Ireland

The course focuses on the variety of ways in which, since the mid-1800s, women writers from the United States have made use of non-realist genres and modes within short fiction as a means of both protesting and celebrating women’s positioning in what was still a self-consciously new and ostensibly utopian nation. It introduces students to the imaginative and discursive breadth displayed in texts produced by female writers prior to the 1970s. In doing so, the course explores the developments and continuities in fantastic fiction by women writers from the American Civil War, though the fin-de-siècle period, and into Modernism and its immediate aftermath. In this way, the course problematizes rigid periodization, in particular by highlighting the formal innovation and conceptual range of writers who employ a range of fantastical genres to explore issues from racism and oppression to infidelity and financial ruin, from science and the senses to the very nature of reality itself.

Hundreds of myths and sagas survive from medieval Ireland. Many of these display intricate narrative techniques and structures, and their contents often reflect contemporary ideologies as well as inherited mythological motifs. In this course, students focus on one specific long narrative from the early Middle Ages and conduct a thorough and critical analysis of the text. No knowledge of Old Irish is required, as students read the story in full in English translation, but throughout the course key Irish terms and concepts are examined and their significance explained. 

This course offers the opportunity to learn the basics of Gaeilge (Irish, or “Irish Gaelic”), Ireland’s first official language. In addition to acquiring core skills, students also explore cultural topics in their linguistic context.

The Irish geological record contains over a billion years of Earth history preserving memories of the uplift of Himalayan-sized mountains, volcanic eruptions, warm tropical seas, and polar ice caps. This course introduces through field classes and online material how we can interpret the ancient rock record to reveal the past, and explore the links between the bedrock beneath us and today’s landscape and society. Students visit sites of outstanding geological interest and beautiful scenery in North and South County Dublin. Students are required to attend field classes, and the dates of field classes cannot be changed.

This course gives an introduction to methods of pharmaceutical analysis, which utilizes chromatographic, spectroscopic, and electroanalytical techniques to determine the structure and purity of medicinal compounds. Topics include analytical methods for characterizing pharmaceutical solids, AA Spectroscopy in pharmaceutical analysis, extraction of organic and inorganic analytes from aqueous solution, spectroscopic techniques, and complementary techniques to determine the structure and purity of a pharmaceutical compound.

This course provides a comprehensive exploration of the principles and applications of building energy systems. The course is for students in engineering and architecture, focusing on the intersection of energy efficiency, electrical systems, and building design. Topics include building energy analysis, psychrometrics, steady state and seasonal analysis, electricity supply system, electrical services in buildings, lightning protection.

This module studies deep-sea, coastal, and pelagic habitats. Students learn how to identify the major groups of cnidarians commonly associated with seamounts and submarine canyons; describe the biology of deep-sea communities; provide detailed description of a range of marine systems including epipelagic, rocky benthos, soft sediment benthos & estuarine systems; describe the physico-chemical gradients found in these habitats and discuss their role in structuring the marine communities found there; describe biological structuring processes in these coastal marine systems; describe the features and adaptations of animals in these systems; and define the relationship between area and species richness and apply this relationship to real conservation problems.