University of London, Queen Mary

This course explores the political and artistic aims and effects of non-theatrical performance in the 20th century and contemporary urban environment. It explores how the city is sometimes conceived as a dystopian site of potentially enormous social oppression. And it examines everyday, artistic, and activist performative responses to this potential subjection, responses which imagine the city as, instead, a utopian site of personal and social liberation. Students contextualize and historicize our analysis through studying various theoretical analyses of urban experience (e.g. Baudelaire, Benjamin, Debord, Lefebvre) as well as a variety of artistic practices (e.g. everyday interventions, activism, public art). Throughout the course, students work to map the ideas and practices we encounter, many originally grounded in Paris, in our own experiences of London. The course concludes by imagining what performance might do next to contest the particular challenges of living in the city now and to explore and exploit its opportunities.

Creating a true brand is one of the most powerful things any company can do to enhance its market power. When a product-commodity becomes a brand, its use value is imbued with symbolic value that consumers deploy in constructing and maintaining their identities. This course draws on a diverse set of theories to understand current issues in brand management rather than merely relying on the cognitive, information-processing approach to branding.

This course introduces students to the purpose, operations, and implications of management by exploring the contexts within which management takes place. Students reflect on management in relation to the social, economic, technological and legal conditions within which it operates, and analyze political and environmental consequences. We often think of management as trying to manage flows of energy, finance and labor, but it increasingly is required to confront changing social and political structures on a world scale, and challenging environmental conditions as well.