King's College London

Intellectual history of antiquity and the Middle Ages is typically conducted with sparse attention to women authors, and women thinkers whose works are not preserved. This course challenges that approach, by focusing on the achievements and contributions of female thinkers spanning a period from classical antiquity, with figures like Aspasia and Diotima, down to Christine de Pizan at the dawn of the European Renaissance. Some attention is paid to other cultural traditions, especially India and the Islamic world, though the richest materials are to be found in the Greek and Latin textual traditions. Many of the figures covered are, in a broad sense of the term, “philosophers,” but figures more usually described as “mystics,” such as Rabia and Hildegard of Bingen are also included.

In this course, students are introduced to the main ways in which the rise of digital cultures have disrupted existing political forms and structures. Students focus initially on identifying different understandings of politics prior to the rise of digital cultures and then explore the ways these have been changed. Part of this change is the increasing advancement of digital technologies and rise of platforms, leading to new shapes of political communication and the mediation of politics. In this course, digital politics is examined through some of its key political manifestations: for example, through changes in election campaigns globally, including in the Global South, through piracy and the Pirate Party; online censorship in the UK, China, and other parts of the world; privacy and ownership in Facebook and other social media platforms.

This course develops students' knowledge of the key microeconomic issues facing developing economies, and deepens their familiarity with modern analytical and empirical approaches to development economics with an emphasis on the most recent advances in the field. Students also learn about the use of formal microeconomic modelling in development, the links between formal models and empirics, and the seminal debates in development. Students must have taken a microeconomics course prior to enrollment.

This course looks at ways of writing throughout the long history of experimentation with critical form: from essays and auto-fictions to critical fabulations and diaries, the "personal" and the "political" in writing have often deeply intermeshed. The course considers ways of thinking about the relationship of formal innovation and structure to the content or air of the text; to ways writers enact performative relationships with their real or imagined interlocutors; and to ways we ourselves can examine and reinvent our own manners of shaping written thought. Affect, race, gender, aesthetics, and politics, as well as archives and documents occupy students' attention, as they navigate some radical and long-lasting experiments in the history of critical thought. 

Why was love such a burning topic in pre-modern France? How did poetry and prose fashion attitudes towards women, men, love, and sex? What were pre-modern constructions of gender and were there any alternatives to traditional models? During this course, students answer these questions by consulting a wide range of pre-modern texts, including courtly romance, lyric poetry, short stories, and longer narrative. They examine the portrayal of love and the conventions that govern its representations in literature. Topics include the body, virtues and vices, marriage, sexuality, seduction, chastity and violence. Students compare how men and women treat these themes, and look at how women write in genres traditionally dominated by men. Knowledge of French is not required. English translations of the works studied can be read.

This course explores the role of seapower and empires in the development of modern warfare, strategy, and international relations. Students examine the role of sea power in imperialism and the relationship between East and West, the role of technological innovation in the ability of sea power to affect war and politics both at the global and regional levels, the role of maritime geography as a structural impediment and enabler in the projection of power, and the conceptual complexities involved in the terms empire and imperialism as tools for understanding the strategic challenges that face the world today.

This course provides an introduction to strategic people management, with a focus on people management innovations and the major changes affecting contemporary people management. While this includes coverage of the basic people management functions and how people management contributes to value creation and organizational performance, the course’s strategic perspective means that people management is analyzed in light of several major changes and innovations, including diversity management; employee involvement; employability, soft skills, and labor market trends; employee wellbeing; global value chains, downsizing, and other forms of organizational restructuring; and the internationalization of people management, also through multi-national corporations. Furthermore, promoting a strategic perspective, the course also discusses contextual factors influencing people management decision-making. 

This course teaches symmetries and group theory, and their applications to physical problems – from basic discrete groups, representation theory, and Lie groups and algebras.  This course also includes formal mathematical concepts.

Students learn about group theory and formal mathematics, giving them a firm framework for further study.

This course explores some of the historical roots and key debates of different religions and some of the contemporary issues they face. The course provides introductory groundings to various religious traditions, which may include Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Students explore ways in which these traditions have been defined and understood, both internally and externally, and how they have interacted in key historical moments and present-day contexts. This course may include a trip to a London religious site or other relevant neighborhood setting, a museum, gallery, or library. 

This course considers a range of recent novels produced by Irish writers considering the relationship between writers and the state, north and south. Students explore what kind of difference literature can make to a society’s growing consciousness of itself. Issues to be addressed include modernity in an Irish context, sexuality, violence, the fantastic, religion and its aftermath,  the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and the connections between literary production and the imagined "nation."  The course treats Edna O’Brien’s debut novel THE COUNTRY GIRLS (1960), as its founding text. O’Brien has said that the Archbishop of Dublin and Charles J Haughey (who was at that time Minister for Justice) characterized the book as “filth” that “should not be allowed in any decent home”. Her first three novels were subject to multiple public burnings. The course also considers works by writers such as Brian Moore, John Banville, Anne Enright, Kevin Barry, Niamh Campbell, Colm Tóibín, Eoin McNamee, Anna Burns, and Sally Rooney.