King's College London

From Roman traders to modern commuters, millions of people have lived in the same few square miles where students now study. In this course, students form into groups with fellow Liberal Arts students and stage an investigation into some of these London lives. Students begin an interdisciplinary exploration of the history and culture of London and are introduced to some essential skills and methods of academic study that students use throughout the course. Students form into groups and enquire into an aspect of London, past, or present. Guided by a tutor, students seek to answer questions by engaging not only with primary and secondary readings and resources for study within King’s, but with the streets and spaces of the city itself. They present their findings via a digital portfolio and a group presentation. As students come to see by the end of this course, London - in all its struggles and achievements - is a fascinating microcosm of the wider world; and as such, an ideal laboratory for the study of Liberal Arts.

The course introduces the basic concepts of discrete mathematics needed for the study of computer science. Student learn to work with sets, relations, functions, recursive structures, graphs, trees, basic combinatorial principles, discrete probability, finite automata, and regular languages. 

This course introduces students to a variety of philosophical thinking from around the world. It prompts students to explore some key questions and concepts in philosophy across different religious traditions and time periods. The religious traditions to be explored in this course may include, but are not limited to: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  

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.