King's College London

The course introduces students to historical and contemporary debates concerning the nature and characteristics of 'political Islam'. By examining key Islamic thinkers, movements and currents, the course aims to provide intellectual and analytical tools to make better sense of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon, drawing on a variety of disciplines (history, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, international relations) while grounded in a political science approach. The course is divided into three parts. An introductory section devoted to Islamic thinkers, conceptual frameworks and Islamist states. A second section dealing with Islamist movements – charting the evolution of Islamic liberation groups (Hamas and Hizbullah), revolutionary trajectories (Iran) and resistance movements (Islamic movement inside Israel). A third and final section will focus on internal dynamics and global challenges – exploring Islam and democracy, transnational jihadism, sectarian division and the legacy of the Arab Spring. The course rejects simplistic readings of political Islam but instead seeks to provide a dynamic and complex examination of Islamic thinkers, concepts and movements through discursive frames of ideology; state power, democracy, geo-politics and local socio-political realities.    

This course focuses on those dimensions of 19th-century American literature and culture that stand out as most distinctive to the culture of the new nation. The course explores four major cultural and intellectual arguments and their overlapping concerns. It begins with the dominating and inescapable presence of slavery and its representation across the middle decades of the century; briefly taking in questions about industrial wage-slavery in the republic. It explores the troubling questions raised by Nature and the natural for the writers and painters of the early 19th century, including the Anglo-American representation of the "Indian" and the writing of the American West. Next students consider ideas of the self, self-culture, the American self before, finally, tackling late-century fiction dealing with Americans in a sophisticated and corrupt Europe.

Should the different countries obey international law? Is international law really "law"? It is just? Who should enforce it? What kinds of values should it reflect and what kinds of institutions should support it? Is it merely an expression of Western values or is it universal? Through these questions this advanced course discusses the nature, sources, justification, and effects of international law. We use international law cases to tackle complicated philosophical and empirical questions about the character of international law. The readings blend analysis of core areas of public international law and classical texts in the philosophy of law.

In this course, students develop a deeper understanding of the diverse ways in which European imperialism and colonialism changed musical culture in South and Southeast Asia through a detailed, comparative examination of changing contexts for music making in the Indian Ocean region c. 1750–1950. Students focus mainly on British imperialism and colonialism in the Indian subcontinent and the Malayworld; and transition and interplay between cultures, over time, and geographically across the Indian Ocean. Topics may include but are not restricted to different approaches to music and empire; postcolonial and paracolonial; Orientalism and race; circulation; musical knowledge; sound and affect; religion; gender and sexuality; sovereignty and decolonization. 

This course examines the period from the fall of the empires of the Bronze Age Near East (ca. 1150 BCE) until the time when the city of Rome began to expand its power into the Mediterranean (ca. 31 BCE), as well as exploring the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, and the Near East. Students enrolled in this course undertake only the fall semester (semester 1) of the year-long course.

This course covers the history of Europe from c.1000 to 1500, covering areas on both sides of the Mediterranean. It covers problems of continuity and change in society, politics, religion, and culture, and introduces students to debates about the impact of the rise of Islam, the centuries of the Crusades and the European economic "take-off," the effects of the great plagues and revolts of the 14th century, and about the Renaissance, modernity, and the origins of European states. Students have the opportunity to consider how a vast series of transformations formed European culture, and to reflect on general themes, such as the interaction of religious orthodoxy and dissent, shifting perceptions of gender, or the friction between imperialist drives and cultural coexistence.