King's College London

This course provides and understanding of group theory and some of its applications. In this course, students work with cyclic groups, permutation groups, dihedral groups, equivalence classes, cosets, Lagrange's theorem, and direct product groups; are introduced to quotient groups, construct the groups of low order, learn about the conjugation map, and construct conjugacy classes; meet the classical matrix groups, which are examples of continuous (or Lie) groups; work with group homomorphisms, isomorphisms, automorphisms, normal subgroups, kernels of homomorphisms, and prove and make extensive use of the group homomorphism theorem (also known as the first isomorphism theorem); learn about the semi-direct product and semi-direct product groups; construct and investigate the Euclidean group; investigate the geometric structure of some of the classical matrix groups, in particular SU(2)and SO(3); work with group actions on sets, stabilisers and orbits; and prove the Sylow theorems.

This course provides an introduction to sets and functions: defining sets, subsets, intersections and unions; injections, surjections, bijections.; compositions and inverses of functions; an introduction to mathematical logic and proof: logical operations, implication, equivalence, quantifiers, converse and contrapositive; proof by induction and contradiction, examples of proofs. These ideas are then applied in the context of the real numbers to make rigorous arguments with sequences and series and develop the notions of convergence and limits. 

This course teaches students certain key literary texts and the philosophical topics they explore. It also allows students to explore certain key conceptual issues concerning the relations between philosophy and literature. Topics include: what is the distinctive contribution that literature and philosophy each make towards an understanding of religion and morality in the broadest senses of these terms? Are there topics which can best be understood from a philosophical, rather than literary, point of view, or vice versa? What kinds of critical concepts does one need in exploring philosophical, alternatively, literary texts? Can one even speak of texts as "literary" and "philosophical" in such a broad-brush way? And, most importantly, what are the respective contributions of philosophy and literature to a humane education? There is no requirement to read foreign language texts in the original languages, but students are encouraged to do so if possible.

This course discusses what it means to read for the politics of a text and to read a text politically. We reflect on the different kinds of desire at play in the class: desire for social justice, for solidarity, for purpose in what we, as readers, activists and critics, do. In so doing, we learn to situate texts in terms of their contemporary commitments and in relation to our own. In the second half of the class, students discover literature in the context of, and in service to, a series of social movements and hone our skills in the archive to recreate these past moments of insurgency.

This course examines stars, celebrities, and fandom practices, as they are found in the media and popular culture (film, television, pop music, advertising, branding, news and magazines, the Internet and society media). Stars and celebrities also arise from beyond the mediasphere, with the possibility to consider literary stars, famous artists, royalties, and personalities from the fields of politics and sports. Academic approaches to fan cultures also critically engage with subcultural groups and participatory practices.

This course fulfils the dual function of introducing students to various canonical French texts and films and of introducing students to the study of narrative poetics, or "narratology" an important mode of literary analysis which was largely developed in France. Beginning with a comparative analysis of the narrative techniques of a 19th-century short story by Guy de Maupassant and its film adaptation by the great director Jean Renoir, the course then turns to the medieval and early modern versions of the popular tale LA CHESTELAINE DE VERGI. Afterward, students read the crucial 18th-century novel MANON LESCAUT, the source for Puccini's opera of the same name; they shall then turn to Emile Zola's 19th-century novel THÉRÈSE RAQUIN, studying both this text and its film adaptation. Finally, students examine a contemporary text remarkable for its narrative technique: Annie Ernaux's LA PLACE. 

This course reads against the grain of those dominant narratives of colonialism as world-making by focusing on the pirate as an interruptive force, who derails the movement of peoples, goods, ideas, and laws across the maritime routes linking the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Important tools in the course are the reading practices of postcolonial theory, which will teach us to extract and assess this alternative history of the post/colonial pirate. The course also teaches students to nuance standard maritime historiographies through literary reading practices, as well as evaluate the metaphoric application of piracy to contemporary, interruptive, economic practices.

This course introduces students to scholarly debates about contemporary Russia. It develops a comprehensive analytical toolkit required for understanding the various patterns and dynamics in Russian politics, state, and society. The course is motivated by the growing prominence of "the Russian challenge" issue in contemporary global political debates and is structured around a series of questions that allow for exploring commonly used explanatory variables as well as key issue areas structuring public and scholarly debates on Russia.  

This course examines human experience as a source of truth, knowledge, and belief about war. Representations of human experiences of war play a significant role in human culture and society, often defining social memories and collective understandings of war. As such, this course examines how human experience is transmitted and interpreted via historical sources as well as cultural objects such as films, novels, and video games. It also engages students with key social, political, and moral arguments about the representation of war experience in the media, museums, monuments, and commemoration rituals. 

The course covers the last generation of the Roman republic, primarily focusing on the political and military events between 88 and 43 BCE. It traces the process which led to the replacement of the traditional system of shared aristocratic government by a hereditary monarchy. Central themes include the rise of the late republican dynasts, above all Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, the role of the army in politics, the gradual destabilization of domestic politics, and the challenges posed by the expanding empire as well as its socio-economic impact. The current debate about the nature of the "fall" of the republic – accidental or inevitable - is also analyzed and placed in a wider historiographic context.