Brunel University London

This course looks at the development of the fashion world in a critical way and uses past theories of communication to examine how the fashion world is viewed, such as hipsters and the statements they make about society.

This course examines the practice of politics in the United States in the age of mass communications technology. A variety of disciplinary perspectives are employed, ranging from political science and history to cultural studies. Students examine and analyze the ideological, partisan, economic, and constitutional priorities of the main actors involved in the transmission of political messages and journalistic reporting, and learn about the tensions and conflicting agendas that complicate these interrelationships. Students also examine the goals of, and interaction between, politicians and film producers/directors in order to understand how political messages and ideological bias affect Hollywood and how film producers attempt to influence Washington.

This course analyzes the psychological theories and approaches to current research on the psychology of reading, specifically from the perspectives of skilled readers and impaired readers due to brain damage, as well as typical and atypical literacy development. Students learn to describe and evaluate major empirical findings within the core areas of study; to evaluate the behavioral, neurological, and neuroscientific evidence against current theories in psychology of reading; and to write clearly and coherently about the application of theory and practice in the psychology of reading.

This course examines political institutions and their impact through institutional analysis and modern institutional theory. Students learn about particular institutions, and they create a framework for analysis that allows for comparative analyses. The empirical examples are drawn from across the world, and the assignments allow students to work on a problem they are interest in.

This course offers a distinctive and wide-ranging analysis of Anthropology that highlights the continuities and differences between anthropology and cognate disciplines. It combines innovative and classic teaching methods with courses that draw on the leading-edge research of staff whose expertise covers a range of ethnographic regions and research themes. Students are introduced to a diverse range of anthropological theories and methods.

The aim of this course is to examine and evaluate the major issues and controversies in the study of elections, voting behavior and political parties in Britain, and to provide a basis for comparative analysis. Drawing upon skills and knowledge learnt in previous undergraduate work, it seeks to provide a sophisticated examination of changing electoral behavior, party ideology and the party system. A variety of methodological techniques employed in psephology and the study of parties are employed.

This course introduces the political issues raised by the 20th-century women’s movement and the subsequent developments in feminist history and theory. Students learn to recognize how the issues were expressed and developed through literature and learn to use feminist theory in the analysis of appropriate texts, particularly plays and novels.

In this course, students examine a range of questions: Why is it so difficult to define terrorism? What are the implications of said definition? What factors motivate terrorism? What strategic choices do terrorists make? What methods do counter-terrorist forces employ, how do these help to reduce violence, and is it successful? What is the role of the public? The literature is theoretically motivated and empirically driven. Students are introduced to the fundamental theoretical and policy debates surrounding terrorism and the current trends in terrorism and counter-terrorism.

This course explores the developments in the history of biology and psychology that led to the development of evolutionary psychology. Students survey evolutionary psychologists' findings about how humans are adapted to solve adaptive problems in diverse domains such as cooperation, aggression, mating, parenting, and survival, and they evaluate how evolutionary psychology differs from other human sciences.

The course provides a theoretical foundation for analyzing public policy and skills to communicate the analyses to non-academic stakeholders in public policy. The first part of the course explores theoretical issues relevant to the analysis of public policy. Students focus on examples from both national and comparative public policy. The second part uses the theoretical foundations to examine lobbying on specific policies through case studies which may include: family policy, health policy, education policy, defense policy, business policy, constitutional policy, and policies that are cross-cutting in nature.