University of London, Queen Mary

This course offers an introduction to the history of women in medieval Islamic societies (600 - 1500 AD), through their experiences and representations in art and literature. The course aims at finding the boundaries that divided the worlds of women and men in the economic, legal, and spiritual spheres. It does so by looking at a variety of texts, including the Qur'an, Prophetic traditions, marriage contracts, travelers' accounts, and the tales of the Arabian Nights. By comparing sources from diverse cultural perspectives, students consider the development of a cultural, economic, legal, and spiritual female identity in the Middle Ages, and critically examine medieval and modern discourses on women and Islam.

London in the 18th century was the first recognizably "modern" city, the metropolitan center of a global trading empire. For this reason, poets, artists, novelists, playwrights, travel writers, satirists, and essayists were drawn persistently to London as a fascinating and complex subject for literary representation. There were few established precedents for how cities might be imagined through text. Solving the problem of how to represent the diverse, enigmatic, ever-changing city of London is one of the core literary questions that we ask on this course. 

Crime has been readily associated with London's metropolis, from loveable rogues, spivs, and celebrity criminals such as Jack Sheppard to panics caused by the "London Monster" and "Jack the Ripper." Criminals have been the focus of both fascination and horror in the city's past. In tandem, the city developed efforts to control crime, from Beadles and Bobbies to slum clearances and the ultimate sanctions of Tyburn Tree and Newgate Prison. This course analyzes thematic aspects of crime and punishment in London, with particular attention to race, gender, and queer history. By recovering marginalized voices, students chart transitions in societal reactions, policing, legislation, and culture across the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Through analyzing primary materials and site visits linked to key cases from London's past, this course provides glimpses into the shifting criminal and judicial landscape of London.

This course introduces students to the history of gender and sexuality from the medieval period to the present. Students look at a variety of textual and visual sources, and consider global perspectives on gender and sexuality and how they intersect with structures of power and social hierarchies. Students explore themes such as gender fluidity, women's reproductive health, sexualities, family structures, women at work, women's rights and oppression, gender violence and feminism(s). The course offers an opportunity for global comparison between societies of the past and our modern world, helping students to understand how categories such as gender are not fixed but rather develop over time.

This course provides students with the opportunity to explore the connections between language, culture, and society with a comparative approach. Using a range of contemporary materials in different media (including political writing, journalism and visual media), students investigate the factors of geography and national identity, history and memory, politics and society, culture and media in the countries where the languages they are studying or encounter across Europe are spoken.

The Internet is everywhere. From the smartphones in our pockets to the supermarkets delivering our groceries, large parts of our lives are mediated by digital technology, through screens which connect us to computers in air-conditioned rooms thousands of miles away. But how did we get here? What really is this thing we call "the Internet"? Who made these systems, and how do they work? Beginning with the Cold War origins of today's globally-interconnected digital world, this course explores the social, political, and economic impacts of networked digital technology, its impact on history, and on how that history is written.