addresses the meaning and characteristics of "experiences" and lifestyle from a marketing and branding perspective. It encourages students to critically explore the role of marketing in the customer experience design process and in its delivery. By synthesizing key concepts and theoretical foundations of experiential and lifestyle marketing with market orientation concepts, students are expected to interrogate customer's perspectives and assess how this highly complex mix influences consumer decision making and loyalty, and how it ultimately contributes to the customer experience.

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of contemporary cultural policy – what it is, what motivates it, how it is made, what consequences it produces, and most importantly why it matters for students as future artists, creatives, and citizens. While helping students learn about state policies in the broader cultural sector, the course actively uses international and comparative materials to help them to develop global problem-solving skills. The focus of the course is on key aims and values of cultural policy, such as national identity, nurturing creation, public value, public accessibility, and cultural diversity.

European film industries have consistently produced popular films and yet the most common perception of European cinema is one of arthouse production. This course redresses this misperception. Putting the terms "popular" and "European" together illuminates them both. "Popular" means different things in different countries: it may refer to box office success, or local traditions, or particular class or niche tastes. Sometimes what is "popular" is said to express the character of a nation, while at other times it is seen as a corruption of such a national identity. This course address many facets of what we refer to today as "Popular European Cinema." The course's methodologies reflect the rubric's multifariousness. It may be taught through a comparative approach, looking at one genre, such as melodrama or comedy, across several countries, or considering the effect of different institutional and funding contexts. It may also take a trans-national approach, looking at co-productions or stars who worked and were popular in a number of European countries.