United Kingdom - Scotland

This course focuses on a selection of readings from the Greek Old Testament, Greek New Testament, and other Greek writings of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, along with some elements of advanced grammar and vocabulary. The syllabus changes from session to session but incorporates a range of koine Greek texts. These typically involve a selection from the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek New Testament, the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, and other early Christian writers, with a focus on the New Testament Apocryphal Gospels and other non-canonical texts.

With attention focused on the question of independence, recent debates concerning Scottish culture and identity gain a heightened political charge. Literature has not only reflected but actively shaped such debate. In the year the new Scottish Parliament was established (1998), Christopher Whyte argued that "in the absence of elected political authority, the task of representing the nation has been repeatedly devolved to its writers." But what influence have writers played in recent political change, and to what extent has Scottish culture escaped its own stereotypes? This course examines the literary and political currents shaping contemporary Scottish identity, introducing students to key 20th- and 21st century texts. Students encounter and explain a range of cultural debates concerning language, class, democracy, and nationhood, attending to the urgency as well as the complexity of recent Scottish writing.

This course has two aspects. The first is to increase students' understanding of more technical issues of geospatial data management and the underpinning geospatial databases necessary for GIS to be useful. The second is to develop practical skills and understanding of GIS by using it in a more extensive applied project, which takes the form of a work-based task (a "virtual placement") where students assist a virtual company to respond to client requirements for GIS analysis.

This course provides students with an understanding of the origins, main features, and impact of the Jacobite movement, and places Scotland’s experience of Jacobitism within its wider British and European context. It seeks to deepen historical and transferable skills already acquired or to assist students coming to history as a discipline for the first time. Students look at the societal changes that occurred in Scotland in the 18th century, the Jacobite rebellions and the Enlightenment period, and learn how to collect, evaluate, and use sources to support a historical case and evaluate conflicting historical interpretations.

Feelings are things we usually think of as "natural," but sociologists are interested in to what extent emotions are socially constructed and/or socially constituting. In this course, students examine why sociologists have largely neglected emotions and what a sociological approach can bring to our understanding of them. This enables students to explore how the sociology of emotions can challenge some of sociology's key premises and ways of thinking and to critically analyze debates about the changing role of emotions in social life. The topic examines how modernity has made people feel about each other and their world and how those feelings have in turn shaped that world. 

This course examines the origin of the concept of sustainable development in public policy discourses with particular focus on the implications this concept has for the operation of business organizations. The course examines the difficulties of applying notions of sustainable development to single organizations as well as the challenges which conventional economic systems present to sustainable development. The course examines the theory and practice of managing for sustainable development, drawing on examples which are found in business. In addition, selected topics in managing for sustainable development are examined.

This course considers the ways that science and technology shape the relationship between humans and the environment. Students examine a number of topical historical and contemporary cases and in the process reflect on the role played by science and technology in how societies understand nature and environment. Themes to be dealt with include science and cultural uses of natural resources; sociology of climate science; science, technology, and international development; science and public understandings of environmental debates; science, knowledge, and power; and environmentalism. Students approach these themes by studying various environmental topics, often reflecting current events.

This course introduces critical approaches in human geography to understanding the relationships between landscapes, power, and society. The critical approaches applied in this course stem from ideas within cultural, political, and social geographies which centralize the role of power in socio-spatial dynamics, and how power produces complex relations between society and the landscapes we inhabit. Critical approaches in human geography provide a framework to understand society and landscapes as carrying multiple meanings. Students examine society as composed of knowledge, institutions, community dynamics, representations, discourses, inclusions/exclusions, material aspects, and more. Similarly, landscapes are explored in terms of nature, bodies, the imagination, digital realms, technology, everyday experiences, and other dimensions. These various perspectives demonstrate how power imbues landscapes and society with various meanings, and how ideas in human geography can critically analyze the co-production and experiences of landscapes, power, and society.

The early modern period saw considerable changes in the shape of warfare and in the nature of armed forces and the state, a process some historians have described as a military revolution. Yet the increasing pressures of war brought about considerable social, economic, and political breakdown, as rulers overburdened both their armed forces and their domestic subjects. This course examines how western European states organized and conducted war between the late 16th and the early 18th century, and consider what effects this had on political stability. The focus is not only on some of the great powers but also upon some minor states who punched above their weight on the international stage.