Ireland

This course engages with practical and theoretical questions of theater and performance as social practices. By focusing on various theatrical outputs and their reception, paying particular attention to history, politics, national identity, justice and collective memory, this course showcases the importance played by theater practitioners, performers and playwrights in Latin America in terms of validating stories from subaltern groups, including indigenous communities, in relation to power.

2 years of university-level Spanish (or B1 level) is required in order to take this course.

This course offers an introduction to the history of modern Eastern Europe, with a focus on the region’s politics, society, and culture, from the late 19th century to the present. It traces the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian empires; the rise of nationalism and creation of nation-states; the impact of the world wars; the establishment and evolution of communist regimes; and the region’s transition to democracy after the fall of communism in 1989. Through engagement with primary sources, memoirs, literature, artistic works, and major historiographical debates, the course explores how the countries of the region continue to grapple with the questions of identity, memory, power, and belonging raised during Europe’s tumultuous twentieth century.

This course is designed to train students in the basic skills of archaeological post-excavation, processing, and results dissemination. It explains the varied methods used by archaeologists to analyze and process different types of archaeological material and provide experience in a number of necessary skills. These skills may include washing and numbering of artifacts, basic conservation, artifact illustration and cataloguing, sample washing and sorting, sample sieving, sample flotation, inking-up and digitizing of excavation drawings. This course includes standard lectures, laboratory-based talks, physical demonstrations, and hands-on experience. The course also explores how and where to publish results, and interaction with the media and the public.

This course explores key sustainable development challenges, including climate change, poverty, inequality and social justice. It explores the concept of sustainable development and assesses the effectiveness of a range of approaches to development. The role of government, business and civil society in addressing global challenges is considered.

The institutional church never had the kind of control over the populace of medieval Europe that modern people think it did. This course explores the multiplicity of types of belief and practice amongst those who lived in accordance with the church’s teaching—monks and nuns, wandering preachers, pious families—and the varieties of resistance among those who did not—Jews, Muslims, and heretics, social revolutionaries, sexual nonconformists, practitioners of the occult, student wastrels. The course discusses the kinds of sources that tell us about these groups, including saints’ lives, chronicles, Inquisition registers, letters, and poetry. This course helps students appreciate how people in the past operated much as people do today, but in a very different world with a different set of assumptions. Continuous emphasis is placed on the geographical and cultural diversity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and the decentralized and multivocal nature of medieval religion.

This course develops foundational writing skills in Irish by engaging with short texts based on themes aligned with the A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Writing practice is supported by analysis of Irish syntax using both original work and selected examples from other sources. Reading skills are strengthened through short passages accompanied by comprehension tasks. The course also encourages reflection on personal learning processes, with attention to the use of learning strategies, common challenges, and effective approaches for addressing them through guided class discussion.

This course examines the historical trajectories and contemporary interpretations of the concepts of race, ethnicity and nationhood. Through critical engagement with classical and contemporary theories of race, ethnicity and nationhood, the course examines the role that these play in the construction of social and political identities, and in the development of the modern nation-state and nationalist politics. The course also investigates the co-constitutive relationship between interpretations of race, ethnicity and nationhood, and historical and contemporary migration. Emphasis is placed on the role of migration in the constitution of the modern nation- state, the relationship between migrant and minority politics, and the manner in which contemporary migration continues to be affected by discourses of race, ethnicity and nationhood.

The contemporary era is marked both by a proliferation of screens through which we access ‘content’, as well as fundamental and ongoing shifts in the media industries, largely driven by digital innovation. Given this context, this course provides students with a scholarly understanding of a range of screen media, past and present, in order to better comprehend continuities and disruptions. Students examine how formal elements combine to create meaning in screen texts and they are introduced to a wide array of critical terms through which they will develop their own analyses. Through a number of detailed case studies encompassing film, television as well as emergent “new media” forms, the course provides a foundation of methods and skills for researching and studying screen media in varied forms and contexts.

In this course, students design a social research project; understand the principles and assumptions associated with qualitative research; select and justify the most appropriate research method to answer particular research questions; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various research methods; distinguish and apply suitable types of analysis to varying research designs; apply appropriate ethical standards to research design; and understand issues of power, inequality and exploitation in qualitative research.

This course provides an introduction to the diverse and dynamic history of the United States. Through a range of historical approaches—including political, social, cultural, and foreign policy perspectives - students investigate the forces that have influenced the development of the United States. Themes such as popular culture, multiculturalism, the role of the state, sexuality, gender, race, religion, class, and varied identities are explored, alongside foreign policy, the presidency, and the evolution of America as a global power. The course provides a broad yet nuanced understanding of how power, politics, and different groups of people have intersected across different eras, equipping students with the analytical tools to engage critically with historical narratives and debates. The course is designed to encourage students to think critically about the forces that shaped American politics and culture and empower them to engage with debates about its past, present and future.