The module looks at the development of the English language, and examines its relationship with other, potentially rival, languages that have been spoken in the British Isles. It examines the effect of successive waves of conquest on the sociolinguistic situation which led to a situation of of diglossia or even triglossia, with English one of a number of varieties used in a set of socially determined domains. Using Haugen’s standardization model, we examine the factors which led first to selection and later acceptance of English as the dominant variety, and consider the associated linguistic processes of codification and elaboration of function. Working with short texts from different time periods, the module then introduces how and why grammatical changes occurred in Anglo-Saxon, Old and Middle English (e.g. loss of case marking, gender, weakening of the verbal paradigm) and their consequences for the modern language. We will also consider phonological changes (e.g. the Great English Vowel Shift) and their consequences for dialect differentiation. Throughout the module we make parallels with contemporary English by exploring ongoing change, including dialect loss and dialect levelling.
India as we know it today did not exist before decolonization in 1947. During British imperial rule, India was a collection of British colonial territories and loosely colonized Princely states. And, for almost three thousand years before colonial rule, the territory we know as India was in fact many different states. How did India become one nation with many official languages and the biggest functioning democracy in the world? This module will address this question by tracing how stories about ‘one India’ have been told in the last 150 years by important commentators of the time. We will read James Mills’ 1818 History of India alongside Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India which was written in 1935. Through these readings we will think about how a modern nation state comes to be. What are the processes through which new unity is imagined? Effectively, this module will introduce you to debates in the history of nationalism through a case study of Indian nationalism.
Philosophy of mind explores questions about the nature of the mind and mental states – states such as perceptual experiences, beliefs, desires, and emotions. What is the mind? Is it an immaterial substance? Is it the brain? Is it something like a computer? Might it just be a useful fiction? In considering these questions we will pay particular attention to two central features of the mind: (i) that mental states play a central role in explaining behaviour (for example, my desire for coffee helps explain why I’m heading to the cafeteria); (ii) that some mental states are conscious: there is something it is like to feel pain, taste marmite, or see a sunset. We will study the various ways in which philosophers have tried to give an account of the mind that makes sense of these features.
The course provides an insight into how molecular studies can be employed to further medical research and aid in the development of novel treatments and therapeutics. The course will cover a number of areas including the role of epigenetic in disease, amyloid diseases, the role of kinases in cancer, molecular understanding of diabetes and viral infections.
‘A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions’. The contemporary novelist Milan Kundera describes the novel as an exploratory and engaging form, a way of telling stories that involves readers both in its searches and in the questions it poses. This module gives you the means of participating fully in these acts of literature by raising questions of genre, and considering how such familiar terms as character, setting and plot generate meanings collaboratively with us, their readers. This module locates the novel historically, to give the curious story of a peculiarly modern form. Our story begins in the eighteenth century, when the novel was effectively invented and sought its fortunes in a new market of leisured middle-class consumers. We trace its history from the boom years during the mid to late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, when the novel comes to compete with other popular cultural media, such as cinema, TV and then the internet. The final section of the module looks at texts in which the novel redefines itself globally, often through new hybrid and experimental forms associated with such movements as modernism and postmodernism. We will also consider the novel in our own time.
In this module you will explore the operas by Benjamin Britten, one of Britain’s most influential composers. Britten’s operas are among the few 20th-century works that hold a central position in today’s operatic canon. They are produced regularly by world-leading opera companies, and they are available in numerous audio and video recordings. Proceeding in rough chronological order from Peter Grimes (1945) to Death in Venice (1973), you will become acquainted with Britten’s most popular works, including Billy Budd, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen WIngrave. Each opera discussed in the module will serve as a case study to explore a broad theme in operatic culture, including reception and dissemination, the adaptation of a literary source to an opera libretto, national identity, social issues, sexuality, and opera and the media.
Are we living in an age of climate change or climate crisis? In her 2019 speech to the World Economic Forum, Greta Thunberg famously declared “Our house is on fire”: a statement underscored by the Australian bushfire crisis of 2020 and the mass devastation of more than one million acres of ‘gigafires’ in California the same year (worse even than previous seasons of ‘megafires’). But how did we get here? What stories could have been—or were—told about the gradual changes to our global climate over time? This module returns us to a pivotal moment in the history of climate change: to the rise of a new geological age defined by human influence (the Anthropocene). It charts the course of increasing fossil-fuel consumption, changes to rural and urban economies and, ultimately, the rise of smoke-filled city skies. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how British fiction, non-fiction prose, plays, and poetry from the mid-to-late Victorian age (ca.1850-1900) place empire, economics, and ecology at the centre of an emerging planetary crisis. In learning from the writers of a newly-global, capitalist society on the cusp of massive geologic change, we will explore our own position as critical readers, writers, and thinkers in an era of ‘sustainability.’
The Philosophy of Value offers students the opportunity to explore in detail some central issues and texts in the Western philosophical tradition that address questions in the philosophy of value broadly construed (i.e. including ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, etc.). The module may focus on an important text, or on a body of significant literature.
This module focuses on the European Union (EU) as a system of public policy-making and aims to provide students with a working knowledge of the history of European integration, the main EU institutions, the EU policy process, main theoretical debates as well as the key EU policies, such as the Monetary Union, Brexit and Enlargement, or the EU’s growing activity in Justice and Home Affairs. Towards the end of the module, students will have the opportunity to discuss some of the key current issues and challenges confronting the EU’s future direction: its democratic legitimacy; the process of Brexit; the Eurozone crisis and Britain’s relationship with the EU.
This module focuses on the European Union (EU) as a system of public policy-making and aims to provide students with a working knowledge of the history of European integration, the main EU institutions, the EU policy process, main theoretical debates as well as the key EU policies, such as the Monetary Union, Human Rights and Enlargement, or the EU’s growing activity in Justice and Home Affairs. Towards the end of the module, students will have the opportunity to discuss some of the key current issues and challenges confronting the EU’s future direction: its democratic legitimacy; the process of Europeanization; the Eurozone crisis and Britain’s relationship with the EU.
The Roman empire has held the imagination of successive generations. Conquest by Rome brought social, cultural and economic change to large swathes of what is now Europe, the Middle East and north Africa. Never before or after did these parts of the world enjoy centuries of stability and peace as they did under the Romans. It was a unique political institution that encompassed a mosaic of peoples, languages and cultures that was unprecedented in its richness, leaving a legacy that has profoundly shaped the course of Western civilisation. The success and longevity of the Roman empire has fascinated many, and long after its demise it remained a model for the European and American imperialism in the nineteenth, twentieth and even twenty-first centuries. The great wealth of the archaeological evidence has produced a long tradition of scholarship, but in the last twenty years, new approaches have reawakened these debates, making the study of the Roman world one of the most dynamic fields within archaeology, with major implications for other areas of the Humanities. Post-colonial discourse, theorists of Globalisation and North African states trying to raise their agricultural output, to name just few, have all looked back to the Roman Empire for clues. So what was the story of the Roman empire’s success? How did it come to be, how was it maintained, and what factors were involved in the fracture and transformation of the system? In this module, you will look at the causes, consequences and the changing nature of Roman imperialism and its political, social, cultural and economic foundations. You will touch upon key issues and debates in Roman archaeology and learn about major sites and artefact types from all parts of the Roman world, as well as having the opportunity to handle Roman material culture. Assessment is through an essay based on a group presentation, and a final exam.
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In 2017, global recorded music revenues totalled $17.3 billion, the majority of which comes from the consumption of what we would classify as songs. This module aims, through lectures and practical work, to investigate & demonstrate how new production, distribution and consumption technologies are changing the way songs are made.
The Professional Geographer is a high-level skills practical module. The module aims to help students understand the changing nature of work, the dynamic and diverse labour market for geography graduates and to develop skills, knowledge and experience to successfully identify and pursue career suitable paths. By working with internal and external experts (people from industry) students will develop academic knowledge and professional skills. Lectures will be complemented with interactive workshops and practical sessions that will enable students to reflect on and develop different aspects of career development and employability. For example, identifying potential jobs and career trajectories, preparing personal statements and applications, developing traditional resumes as well as a web-presence and successfully negotiating interviews and assessment centres. Students will complete a series of professional development tasks throughout the semester and complete a professional development reflection and labour market entry plan.
This module will be an introduction to the psychology of metal health and wellbeing. Students will first learn about the links between wellbeing and mental health. We will also cover how we define and categorise mental health using modern diagnostic systems, with examples from a few mental health conditions. They will also cover how research has influenced our evolving scientific understanding of mental health. Students will be introduced to different perspectives of mental health, links between physical and mental health, sustainability, and how we use mental health theory and research in real-world contexts, such as treatments, policy, and global mental health. The module will also cover how experiences of stigma and inequalities influence the risk, development, and maintenance of mental health problems in the context of different perspectives. Applied examples will be provided throughout relating to mood and psychotic disorders. Optional individual wellbeing exercises are also introduced to demonstrate theory and research in practice. Coursework requires students to demonstrate their knowledge and ability to think critically about the module content in novel, applied tasks.
This module will introduce you to how books are published, printed and brought to market, and to key issues relating to the regulation of print and digital media. We will focus on publishing books in the United Kingdom, but will make useful comparisons with publishing industries beyond the UK. We will be thinking about fiction and non-fiction works, and we will be focussing on ‘trade publishing’. This module will give you the opportunity to engage with research on all the key aspects of the publishing world.
This module explores the Russian Revolution, assessing the 1880s up until the eve of the First World War. We will look closely at the old regime, considering the political culture of the autocracy and the dynamics behind tsarist rule. It will consider the personality of the tsar, Nicholas II, and his key advisors. But the module will depart from traditional perspectives quite frequently: we will look closely too at wider society – the development of key questions around the peasantry, the working class and also non-Russian identities in the empire. The development of political radicalism will be surveyed from the late nineteenth century through to the Revolution of 1905, as well as the mobilization of the forces of counter-revolution, thinking too about the impact of Russia’s first revolution. The last weeks of the module will explore the era of politics and parliament, the wider crisis in tsarist power in this period, the mobilization of conservative opinion, and the pre-war atmosphere of anxiety. Primary sources are key to the special subject, which will use different genres of sources, including literature, film and the visual arts, to understand historical change. Key to the module are the rich historiographical debates concerning the revolution, and the module will start by looking at some of the more recent developments in the ‘imperial turn’ to help us understand old regime Russia.
This module explores the Russian Revolution, following a chronology from 1914 until 1924. Part two explores the turmoil of the First World War, the Revolutions of 1917 and then the Civil War period (c. 1917-21). It will look closely at the First World War period (1914-17) and integrate recent literature into its study. We will then turn to the Revolutions of 1917 – the role of the opposition, the abdication of the tsar, the uncertain era of Provisional Government and the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. Then we survey developments during the tumultuous Civil War era and consider how this critically impacted upon the development of the Bolshevik party. The chronology ends with an exploration of the political culture of the early Soviet state, concluding with the death of Lenin, and the culture-building around the Bolshevik party. The module will consider a wide variety of different source materials during seminars and focus on the role of culture in the construction of the revolutionary project throughout Russia’s early twentieth century. It will end with consideration of the Revolution’s contested legacy: what has the Russian Revolution done for us?
To introduce the theoretical underpinnings of the democratic state; to outline theoretical and practical changes and challenges to the democratic state both today and in the future; to draw links between theoretical ideas about the democratic state and democratic politics in action.
