King's College London

The course covers the history of Europe from the late 18th century through to 1991 – from the French Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union. Attention is given to social, cultural, economic, and political history, and the way these components have interacted. Lectures and seminars approach European history from a variety of angles. In chronological terms, the course highlights key moments in European history (wars, revolutions) that had continent-side repercussions. In geographical terms, it explores the uses, as well as the limits, of dividing European history into histories of discrete nations and states. In thematic terms, it looks at the formation and evolution of various collective actors—religious communities, classes, sexes, professions, generations - and consider how these groups have shaped and been shaped by historical change.

This course provides knowledge of key topics in cell biology with a strong emphasis on molecular and biochemical aspects, to equip students for more detailed studies of cell biology in advanced courses, to give students experience of some experimental techniques that are used to research cell structure and function, and to develop students’ skills in accessing and understanding primary scientific literature, analysis of data, and scientific writing.

This course gives students the opportunity to build on their knowledge and understanding of mammalian metabolism, and to understand its integration and control, and it provides an introduction to disorders of metabolism.  It also allows students to develop skills relating to laboratory practical work and analysis and presentation of experimental data. 

This course offers an introduction to US Constitutional law. It is designed to provide a solid foundation in the constitutional law of the US both for commercial lawyers, and for lawyers interested in public law and human rights. In addition to examining questions of interpretive method, the course focuses on the powers of the federal government and the allocation of decision-making authority among government institutions, including federalism and separation of powers. 

This course introduces students to some central figures in the history of political thought: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and Schmitt. Students look at why they wrote what they wrote, what they meant, and how well their arguments work. They ask why they give different answers to questions such as: What does it mean to be truly free? Is democracy possible or desirable? Should we educate citizens, or take them as they are? Are there absolute moral truths, and what sort of politics should we have in light of that? What rights do we have? What place should religion have in politics? Should citizens dedicate themselves to the state? The course particularly suits students who enjoy political theory and the history of political thought. There is a lot of reading, and much of it is very challenging. Great emphasis is put on understanding primary texts, which are usually dense and difficult. 

The course invites students to consider the ways in which the investments of literary and critical theory—most centrally language, class, race, gender, and sexuality—have intersected and overlapped in relation to socio-political transformations from the 1970s to the present. Each week is organized around one or more of these intersections, which students address though discussions of critical and literary texts and films. Topics of discussion might include the relationship between waged and unwaged work, and the systems of gender and race that are organized around the poles of this relationship; the construction of categories that are presented as “normal”; the category of the human; the relationship between finance and representation; the politics of visibility; the relationship between aesthetics and social structure; the challenge of trying to define the social, political, and cultural characteristics of the present (and the recent past). 

This course examines issues of environment and uneven development through the historical geography of empire. The course educates students on: 1) interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to empire in the social sciences and humanities, 2) the study of empire and environment (especially natural resources) within the subfields of political geography, historical geography, development geography, and political ecology, and 3) the complex natures, spatialities, and identities produced in the wake of European empires in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Specific topics include the spatiality of sovereignty, racialized labor regimes (including slavery, coolies, and peasants), imperial modes of water and forest development, imperial systems of food and agriculture, state responses to disease and disaster, and the contradictory political geographies of settlement, incorporation, exploitation, and decolonization. The course concludes with a reflection on struggles to ‘decolonize’ imperial knowledge systems, political economies, and social relations in the contemporary era.