United Kingdom - England

This course examines the institutions, politics, and policy controversies that mark the U.S. American policy. The course revolves around the concepts of democracy, liberty, and equality, probing the uneasy and often paradoxical application of these principles. Students explore the linkages between the U.S. public and elites, and how these relationships coincide (or not) with the democratic claims of the system. Students evaluate the democratic/undemocratic, liberal/illiberal, and egalitarian/inegalitarian strains that run throughout U.S. policy and challenge the preconceptions that obscure our understanding of this highly complex political system.

With a career spanning nearly 50 years, Stephen King is one of the world's most popular and influential writers, his stories and iconic characters forming an integral part of the American cultural landscape. Film adaptations of his work continue to receive critical acclaim and extraordinary box office success. The analysis of Horror film and fiction can reveal cultural anxieties at significant socio-historic moments. In this course, we will explore the ways in which Stephen King's shorter novels, novellas and film adaptations of his work interrogate the American psyche, capturing its fears and apprehensions at defining points in modern history. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this QMUL Model course will use King's work as a lens through which to examine developments in American horror cinema and fiction, investigating the articulation of cultural anxieties from the New England Puritan imagination in the influential works of Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft to the disillusioned aftermath of the Vietnam War in 'Carrie' and contemporary contexts of gender, empowerment and sexuality in 'Gerald's Game'. While the course will focus on the Horror texts for which King is renowned, we will look at his contribution to other genres, from the depiction of boyhood in 'Stand by Me' to the prison melodrama of the world's favorite movie, 'The Shawshank Redemption'. We will read and reflect on what we can learn about our own writing from King's memoir and reflection on the writing process, 'On Writing'.

This course examines superpower relations and nuclear tensions during the Cold War, including the collapse of the USSR and the decade of uncertainty that followed. It analyzes international relations from 1945 through 1998 and the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty coming into force. The course focuses on areas of direct conflict and the prevalence of war across the globe as much as the nuclear stand-off which was M.A.D. between east and west. Social and cultural factors are considered, such as the reciprocating boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

This course covers a wide range of epistolary forms in the early modern world and encourages students to unfold the stories behind them, as well as to seek out their own examples of literary letters and place the canonical alongside the more obscure. The course is broadly designed to progress from real letters towards literary letters, but students are encouraged to experiment with literary, historical, and material methodologies throughout. Students have opportunities to learn about letters in a hands-on fashion, by physically manipulating paper, wax, and seals, and composing their own original "early modern" correspondence.

This course examines ideas of health and healing across the early modern world. By taking a global approach, students look beyond the intellectual and commercial centers of European cities to diverse sites of medical practice on land and sea, across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Students examine spiritual and natural remedies for the sick, the biological consequences of intercultural contact, the trade of exotic drugs, and the circulation of medical knowledge between cultures and across continents. A global understanding of health and healing as well as sickness and suffering allows students to diversify their understanding of early modern medicine and reflect on both the connected and disconnected nature of the early modern world.

The course provides students with an understanding of common law procedure, common law reasoning and argumentation, as well as an understanding of the place of human rights within the contemporary English legal system. To this end, the course fosters understanding through activities and reading. This course consists of three parts: In Part I there is an introductory lecture and a visit to the Crown or Magistrates' Court, including the completion of a court observation form as part of a learning log. Seminars are used to discuss the court observation, the notion of a fair trial and how the various actors in the court process contribute to the idea of a fair trial. Students complete the learning log by bringing together their observations, reflections, readings, and discussions. In Part II lectures examine the sources of English common law from domestic legislation and judge-made case law to international treaties and the law of the European Union. In seminars, students are introduced to reading cases, discovering the judges' legal reasoning, and applying the principles to new legal problems. In Part III students concentrate on the development of case-law and recent legislative changes in relation to the crime of murder and the civil wrong of defamation. Seminars explore causation and intent, general and partial defences to murder, and defences to defamation.

This course teaches students the most important issues in operations management (i.e. process design, quality planning and control, supply chain management, just in time, and total quality management) through a blend of theoretical approaches and seminar-based activities. Students analyze the relationship between process design in services and manufacturing, the reproduction of technical and managerial knowledge, and the implications of such a relationship in terms of governance and strategic decisions.

This course is an overview of the diversity in language structure and use around the world, and forms a key foundation for any student of linguistics. In order to appreciate the basic goals of linguistics as a discipline, students must appreciate the full scope of human language. The course will examine how different language families differ from one another in sounds, word formation, sentence formation, and usage. Using indigenous languages from diverse regions, such as Africa, Australia, Asia, and North America, we will explore the question of whether universal constraints limit the range of what is possible in human language, and if so, why such universals might exist. We will also consider diversity in how social and pragmatic functions are signaled by language use in different speech communities around the world, and the problems associated with language endangerment and death. The course will feed directly into both theoretical and social themes in future modules in linguistics degree programs.

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.