King's College London

Social justice has long been at the heart of 'development' – alongside economic growth, environmental sustainability and accountable governance. Further, these other goals are often regarded as instrumental to justice: growth enables surplus for redistribution; sustainability ensures fairness to future generations; and accountability promotes more equitable shares. Rather than debate ‘social justice’ in abstract terms, this course engages with embedded, ethnographic perspectives: why does injustice prevail; why do inequalities persist; why are states violent; how do people come to resist and mobilize for change; engage with the state; or turn to violent opposition? In listening to people’s perspectives, understanding their beliefs and desires, the course also introduces the anthropological approach to development at large. 

This course is an in-depth study of art production in the Classical world, providing a history of making from Graeco-Roman techniques to their reception in the Renaissance and use until the present day. Students engage with the materials, tools, and processes involved in the production of sculpture, pottery, painting, glass, textiles, and jewelry among other art forms. Students study the complex sequence of actions involved in their production, following the artist as maker as well as investigating the client behind these commissions.

This course looks at how multinational enterprises (MNEs) navigate in the international landscape given country and institutional differences.

The course introduces students to the extraordinary range of American poetry in the first half of the 20th century, which includes, for example, the radical experiments of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Mina Loy and William Carlos Williams; the conservative modernism of Robert Frost; the European-oriented neo-classicism of T.S. Eliot and H.D.; the cerebral playfulness of Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens; the political daring and earnestness of Muriel Rukeyser; the marriage of avant-garde irreverence with a democratic openness to popular culture (cinema, jazz) represented by Langston Hughes; or the subtle social, sexual and racial awareness to be found in the work of Gwendolyn Brooks.

This course covers the history of war from as far back as the 13th century right up to the height of large-scale, industrialized warfare in World War Two and the global, colonial violence of the 20th century. It does not strive to provide what would end up inevitably being a superficial coverage of all wars in all regions of the world. Rather, different, select periods or conflicts are considered as illustrations to help us explore the central theme of escalation over time and the emergence globally of modern war and violence. This is the spring-only version of the course.

This course provides students with an understanding of the most important challenges that war poses for international order. It draws on ideas from international relations, sociology, political geography, and anthropology to equip students with conceptual and analytical insights to understand the relations between international order and war. Are wars an unavoidable threat to international order? Or are they necessary at times to preserve international order? What have the Cold War, the "war on terror," and the war on poverty in common? How can we understand the relations between war and revolution, war and security, war and human rights, war and risk? What alternatives to war are possible today? How have wars and conflicts been transformed by changes in the international order?

The field of modernist studies has undergone a radical transformation over the last decade.  This course introduces students to a range of modernist writing, as well as investigating what is at stake in such reconfigurations of modernist literature and culture.  Students approach both the primary texts and investigation of the field through the lens of space and place.  Students focus on the geographical co-ordinates of modernism, as well as the way the field has been "mapped," provides a thread through the course.  It leads students into the material spaces of urban interaction, the places (cafes, galleries) where the crucial transnational collaborations occurred that have defined the period.  Students also consider the spatial politics (urban, domestic, textual, and psychological).  The course pays careful attention to the social and politics contexts in which these writers operated, and the transatlantic and colonial networks which facilitated their writing and their aesthetic experiments.

This course is divided into two parts. In the first part, it focuses on some key policies of the EU: students look at the economic and monetary policies, justice, and home affairs, the common agricultural policy, environmental and climate policy, trade policy and EU foreign policy.  The second part looks at some current challenges and controversies that the EU is facing. Students consider whether the EU is an efficient and legitimate system, current challenges to the rule of law, Euroscepticism and the increasing domestic contestation.