United Kingdom - England

This course explores the connections between political economy and social policy. Political economy is about the distribution of power and money in society, whilst social policy is about welfare and meeting people’s needs. The course thus sets out to understand how the distribution of power and money affects the ability of states and other actors to meet people’s needs. It addresses this question through an everyday approach that seeks to link everyday experiences to global phenomena, institutions, and processes. The first few weeks of the course discuss various ways in which scholars have theorized political economy and social policy. Students then move on to study broad areas of international political economy and social policy, such as debt, housing, work, climate change, and race.

The Iberian Peninsula was home to the first ventures of global empire. Drawing on key medieval and early modern texts in Portuguese and Spanish from the peninsula and its colonies this course examines the literary representation of frontiers and colonization. Students learn about the emergence of the modern states we now call Spain and Portugal and how they were not only the initiators of worldwide transformations, but also the products of a complex process of colonization. Through the literary representation of the relations between Christians, Iberian Muslims, and the indigenous peoples of Africa and the New World, key concepts of frontier, conquest, reconquest, conversion and coexistence are examined as part of global movements and dynamic cultural (ex)change.

This course examines how British Prime Ministers have governed in the period 1979-2015, and the role of the Prime Minister in the British system. The first half of the course focuses on key themes relating to the office of Prime Minister and the machinery of government, with the second half providing specific historical case studies, onto which the frameworks and theories discussed in the first half of the course can be applied and used for analysis and evaluation. Special attention is given to the memoirs and diaries of the prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and senior officials involved in managing the central machinery of government. The use of historical sources, and debate around the historiography of the subjects being discussed are interwoven into each week’s teaching. 

This course introduces and examines London's internationally-significant museum and gallery collections from a critical and global perspective. Exploring the politics of collecting and display, it engages with contemporary art historical and curatorial debates via the realities of institutions and their collections - and the inherent tensions therein. Major cultural institutions and their collections are examined, including the national gallery, Tate, and the British Museum, where issues of the representation of gender, the depictions of people of color, decolonization and repatriation are discussed and debated. Current debates surrounding museum and gallery ethics (for example ongoing debates regarding the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles and Benin Bronzes) are explored and contextualized in relation to contemporary social justice movements.

The themes, methods, and ideas in the fields of social psychology and individual differences is introduced in this course. Students focus on social psychology and individual differences as scientific disciplines that uses experimental methods for data collection to formulate and empirically test theories of human nature.

This course allows students to identify research papers relevant to a health psychology topic, summarize and evaluate published evidence, relating to a health psychology topic, apply health psychology theory to a practical problem, and describe and think critically about a number of health psychology theories, models, and concepts. 

The course covers some of the most prominent tools in modelling and simulation. Both deterministic and stochastic models are covered. These include mathematical optimization, the application of sophisticated mathematical methods to make optimal decisions, and simulation, the playing-out of real-life scenarios in a (computer-based) modelling environment. Topics may include formulation of management problems using linear/nonlinear and network models (these could include binary, integer, convex, and stochastic programming models) as well as solving these problems and analyzing the solutions; generating random variables using Monte Carlo simulation; discrete event simulation; variance reduction techniques; Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The course teaches students to use modelling and simulation computer packages.

Queer history is both a subject and a practice, and this course provides an introduction to both. It is, first, an introductory global history of sexuality, demonstrating the vast range of approaches different societies have taken to regulating and experiencing the body and desire. It also aims to introduce students to the method of queer history, one of many approaches to the past which illuminate how Historical Grand Narratives are produced, and how they might change. 

This course examines aspects of the historical and contemporary development of film form. In the first half of the term, it looks at crosscutting and continuity editing in films by D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, and Christopher Nolan. In the second half it studies discontinuity and montage in various films, including work by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, and Isiah Medina. Students are also introduced to basic editing software and the final assessment is in the form of a video essay.  

The course provides a broad overview of this diverse critical discourse over the past generation, while also paying close attention to some of the most pressing debates currently animating the field. Topics include identities, sexualities, temporalities, homophobia, activism, deviance, performance and transgression.