King's College London

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. 

In this course, students glimpse into the Mediterranean world, using real examples of Archaic sculpture in the British Museum as touchstones and maintaining an emphasis on first-hand inspection and close-looking through gallery visits and handling sessions. Moving beyond Greece, students consider the interconnected development of Archaic art across the Mediterranean, including Egypt, Cyprus, Anatolia, the Levant, and Magna Graecia, informing these discussions with new discoveries and scientific testing. Readings engage with current scholarly debates about periodization, gender, and polychromy in Archaic Sculpture. This course requires self-directed study and presentations in museum contexts, culminating in a final essay. All ancient texts are provided in both Greek and English. Numbers will be capped because of museum visits/handling sessions.

The analogy between the intelligence analyst and the academic, evoked above by the spy fiction writer John le Carré, is theme of this course. The course teaches students about the function of intelligence in the 20th and 21st centuries, and promotes reflection on the nature of scholarly work. The connection between scholars and the spies is not just a fanciful one dreamed up by novelists. During the world wars and the Cold War, academics swelled the ranks of Anglo-Students learn about the problems of gathering evidence, interpretation, analysis, presentation, and distribution of intelligence. 

This course covers advanced molecular genetic concepts, together with their associated analytical or research-driven techniques, presented, where possible, by scientists or clinicians actively employing these concepts and techniques in their own research or clinical practice. The course covers: Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) - finding genes associated with complex disease; Pharmacogenetics (PGx) - using genetics to "individualize" drug treatment; Next Generation Sequencing - methods and application to translational medicine; networks of transcriptional control and regulation; chromatin regulation; recombineering and transgenic tools; genome editing techniques and uses; genetically modified (GM) foods and other plant technologies; RNA interference - future therapeutic or useful laboratory tool?; microbiome; and stem cell genetics.

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 course offers a comprehensive exploration to some of the main areas of music study that students encounter during subsequent years of their study. These include an exploration in music and music history from the Middle Ages to ca. 1780; music and music history from ca. 1780 to the present day; jazz and popular music (broadly defined); ethno-musicological issues, and to music cognition. This course covers ethnomusicology and film music. All students must be able to read music fluently.

This course focuses on the Greek world. The course includes a study of the built environment, from the major urban and imperial monuments of Athens to the forts and farms of the frontiers, the images housed in public buildings, houses, and tombs, as well as portable objects and the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students learn to apply the different perspectives and methods of archaeologists and art historians in interpreting material remains and visual images. The course combines close study of individual pieces of evidence with an evaluation of how they may illuminate the societies, cultures, institutions, and economies of classical antiquity. The students also learn to access sources of evidence in printed and digital form and in museum collections in London where key relevant source material can be inspected at first hand. Students in this section take only one term of the year-long course Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome.

This course examines the relationship between colonialism, decolonization, and religion globally from both historical and contemporary perspectives. This includes the ways in which secularism and colonial modernity provided a context for the remaking of religion, as well as the many different forms of colonial power and anti-colonial resistance across the world. Special attention is paid to questions around gender, class, racialization, and religious minorities. Students critically examine formative concepts, theories, and texts related to the post-colonial study of religion, as well as historical arguments from anti- and decolonial perspectives. Examples may be drawn from a variety of contexts and religious traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, as well as indigenous religious traditions. 

Environmental economics provides theories and techniques, which help students understand some important and controversial issues, such as climate change, nuclear power, recycling policy, and traffic congestion charging. Frameworks taught at the course can be used to evaluate various important policy questions such as: should air regulations be tightened or loosened? Does economic development necessarily result in a high environmental price? Is there a "Race to the Bottom" in environmental regulation? Are we running out of oil and other natural resources? What are the costs of climate change in the UK and other countries? Analysis of various political facets of environmental policymaking are an important part of the course. 

The course provides an up-to-date picture of the underlying basis for, and treatment of, a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders. It illustrates how established information underpins the use of current drugs for treating these conditions and how emerging theories and experimental outcomes inform future drug development.