University of Manchester

Venice today is a manifestation of Romanticism’s continuing influence on modern-day culture: Romantic-period literature transformed the city from an almost forgotten backwater into the iconic city of modern tourism. This course is focused on the international re-imagining of Venice by Romantic-period writers such as Goethe, Radcliffe, de Staël, Byron and P. B. Shelley, and the influence of this re-imagining across Europe and beyond. However, this international focus on "Romantic Venice" also enables students to re-think Romanticism in Britain, in terms of its inherently international nature and its international impact. It does this by foregrounding Romanticism’s interest in urban as well as natural worlds; its reinvention of literary genres to address new aesthetic, social, and political objectives; the importance of writers (especially women writers), and kinds of writing (especially travel writing), often marginalized in scholarly accounts of Romanticism; and the influence of "Romantic Venice" on writers such as Dickens, George Sand, and Henry James.

This course uses the framing concept of "metamorphosis" to explore the ways in which late medieval poets creatively reworked and re-imagined classical stories dealing with change, loss, and violence, while working out new modes of poetic representation and form. Many of these stories were taken from the works of that most popular of Roman poets in the Middle Ages, Ovid (predominantly from the Metamorphoses). Engaging with these narratives allowed medieval authors to confront and explore questions of transformation and change in language and forms that were themselves often innovative and experimental. It also required them to think about how to engage with the writings of a pagan poet within their own, Christian context. The course introduces students to selected stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and to reworkings of them by late medieval authors such as John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate and Robert Henryson.

This course offers students the opportunity to critically analyze contemporary societal issues in depth, with reference to current psychological and neuroscientific theory and evidence. It brings together topics in the related fields of political psychology, media psychology, and social cognition. Familiarity with major theories, perspectives, and methods in Psychology is assumed, along with competency in psychological statistics (e.g., Psychology as major or substantive subject for visiting exchange program students.) 

This course examines the political system established at Rome by Octavian at the end of the Roman "Republican" period which is normally known as the "Principate" or "High Empire" until the reforms of Emperor Diocletian and the Edict of Milan which granted the Christians freedom of religion.  Students look at the tensions and development in the structures of the state in this period, the role of the army and foreign policy, life in the provinces of the empire, and social issues including religious practices and the rise of Christianity.

This course introduces students to the key ideas, concepts and thinkers in the Western tradition which underpin the ways we approach the world in the different disciplines in the arts, from archaeology to literature, history to film, art to drama, religion to music. Students will have heard of Paul, Marx, and Freud, but may be less familiar with Connell’s arguments about gender, or Fanon’s writing on ethnicity. Students engage directly with the texts or images at the heart of the debate and gain a broad foundation in the ideas and concepts to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Western approach to knowledge, wisdom, and truth.

This course introduces some of the central issues and concepts involved in a critical consideration of punishment and penal systems. The course explores the main theoretical perspectives and applies these to some contemporary problems in the field. Topics include the aim of punishment and societal structure; the political economy of punishment; punishment and discipline; punishment and culture; probation, electronic monitoring, and risk; restorative justice; prison; the death penalty and life imprisonment ; and fines and intersectionality.
 

This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of Russian-to-English translation. It introduces key theoretical approaches to interlinguistic translation, with a particular focus on contemporary theories; it identifies key linguistic and cultural issues that are particularly relevant for translation from Russian into English; and it helps students to practice and develop both their own translation skills and their skills at critical analysis and assessment of approaches to translation, multiple translations of individual texts, and specific translation choices. Weekly lectures cover issues of theory and genre; seminars provide the opportunity to discuss these issues in detail and to compare different translations of individual works; and translation practicums provide the opportunity to discuss weekly translation portfolio assignments and engage in further translation work (e.g., of unseen text excerpts similar to the translation portfolio assignments).