King's College London

This course introduces students to the key texts, arguments, and controversies in European political thought from ancient Greece to the end of the 17th century. This is based on the close reading of classic and complex texts, situated in their broader intellectual and historical context. A single canonical thinker – such as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes or Locke – will typically be central to each week’s teaching, but these thinkers are read in relation to the political environments that shaped them and the debates in which they participated. Where possible these key thinkers are considered alongside the work of other thinkers as well as other relevant primary texts. Students explore the early development of key ideas and issues – such as kingship, natural rights’, republicanism, and the relationship between church and state – that have formed, and continue to form, the conceptual bedrock of Western social and political debate. 

Chariot racing, gladiatorial combat, athletic performance, often violent, as well as the theatre and other forms of popular entertainment played a major part as spectacles in the lives of the citizens of the Roman empire throughout antiquity. By virtue of their close connections with other central areas of ancient life, including religious belief and practice, economic organization, political power and patronage, or the construction of political and/or ethnic identity, the forms taken by entertainment in any region or period are very revealing of contemporary concerns and values. This course explore the ancient evidence for Roman entertainment and spectacle from the Republic to late Antiquity, including a wide range of archaeological evidence, including art, architecture and inscriptions, as well as texts. It investigates ancient attitudes to spectacles as well as the responses of modern scholars to an aspect of Roman culture which has caused difficulties for advocates of the Classical world as epitomizing civilized values. 

This interdisciplinary course aims to make sense of what it means for children to grow up into adults. It considers competing arguments that childhood has been extended in recent decades and that children are growing up "too fast," and it assesses the factors that contribute to a successful transition to adulthood. The course draws on perspectives from psychology, sociology, public health, cultural and environmental studies, anthropology, and geography. Students gain an understanding of the different perspectives from which this range of disciplines debate issues around transitions to adulthood, problematizing the key concepts and assumptions underlying these debates and critically examining processes of personal development and identity formation.

The course explores different models for explaining and predicting how individuals behave. The course considers social influence, including notions of conformity and obedience; the role of individual differences including models of personality, how personality develops and what behavior we can predict from personality. The course introduces students to learning theory and ideas of behavioral psychology, understanding how experience of environment and rewards shapes how people choose to behave.