University of Kent

This course focuses on the period from the 18th century onwards, beginning with the British colonies in North America from initial European settlement. The course focuses on interactions between Native American, African, African-American, and European populations in the colonial period. It examines the first anti-colonial revolution in modern history leading to the creation of a new nation and concludes with a study of the reconstitution of the nation after a bloody civil war and on the eve of large-scale industrialization. Topics include the causes and consequences of the Revolution, the new political system, the development of mass democracy, economic development and territorial expansion into the West, reform movements, sectional conflict between North and South, slavery, the Civil War, and the re-establishment of a national order during Reconstruction.

The course explores common logical and psychological barriers to understanding and analyzing empirical research. Topics include common fallacies of deductive and inductive reasoning, judgmental heuristics relevant to evaluating empirical research claims, essentials of a scientific method, misleading statistical and graphical techniques, establishing genuine associations, the role of inferential statistics for identifying illusory associations, essentials of causal inference, and threats to the validity of experimental and non-experimental research.

This course is organized around research-based performance projects. These projects are based on detailed examinations of popular performance genres (for example, variety theater, slapstick, cabaret, pantomime, and radio comedy). Students develop performance skills, including addressing an audience, developing a stage persona, dancing, singing, or simple acrobatics. Students develop their material to create a show in the style of an assigned popular performance genre, which is performed to a public audience.

This course provides students with the skills to analyze how an individual's religious life can be understood in terms of broader social structures and processes. Students explore broad issues such as the study of “lived religion,” macro and micro-sociological approaches, inter-sectionality, and the debate concerning agency and structure. They then examine the significance of religious lives in relation to individualization, gender, class, emotion, materiality, and the relational basis of belief. Using approaches and concepts learned through the course, students write a case study of the place of religion in an individual's lie. Classes include both discussions of concepts and texts, as well as workshop activities which apply these to students' developing case material.