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.
The Supernatural has always had a privileged place in audiovisual culture. Earliest films manifested ghosts through double exposures and the ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ special effect, at the same time that the mediums of film and sound recording were thought to have the ability to capture aspects of the paranormal that were not immediately apparent (Ruffles, 2004). Although a product of developments in science and technology, writers and audiences alike have throughout its existence noted the eerie, spectral nature of a medium that brings physical beings to life in light and shadow. As noted by Sconce (2000), the close relationship between the Supernatural and electronic media has been intimate to the point where disintricating the two can be difficult. The two have also developed side by side: recording technologies are exploited by investigators of the Supernatural, while ideas and visions of the Supernatural have been both defined by and manifested in audiovisual culture. Horror films, in particular, have developed certain ways for depicting, and giving a direct feeling of, the Supernatural, which allows for a distinctive range of ideas about the subject to be presented. But the Supernatural also appears in films from animation to art cinema and films with religious themes. These depictions can be understood as displacements or metaphors for engaging with other ideas. For example, ghosts can often be construed as manifesting a return of unfinished business, as examples of hauntology or a Freudian ‘Return of the Repressed’. They can also embody taboo or unacceptable ideas, suggest political allegories, or function as a means for solving intractable situations. The central concern of this module is with the Supernatural as a metaphor, as a theory, and as an unanswerable enigma. Rather than considering Supernatural beings in their more obvious form, such as vampires and werewolves, the module will be more interested in the ethereal and ephemeral (ghosts, demons and possession, and spiritualism). The module will address the Supernatural in terms of culture and history but focus particularly on film and related audiovisual culture. This will also include television, music and video games, all of which intersect significantly with film and all of which continue the Supernatural as both a representation and an embodiment.
The Sustainability Professional is a high-level skills practical module delivered in partnership with a range of contributors from local and regional environmental and sustainability consultancies and other organisations. This module aims to provide students with the skills, knowledge and expertise to pursue a career in this rapidly growing employment field. Students will be able to develop academic knowledge of the subject area, but also be able to gain practical experience of professional project work through working in partnership with internal and external experts on ‘real-life’ case studies on a weekly basis. The emphasis in this module is on professional skills development, problem-solving, and group exercises. Students are encouraged to participate in discussion and development of solutions as opposed to traditional lecture-based classes. Students will complete a series of weekly case study exercises, to be included in a 'Professional Development Reflection and Analysis Report' as an individual submission. written up in the form of a summary analysis report to be submitted as a ‘Sustainability Portfolio’. Students will work in groups to submit one full consultancy report as the primary assessment. By the completion of the module, all students will have a sophisticated professional level understanding of this diverse field, experience of working with experienced on case study exercises in a professional capacity, and high number of professional skills to add to their CVs.
The Sustainability Professional is a high-level skills practical module delivered in partnership with a range of contributors from local and regional environmental and sustainability consultancies and other organisations. This module aims to provide students with the skills, knowledge and expertise to pursue a career in this rapidly growing employment field. Students will be able to develop academic knowledge of the subject area, but also be able to gain practical experience of professional project work through working in partnership with internal and external experts on ‘real-life’ case studies on a weekly basis. The emphasis in this module is on professional skills development, problem-solving, and group exercises. Students are encouraged to participate in discussion and development of solutions as opposed to traditional lecture-based classes. Students will complete a series of weekly case study exercises, to be included in a 'Professional Development Reflection and Analysis Report' as an individual submission. written up in the form of a summary analysis report to be submitted as a ‘Sustainability Portfolio’. Students will work in groups to submit one full consultancy report as the primary assessment. By the completion of the module, all students will have a sophisticated professional level understanding of this diverse field, experience of working with experienced on case study exercises in a professional capacity, and high number of professional skills to add to their CVs. Students will complete a series of weekly case study exercises, to be written up in the form of a summary analysis report to be submitted as a ‘Sustainability Portfolio’. Students will work in MSc groups to submit one full consultancy report as the primary assessment. By the completion of the module, all students will have a sophisticated professional level understanding of this diverse field, experience of working with experienced on case study exercises in a professional capacity, and high number of professional skills to add to their CVs.
This module will introduce you to the background and workings of the Textile Industry and the wide-ranging career opportunities that studying textiles today will offer you. You will be introduced to the different sectors, markets, applications and contexts of this multipurpose diverse dynamic global industry. You will explore the historical contexts, the contemporary global situations, the various business models and the supply chain processes. You will learn about the heritage, traditions, issues and trends, the future visions. You will investigate the national and international industry and marketplace as a whole, but also discover and discuss the career contexts around Sustainability, Luxury, Artisanship and Ethical Practices in the Industry. This module will allow you to begin to understand how this industry works and the career choices you have in specialising and working in this exciting field. You will come to understand how textiles are fundamental in our lives from the clothes we wear, to the upholstery we sit on, to the bandage that heals and to the cover that protects us, textiles are all around us. You will be shown how to apply critical thinking and discussion to explore the textile industry, its impact on the planet, people, plants and animals, and how the industry is changing to become more responsible for its actions and how textile specialists are creating new ways to clean up the industry and looking forward to a better future.
In this module, you will cover, the rise of national socialism in Germany, the nature of the Nazi regime, and the relationship between the regime and German society.
This module examines the foreign, occupation and racial policies of the Nazi regime, along with experiences on the Home Front during the Second World War, resistance and the collapse of the regime.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, new modes of transport and communication, commerce and violence, have remade the world. As empires expanded and contracted, and as the relationships between states and individuals were repeatedly reconfigured and tested, ways of conceptualising how literature relates to the world changed, too. In Worlding English we move beyond the Western canon in order to engage with the newly global dimensions of literature in English. The concept of world literature originates in the nineteenth century, and this module tracks the history of literature in English as a global phenomenon forward from this beginning through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This period witnessed not only the rise of British Empire, industrialization, and the birth of new resource regimes including coal and oil, but also the emergence of the Anthropocene, decolonization, and global war. This module explores theoretical methodologies for worlding English, while scrutinizing English’s ambitions to universality, exposing its internal fissures and gaps, and its indebtedness to non-Western ‘peripheries’. Texts come from diverse contexts but are linked by their self-consciousness about how race, culture, politics, economics, gender, and ecology shape the worldly positions of authors and their work.
This module gives students a chance to compose for jazz and jazz influenced ensembles. This module will embrace the rich tradition of jazz writing and its conventions as heard in the works of the great jazz composers, such as Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The module will explore contemporary approaches from artists as developed by composers such as Gil Evans, Kenny Wheeler and Maria Schneider. We will also look at how crossover composers such as Jacob Collier, Louis Cole and Snarky Puppy have integrated jazz composition techniques into their music too.
This module draws upon the expertise of three US historians to explore different dimensions of the American past, from the founding of the republic forward. This year, we will be focusing on the theme: ‘The other among us: conspiracies, cults and counterradicalism in US history’. It will explore the concept of an American ‘paranoid style’ and its application to a range of different movements, crusades and moral panics from the post-bellum period through to the present day. Topics will include: the Ku Klux Klan, Voodoo, Anarchism and populist anti-capitalism, Red Summer/Red Scare: white violence and state repression 1919-20, McCarthyism, Black Panthers/COINTELPRO, Waco and its consequences, the FBI entrapment of American Muslims, and QAnon.
In this module, you will explore some of the social, cultural and political forces that transformed the medieval and early modern worlds. This was a period of momentous change characterised by invasion, political upheaval, religious conflict and a rapidly globalising world. International developments like the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment shaped the way individuals and societies engaged with each other and the wider world. Our focus is on the transformations that took place in the British Isles and the emerging overseas empire. But there are opportunities to range further afield and consider this period of transformation from other European or global perspectives. You will explore themes such as: political upheaval; kingship and diplomacy; exploration, commerce and empire; religion and reform; violence, warfare and conflict; art, architecture and literature. In doing so, you will consider to what extent developments in this period laid the foundations for the world we live in today.
Historians have become interested in ‘ordinary people’ in recent years. Why? This module explores this question through looking at case-studies of women’s, men’s and children’s histories in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, and at varieties of ‘ordinary sources’. We examine how a focus on ‘the ordinary’ maps onto, and complicates, other historically-shifting identities – race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, ability, region, and religious faith – and the implications. Claire Langhamer has asked, ‘Who do we mean when we refer to ordinary people and who did the people we study mean?’, and we will also consider this key question through tracing the roots of the historiographical turn to ‘the ordinary’, drawing on the wide-ranging expertise in the histories of modern Britain we have at Southampton.
Ancient history covers a vast geographical and chronological span, from Ancient Egypt to Classical Greece, from Rome to Imperial China, and from the Mediterranean into Europe, Africa, and the Near East. This module allows you to explore your interest in the Ancient World, and to learn about approaches to studying its past.
This module introduces students to mathematical and numerical methods to solve practical problems in acoustics. It provides a self-contained review and derivation of the equations of linear acoustics in the time and frequency domains. Mathematical modelling of sound fields generated by complex source distributions is introduced. This leads to more advanced mathematical methods commonly used in acoustics such as the acoustic Green function and integral solutions of the acoustic wave equation. The numerical methods which are covered in the course are available as commercial software packages but the underpinning theory and analysis is discussed in sufficient technical detail to serve as a starting point for those seeking to apply or extend them to research problems.
This module will provide you with a developed understanding of what is law; how much law can be justified; how law relates to morality and justice, indeed whether there is any morality that is unique to law. The first part of the module will canvass what is unique about legal obligation and law’s claim to authority. In the second part of the module you will look at different theories of justice and the tension they pose between individuality and community. The third part of the module will apply the work from the first two parts towards examining how we might the law be used to promote justice. The theory and practice of law will be examined and reflected upon in a slower and more advanced way than in the LAWS1012 Legal System and Reasoning module taken in Year 1 of the Programme. The module will be taught in holistic way, so that theories of law and theories and justice can be seen in the way they relate and complement one another to reflect both justification and limits for good governance. As a prospective lawyer, it is believed that significantly better and more sophisticated legal analysis and argument can be formed once central legal concepts and principles can be seen in the way they relate to theories of law and justice. As such, this module will deeply inform your doctrinal study of law with the conceptual analysis which underpins law’s search for justice.
