Ireland

This course is an introduction to the rich history of medieval manuscripts with a particular emphasis on Irish codices. Themes include medieval manuscript culture and codex production; insular scripts and scribal techniques; Late Medieval and humanist scripts; the Corpus of Medieval Irish manuscripts; Modern Irish manuscript tradition; digital technology and manuscript research.

This course is for engineering students intending to focus in the area of environmental engineering. The course lays a foundation for more intensive courses in later stages by introducing concepts about, among other things, environmental ethics, engineering calculations, and the fundamental biological, chemical, and physical processes used in environmental engineering. Applications of these concepts to developing engineering solutions for several contemporary environmental problems are also examined.

In this course, students review the major groups of invertebrates which, apart from arthropods, account for most of the animal species on the planet. The course provides the tools for describing and understanding biodiversity and many of the species discussed play key ecological and economic roles. Students review classification of invertebrates into major groups and examine some of the extraordinary solutions they have developed to movement, feeding, sensing, and reproduction. Practical sessions illustrate the variety of invertebrate life and include a field trip to search for specimens on the shore. Key skills include scientific drawing and dissection and, above all, the skill of species identification, including classification, use of keys and guidebooks and taxonomic conventions. 

A knowledge of the past and the long reach of historical processes is vital to an understanding of the modern world in terms of both physical landscapes and the evolution of economic, social and cultural landscapes. Past imperial and colonial practices and their legacies are key to understanding contemporary global inequalities (e.g. uneven economic development, resource access, population structures) and the societal challenges facing developing countries. Historical geography focuses on the dynamic relationship between space and time offering a geographical analysis of the past and an historical analysis of geographic patterns. This course charts the evolution of human society across the globe examining the emergence of regions and places with distinctive identities and characteristics in an increasingly globalizing world. In doing so it introduces key concepts in historical geography that illuminate processes of continuity and change, linkages, and ruptures and the intersections between power and society.

This course introduces key social, cultural, and religious aspects of Jewish thought and practice from antiquity to our own time. This course focuses on Judaism as a major world religion that has shaped Western Civilization. Rabbinic textual traditions that underpin Jewish religious thought—especially the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrashim—are explored. Calendar, festivals (esp. Day of Atonement, New Year, Festival of Booths, Passover, Hanukkah), and rites of passage (e.g., birth, circumcision, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, marriage, divorce, death) are studied both within the classroom as well as, when appropriate, in visits to local Jewish synagogues and museums. Contemporary Jewish movements and the history of their traditions come into view along with their different beliefs and practices (e.g., kashrut, Sabbath, worship, prayer).

This course looks at the idea of "wildness" in children’s literature. The first half of the course examines landscape wilderness as it appears in a range of different children’s texts, from Ingalls Wilder’s canonical American text Little House in the Big Woods to Nicki Singer’s environmentally/themed Island. The second half of the course focuses on depictions of wildness associated with childhood, from Emily Hughes’ picture book Wild, to David Almond’s The Savage. Throughout the course students problematize the idea of wilderness, both in connection to the landscape and to the child. Students consider the long-standing connection between the child and nature, and how this might impact on the broader understanding of childhood. 

This course studies literary texts from the Victorian period alongside popular culture, images, and journalism. Students are exposed to key social issues of the era, including urbanization, class and gender division, and questions of Nation and colonialism.

The emergence of technology requires the study of how history, science, economics, sociological effects, materials, sources of power, climate, and human ingenuity, all play a part in the development and adoption of new technologies. This program of study gives students an introduction to a wide range of technologies and exposes them to new concepts and helps them to question established “truths” regarding the linkages between basic science, research, and the mechanisms involved in the emergence of new technologies. The course is invaluable for students who want to become entrepreneurs because it familiarizes them with new technologies and makes them aware of the many factors that underpin the successful development and adoption of new technologies.

To what extent does our study of Irish small presses and little magazines enable us to "take the pulse of a particular period," as Frank Shovlin puts it? How much credence should we give to the claim, leveraged by Robert Kiely, that Irish "small-press publishers provide some inkling of the real dissent" within cultural discourse? In this course, students engage with the full operational remits of a diverse range of presses and publications blending archival research with close textual analysis in search of answers to these kinds of questions. Given this mixed methodological approach, the course focus alternates from week to week: between book-historical sessions on individual presses and publications operating across various periods since 1950, and sessions centered on close reading the literary products of this small-press labor against the many social, political, and economic issues to which they respond in each case. Students look at an array of archival documents, manifestos, written editorials, paratextual materials, and other ephemera pertaining to each of the presses and publications under scrutiny, in order to understand their diverse material and aesthetic circumstances. 

If historians generally agree that Europe experienced far-reaching intellectual and cultural change during the 18th century, they rarely agree about the nature of that change or how to interpret it. This course introduces students to some of the major interpretations of, debates about, and approaches to the history of the Enlightenment in 18th-century Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. It asks students to engage with original sources (in English), alongside the historiography of the Enlightenment, and to come up with their own responses to that still troubling question.