University of Sussex

Decolonizing education is critical for social justice in the Global North and South. This raises important questions about the relationships between knowledge, power, and society in the past and present. This course addresses these issues. It engages with the politics and history of education in both UK and international contexts. It critiques how the curriculum has privileged particular knowledges and identities in ways that are racialized, gendered, and classed. Throughout the course, students relate these issues to students’ own experiences of education and what decolonizing education means for them.

George Orwell once wrote that "many people who would consider themselves extremely sophisticated and “advanced” are actually carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in childhood." This course examines the political lessons children’s books encode about what childhood is, and about which children matter and why. Students read children’s texts from a range of genres and forms – including fantasy, school stories, picture books, and domestic fiction – written between the late 18th century and the present day. Key focuses include agency, gender, race, class, and the environment. 

In this course, students explore some of the exciting and experimental developments in film music practices emerging in the second half of the 20th century. During this time cultural changes and expectations were reflected in greater experimentalism and innovation across society and art forms. This includes film music and sound, following the so-called Golden Age of classical Hollywood film scores in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Students will begin with a brief review of Golden Age film music and the established continuity system of musical editing. Students then examine case studies of film scores from several different countries, including USA, Britain, France, and the former Soviet Union. Students consider fragmented, composite, formalist, and popular music solutions. Finally students consider the growing influence of sound design and the blurred boundaries between music and sound in some contemporary cinema.

This course introduces students to photography as a tool for communication and encourages students to reflect critically on issues of form and content to convey meaning. Students will learn key technical processes in contemporary image making and consider existing photographic theories alongside emerging digital practices. Students will work individually to realise set exercises in and out of class and produce a completed series of images to a set brief.