King's College London

In this course, students draw on approaches from Cultural Studies to examine the relationship between literature as a creative industry and literature as aesthetic practice. Focusing on 20th and 21st century works by authors traditionally situated at ‘the margins’ of nation-based literary systems, students ask what role marketing and the literary industry might have to play in how a writer’s voice becomes heard. In doing so, students take up Graham Huggans’ suggestion that a boom in postcolonial literature has been accompanied by a fetishization of difference or a ‘marketing of the margins’ which is at odds with many of the positions espoused in that literature. Students move beyond the Anglophone context in order to explore the application of this idea to authors from a range of countries and texts originally written in French, German, and Spanish.

This course enables students to develop their skills and confidence in data analysis in Excel, and in presenting this analysis in clear and accessible written reports. Students explore data sources and applications that are relevant for the study of current topics in economics and social sciences. Students practice their skills in interactive weekly workshops, exploring data sourcing, analysis, and visualization on a variety of relevant topics. They have the chance to develop and deploy their critical thinking skills in relation to data analysis practices in economics and social sciences, and how data is used in public debate. Students also develop important employability skills like communication skills, report writing, and clearly explaining complex findings. The course does not cover regression or other causal methods.

This course will introduce the principles of kinetic theory and thermodynamics. Students learn to use the zeroth law of thermodynamics to describe scales of temperature; use the first law of thermodynamics to investigate changes in internal energy, involving the exchange of heat and/or work; apply the second law to heat engines and calculations of efficiency; show how the second law leads to the concept of entropy; use thermodynamic potentials for different thermodynamic conditions; and basics of kinetic theory.

This course explores the history of social and political thought, focusing on an alternating set of formative texts and their authors. Global early modernity and the Age of Discovery saw the rise of various imperial powers, within and beyond Europe, as well as rapid economic transformation. The onset of modernity and the Age of Enlightenment further strengthened the secular state and witnessed the sustained critique of inherited political and moral ideas. These developments spawned new works of political, moral, and social philosophy that often became famous in their own day and have intrigued intellectual historians and philosophers ever since. The main purpose of this module is to investigate selected texts in order to ascertain their conceptual significance, but also to attempt to understand the historical circumstances in which they were born, and which they themselves influenced. 

This is the first of a pair courses that build towards an overarching understanding of cultures of the French-speaking world in their historical and geographical diversity. It focuses on a range of primary materials in French that are diverse in various senses, notably: chronologically, in genre/medium, and in terms of the origins and identities of the authors/filmmakers. Students are expected to read and study these works intensively in order to participate fully in seminar discussion, and to get the most from lectures offering a framework of historical contexts and critical approaches. The course eases the transition from school to university through a focused introduction to materials and skills of critical analysis, in writing and more widely, that forms the basis of more advanced study in subsequent years. It is designed for students who have not reached the equivalent of A-level standard in French, with French-language materials studied in translation.

This course explores a major topic in current music research, locates it in intellectual and disciplinary history, and gives students the opportunity to conduct independent research on or around the topic, which usually arises from a current project in the department. 

This course provides an in-depth critical introduction to a range of important concepts, musical works, institutions, and people in music of a given time period, and explores both their impact on musical culture and their relationship to wider political, social, and artistic issues. Topics may vary by year.

This course considers how American literature explores the relationship between various American peoples and the land from the earliest colonial settlements to the present day. It ranges across genres, from philosophical writing and journalism, through the novel and poetry, to the short story and theatre, to narrate the spaces that accommodate the current U.S.A and the contingency, precarity, and fragility of human and animal life upon them. From famed urban spaces, through the plantations that perpetuated slavery, to ideas of the wilderness and the seascapes of the whaling industry, the course tracks how literary texts of the U.S. canon and countercanon manifest, and often too critique, American political projects and geographical fictions that have contributed to current environmental conditions. 

This course explores accounts centering on the movement and displacement of people in the French, German, and Spanish-speaking worlds. Beginning with an introductory guide to studying culture(s) in a Modern Languages' context, it then focus on experiences resulting from movement or displacement, whether forced or voluntary, and engages with themes such as alienation, belonging, difference, borders, and otherness. Its case studies are taken from a variety of media (including literature and film) and are considered in terms of their specific local and national relevance as well as their transnational implications. The course offers diverse perspectives on the issues arising from cultural encounters occasioned by, for example, diaspora, exile, migration, urbanization and colonialism.