University of London, Queen Mary

This course explores the field of cultural geography. It draws on examples both historical and contemporary, in the UK and beyond, to demonstrate how spaces, places, and landscapes are laden with meaning. It shows that culture is not something that is fixed, but rather constructed through relations with different people, places, ideas, objects, and practices. The course therefore helps students understand and interpret matters of culture critically, with careful attention to plurality, complexity, and power. Students examine power and identity, cultural representations, more-than-representational geographies, geographies of embodiment and mobility, cultural geographies of food, emerging cultural landscapes and politics, and tensions and new directions in cultural geography. 

This course traces the origins, development, socio-cultural significance, and critical appreciation of the form from its beginnings in the amusement arcades to the mobile games of the present day. Considering video games as uniquely interactive visual sources, the course employs a diverse range of methods, approaches, and critical contexts, from the circumstances of socioeconomic national production in Japan, Europe, and the US to global gaming cultures, the representation of history, the video game's relationship to cinema, and the theoretical ways in which we might understand the nature of human leisure and play.

The course emphasizes the global importance of French language and French speaking culture and is intended for beginner learners. It develops the ability of students to operate practically and effectively in the target language. The challenge of learning a language develops the greater cultural and political awareness, which is a crucial aspect of being an educated global citizen. Students develop a foundation in French language alongside an ability to communicate in a confident and competent manner. 

What makes planet Earth so remarkable? Our planet is shaped by many interacting environmental systems operating from atomic through to global scales. Understanding the science of these systems is central to developing an advanced knowledge of the physical environment. This course explores fundamental Earth surface systems (e.g. tectonics, atmosphere & oceans, landscape development, climate change), focusing on core concepts, processes, their significance within a broader environmental context and their relevance to the human species.

This course seeks to ensure that students are familiar with and competent in a number of discourses or narratives of global health, and that it fosters critical, intellectual curiosity in a range of contemporary global health challenges that are currently being addressed by policy makers, international organizations, and public health specialists. The first half of the course provides students with all the conceptual and theoretical knowledge they will need to be able to explore and, hopefully, critically interrogate the case studies presented to them in the second half of the module. A key focus of the course is the media, both print and social. The media is an important vehicle for the construction and dissemination of global health discourses, and students learn how the media can (and do) frame global health issues in particular ways. This course encourages students to explore contemporary global health challenges from a range of diverse perspectives and disciplines, including cognitive linguistics, media studies, public health, anthropology, political economy, and international relations.