United Kingdom - England

This course analyzes the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health in society. There have been consequences of the pandemic for mental health in the human population. Considering the potential scale of this problem, there is growing need for medicine to integrate knowledge from related subjects, such as psychology, criminology, psychotherapy, and neuroscience, to precisely understand the mechanisms of ill health. This course brings together the discoveries of science with the life stories behind diagnoses to clarify the mechanisms that drive mental health symptoms. In the book, The Myth of Normal, Dr Gabor Maté makes the claim that society is built on a hidden assumption of generational trauma. Trauma disrupts the connection between mind and body. This psychophysiological problem can be diagnosed by doctors as physical and mental health conditions. While diagnostic labels help individuals understand mental health problems to an extent, the individual remains a member of society and its many challenges. Therefore, this course draws upon research taking place at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health to understand resilience in the context of different challenges, such as adolescence, socioeconomic deprivation and war. The course illustrates the mechanisms by which life experiences impact the mind, including the impact of the pandemic on the disconnect between mind and body.

Starting with Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS?, this course considers the key global currents of fifty years of feminist art around a number of themes. These include feminist art about the body and sexuality, women’s domestic labor, feminist approaches to identity, motherhood and childcare, violence against women, feminism, and the art historical canon.

This course examines a selection of key historical periods between 1607 and 1877. Introducing students to the significant events that went on to shape 20th Century America, it engages with influential historical, political, and social works to present a pattern of national development leading from the Puritans through the formation of the Republic and the divisions caused by the Civil War, to the tumultuous political struggles during Reconstruction. The course addresses theories of democracy, of state power, and critically investigates arguments concerning race, gender, and identity as a whole.

The Economics of Information is a critical field that explores how information affects economic decisions, market outcomes, and organizational structures. In this course, students investigate concepts such as information asymmetry, signaling, screening, moral hazard, and adverse selection in order to understand how information and communication may lead to unfavorable outcomes in interactions between agents. Students explore the impact of these phenomena on markets, contracts, auctions, and policy-making, and show how to design institutions that could help to alleviate issues related to asymmetric information.

Through visits to ten of London’s most important institutions, this course examines the development of how institutions curate culture from Renaissance "cabinets of curiosities" to the modern "white cube" gallery space. The course equips students with the historical, theoretical, and practical knowledge necessary for studying culture through institutional collections. Students analyze the techniques and practices museums use to collect, organize, and display their objects; consider the messages these institutions send through their architecture, patronage, and methods of display; and they delve into some of the most important issues affecting cultural institutions today like decolonization, repatriation, and social impact. Aside from the introductory class, the course takes place off campus, with seminar groups visiting a different institution in each meeting. 

This course examines human experience as a source of truth, knowledge, and belief about war. Representations of human experiences of war play a significant role in human culture and society, often defining social memories and collective understandings of war. As such, this course examines how human experience is transmitted and interpreted via historical sources as well as cultural objects such as films, novels, and video games. It also engages students with key social, political, and moral arguments about the representation of war experience in the media, museums, monuments, and commemoration rituals. 

The course covers the last generation of the Roman republic, primarily focusing on the political and military events between 88 and 43 BCE. It traces the process which led to the replacement of the traditional system of shared aristocratic government by a hereditary monarchy. Central themes include the rise of the late republican dynasts, above all Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, the role of the army in politics, the gradual destabilization of domestic politics, and the challenges posed by the expanding empire as well as its socio-economic impact. The current debate about the nature of the "fall" of the republic – accidental or inevitable - is also analyzed and placed in a wider historiographic context.

This course explores the use of music in Hollywood Cinema up to the present day.  The focus is on how music has worked to both support and undermine the dominant ideology of Hollywood Cinema. Students discuss the concept of the Classical Hollywood Score and how it has functioned in partnership with the Classical Hollywood Narrative. 

This course provides an integrated approach to the understanding of the biology of the cell, from understanding the molecular mechanisms that underpin cellular processes through to how such processes allow cells to function in their physiological context (i.e. in tissues and during development); to teach both "classical" and leading edge experimental approaches to cell biology research. 

This course covers the main dementia subtypes and language change associated with each. In lab sessions, students work with language samples to understand the linguistic profiles of dementia first-hand.