Ireland

This course examines the popular experience of life in 20th-century Ireland. Rather than seeing Irish culture in terms of elite experiences, this course explores life as it was lived by the majority of Irish people. To do this, the course broadly traces key experiences from birth to death, examining each experience from as many viewpoints as possible. Certain key themes run throughout the course such as the social and cultural effects of economic, political and demographic change, the evolving role of the state and legislation as it affected daily life, the process of secularization, changes in public and private morality, an increasing openness to international influence and the conflicts, and tensions that these various developments unleashed. The course examines the interpretative challenges of social and cultural history in an Irish context, and examines some of the new certainties that seem to be emerging in the growing literature on various aspects of Irish experience.

The course is an introduction to the study of comparative politics and provides an overview of some of the key theoretical frameworks, concepts, and analytical methods of this field of study, as applied to the developing world. We particularly examine non-democratic forms of politics, asking why authoritarian regimes persist and whether corruption undermines democracy. Other topics covered include the causes of civil war, the clash of civilizations, and ethnic violence.

The course examines authors’ use and adaptation of folkloric and mythological material in their works. The course examines a variety of early modernist and contemporary texts alongside earlier materials alluded to or explored by those texts. Straddling the perceived divide between popular fiction and classic literary works, the course considers the writing of W. B. Yeats and other authors of the Irish Revival as well as J.R.R. Tolkien, James Joyce, John Updike, and Kazuo Ishiguro. The course enables students to query the nature of literary production and reception across different time periods. It allows them to explore why authors choose to underpin their works by references to well-known narratives, and, conversely, why authors choose to revive forgotten legends.

With the rise in environmental concerns and the concepts of sustainable development in public policy at both European Union and national level, interest in regional and urban planning currently enjoys an unprecedented high profile. This course introduces key concepts related to regional and urban planning theory and practice. It presents a series of key topics in regional and urban planning, including sustainable urban growth; rural development; built and natural heritage, information, and communication technology; and public participation in planning. It explores the evolution of modern planning practice and the emergence of modern planning systems and their associated policies, including the Irish political and administrative framework and planning system. The other national systems and international practices are also noted, with European context and spatial planning providing the most relevant reference. Various planning policies and their implementation in practice are also explored and evaluated in the areas of housing, transport, urban design, environment, and community development.

The Frankish super-state pieced together by bloody conquest in the reign of Charlemagne (768-814) comprised much of modern-day France, Germany, Italy, Catalonia, and the Low Countries. It remains popularly seen today as at once a restoration of the western Roman Empire, and as a precursor to modern European unity.

By consulting first-hand the remarkable variety of contemporary literature produced at the courts and monasteries of this age, together with the boom in modern scholarship on the subject published in recent decades, we will seek to deconstruct both these notions, and uncover instead a ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ on its own, eighth- and ninth-century terms: one of ritual, theocracy, and prophetic visions; of brutal violence, learned polemic, and carefully balanced consensus. Above all, the course asks: how were such extraordinary political and territorial ambitions achieved and legitimized in a world of such rudimentary resources? And why, once accomplished, could it not last?