King's College London

"Marxism" has played an enormous role in the shape of 20th-century history. But what did Marx really believe, and how can his "critique of political economy" help us to understand the historical development of capitalism, and its modern dynamics? What are the main challenges Marxian political economy faces? In this course, students examine Marx's materialist theory of human history, his critique of capitalism, and the extent to which his conceptual tools offer us a useful framework for understanding global socioeconomic change and continuity today, compared to other social scientific methods.

The course introduces the characteristics and properties of signals and systems and provide fundamental tools for their analysis and representation. 

The course augments students’ existing knowledge of marketing communications by enabling them to recognize, analyze, and criticize the diverse range of theories and modes of thought which underpin marketing communications, and students develop a practical appreciation and interpretation of a variety of promotional techniques. An emphasis is placed on the desirability of seeing marketing communications as an integrated organizational activity and as a primary social and cultural phenomenon. 

This course provides an introduction to models of international trade and their predictions of trade patterns, with some consideration of empirical studies and policy issues. The course introduces students to classical and new theories of international trade; uses examples and empirical evidence to introduce students to the methods most commonly used in the economic analysis of international trade; and enables students to engage with trade theory in a critical manner, understanding the arguments used both in favor and against trade liberalization. 

From Wordsworth’s ‘gleams of half-extinguished thought’ to Freud’s excavation of the human psyche, writers and thinkers throughout the 19th century were preoccupied by the workings of memory and time. This course investigates connections between literature, the arts, philosophy and science, revealing the centrality of memory and memorialization to the 19th-century imagination. Students examine how developments in science and technology impacted upon the perception and representation of time, while also exploring how modernity was constructed through an active engagement with the past. Topics to be discussed include: time and modernity; technology and the standardization of time; history and historicism; afterlives and hauntings; evolution and extinction; architecture and material memory; nostalgia and trauma; imperial and colonial time.