CLAS40330 Latin for Research – The aim of this module is to promote self-motivated study of Latin as a preliminary to, and as providing an essential tool for, research in the general field of Classics. Students will gain sufficient knowledge of Latin to enable them to read original sources in the language with the requisite aids (dictionaries, grammars, commentaries) to hand.
Formatives may include: Regular formative exercises in Michaelmas and Epiphany terms
Summatives: 2 x Written Examinations
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CLAS40430 Ancient Greek for Research – The aim of this module is to promote self-motivated study of Ancient Greek as a preliminary to, and as providing an essential tool for, research in the general field of Classics. Students will gain sufficient knowledge of ancient Greek to enable them to begin to read original sources in the language with the requisite aids (dictionaries, grammars, commentaries) to hand.
Formatives may include: Regular formative exercises in Michaelmas and Epiphany Terms
CLAS41130 Religious Life in the Roman Near East - This module explores to what degree the religious cultures of the various places and regions within the Roman Levant were different from each other, and whether a common Near Eastern religion can be recognized. By the end of this module, students should have acquired a close familiarity with the wide range of relevant source materials, and be able to understand and appreciate the particularities of the various patterns of worship in the Roman Near East.
Formatives may include: Normally an outline or draft of the summative
Summatives: Long Essay
CLAS44330 Baroque Modes - This module examines modes of heterodoxy and excess in classical literature and the arts and the way in which they have been received in the post-classical world, heavily influencing the modern concept of the Baroque. Students will examine what characterizes ‘Baroque’ style, as opposed to other kinds of visual and literary presentation, and the impact that this has had upon modern art-historical narratives. They will consider what characterizes Baroque style and how perceptions of ancient art and literature have influenced modern ideas about it.
CLAS45230: Linear B: Mycenaean Greek and Homer’s World - This module aims to introduce students to the study of Linear B, the earliest written form of the Greek language, while also focusing on the socio-political structure of Mycenaean Greece to the extent that this can be reconstructed through the tablets and surviving material culture. Classes will begin with the introduction of the script and a first contact with historical linguistics before moving on to the actual reading of tablets and their association with the Mycenaean society and its Homeric echoes.
CLAS45430 Crisis and Recovery: The Roman Empire During the 3rd Century CE - This module will provide students with the academic tools necessary to access and critically evaluate Latin and Greek epigraphic, documentary, archaeological, legal, and literary sources for their own research. Students will also develop an awareness of the different challenges the Roman Empire faced during the third century CE and the ways in which it adapted and transformed as a result of this turbulent time.
ENGL41730: Romantic Forms of Grief - Building upon analytic and persuasive skills acquired at undergraduate level, this module will introduce students to the cultural, religious, social, and historical forces that have shaped Romantic poetry about grief. Students are expected to read in detail specified works that centre on loss, memory, death, or mourning by Romantic poets (which may include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Smith, Byron, Hemans, Shelley, Clare, and Keats). Students will explore the poetic achievement of the poets studied, in part through comparison and connection between the works of them and their poetic treatment of grief.
Formatives include: 1:1 essay consultation
Summatives include: Two essays
ENGL44930: Reading Medieval Literature – This module will introduce students to key genres and texts from across the Middle Ages, in particular the 12th-15th centuries. Students will explore modern critical approaches to ‘the medieval period’ using a range of perspectives and methodologies. Medieval content will be taken from a variety of genres, including epic, chronicle, romance, hagiography, autobiography, and lyric. Texts amd authors studies amy include but are not limited to: Abelard, William of Malmesbury, the Alexandreis, Chaucer, the Paston letters, the Roman de la Rose, and Piers Plowman. Critical perspectives will be introduced using key authors/texts from the 20th and 21st centuries such as Eric Auerbach, C. S. Lewis, Paul Strohm, and Carolyn Dinshaw.
ENGL45330: Illness and Narrative Practice - This module will examine contemporary narrative practices of illness from a critical medical humanities perspective. Key sets of texts will be introduced and drawn into dialogue, focussing on the following areas: literary illness narratives, foundational theoretical accounts of the production and reception of narratives of illness, and examples of narrative approaches to illness by researchers and practitioners working across the medical humanities. The module is designed with interdisciplinary risk-taking in mind: students will be encouraged to think critically about what constitutes a narrative of illness in intersubjective, ethical and instrumental as well as literary critical and theoretical terms.
Formatives include: Short essay proposal
Summatives include: Presentation and Essay
ENGL45930: Neurodiversity and the Humanities (online) - In this module, students will engage with a diverse range of literary, historical, and cultural texts that decentre the neurotypical experience in favour of an alternative that diverges from the norm within a given socio-political context. The module starts by interrogating the diagnostic basis of several conditions labelled as neurodivergent, bringing cognitive and developmental psychology into conversation with writings from neurodivergent advocates and activists. The module then moves on a weekly basis through various critical reconfigurations of neurodivergence and engagements with different media. The module makes use of a variety of media – including zines, comics, dance, theatre, stand-up comedy, and literary texts –to interrogate the accessibility of differing forms of presentation.
Formatives include: Weekly learning log
Summatives include: Student devised assignment (including planning), annotated Bibliography, selection of learning logs.
ENGL46130: Qualitative approaches to Digital Humanities (30 credits) - In this module students will consider a range of digital technologies and their application to humanities research and cultural heritage organisations. Topics can include: the history and development of Digital Humanities; the analysis and anatomy of digital projects; digital musicology; game cultures; textual resources and digital editions; spatial Digital Humanities and crowd-based methods; user studies and interface design; digital techniques in museums and cultural heritage (including field trips to the Oriental Museum and special collections); Digital Humanities beyond the English speaking world- international Digital Humanities and non-roman scripts; Sustaining and preserving digital materials. Students will investigate how digital resources are designed, used and preserved.
Summatives include: Individual Project, critical evaluation of a digital resource
ENGL46230: Writing the Body in the Long Twentieth Century – This module will introduce a broad range of literary and filmic representations of the body, affect, and the senses, from the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary, i.e. the ‘long’ twentieth century, with a particular focus on the ‘high’ modernist years of the 1920s-30s. There is an emphasis on bodily movement and process, considering breathing, dancing, working, fighting, laughing, and more. Students will trace the complex ways in which understandings of the body are framed and transformed by the new styles and modes of representation developed across our period of study. Students will also explore practical exercises, to reflect on the experiences of the reading/viewing body, and encourage attuned engagement with embodied writing.
ENGL46530: The Uses of Literature: Power to Pleasure - This module explores the Renaissance conception of literature as a means of intervening in the world and transforming the minds and lives of individual readers, connecting this tradition to the aesthetic, formal, and rhetorical features of specific works.It also investigates how Renaissance ideas about the uses of literature continue to inform debates about the uses (or conversely, uselessness) of the humanities today. The module is themed around Power, Health, Self-Help, and Pleasure. Students will explore how idea about the purposes and uses of literature were shaped by a range of (often unacknowledged) ideological, institutional, political, and economic interests and pressures.
ENGL53630: Narrative Transformations: Medieval Romance to Renaissance Epic - This module will introduce students to varied forms and practices of fiction from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Students will explore the processes whereby some of the great story-matters of the Western Tradition have been transformed over the centuries. Studying this module will provide a basis for possible future research in Medieval or Renaissance literature. Content will be drawn from a range of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance writers normally including Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, Chaucer, the Gawain-poet, Gower, Malory, Spenser and Shakespeare.
ENGL46630: Subaltern Futurism: Ecology, Agriculture and World Literature – In this module students will explore the literary and theoretical stakes of the global struggle for a post-capitalist food system. They will investigate the cultural logic of contemporary global peasant movements and postcolonial and indigenous food sovereignty movements, focussing in particular on their utopian imaginaries. Students are invited to consider the limits of dominant conceptions of modernity, culture and the future by engaging with literatures and theories of plural temporality, agroecology, eco-feminism, and anti-capitalist resistance.
ENGL45130: Creative Nonfiction - This module will provide students with both a historical and critical knowledge of, and a practical training in, creative nonfiction. It will cover the three key forms of the genre—memoir, biography, and the essay—as well as variants and hybrids thereof. Students will read a selection of published creative nonfiction (mostly from the late 20th and 21st centuries), with a view toward writerly craft and technique. Many seminars will include a workshop component, in which students read and critique (in writing and / or in person) each other’s work. The workshop format is designed to give students an understanding of how their work is read and received; they may then incorporate such feedback into their edits.
Formatives include: Draft portfolio
Summatives include: Portfolio
HIST42530: Palaeography - Scribes, Script and History From Antiquity to The Renaissance
The ability to read and transcribe, to date and place, and to analyse and understand the writing, books and documents of past ages, comprehending the circumstances and contexts in which they were produced, is fundamental for all advanced work in the humanities. This broad-ranging course provides training and practice in the skills and methods involved. No prior knowledge or experience is assumed. Knowledge of Latin, while helpful, is not essential; the course also includes writing in the vernacular (above all in English). Almost every session incorporates first-hand examination of medieval and renaissance books and documents from Durham’s rich collections. Normally, there is opportunity to experience the work of a conservation studio in caring for historic books and documents.
Formatives include: Practice in reading and analysis (discussed and evaluated orally)
Summatives include: Long essay
HIST42730: Negotiating Life in Early Modern England - This module will support students in developing an independent command of primary material in the economic, social and local history of early modern England. Students will explore the relationship between archival, printed and material sources such as houses and landscapes. A major theme of the course is the ways in which the settled and registered population that is documented in parish registers, property and inheritance transfers, tax records and the like, relates to people and communities living in England who were not part of the registered population of the realm. These included marginalised poor and mobile groups, some of whom were living in poverty, while others – such as Gypsy bands – chose to live in parallel with settled society. The tutors on this course are experts in the history of early modern England.
Formatives include: Short oral discussion assignments
Summatives include: Two short essays
HIST45730: A Safe Democracy? Constitutionalism, Extremism, and Political Violence in Modern England, C. 1890-1939 –
The Brexit victory in the 2016 referendum was about many things, including, for some, a sense that England was unique. One historically persistent and significant expression of this exceptionalism has been the view that England was a uniquely stable, constitutional, liberal, consensual, practical and successful nation-state, unlike the unstable, strife-torn and dogma-ridden nations of Europe, which sooner or later end in revolution, authoritarianism, and tyranny. This is certainly a comforting view, not least for a cross-party political class; but is it a correct view? The objective of this module is to explore this terrain by clarifying its conceptual bases, examining both published and manuscript primary sources, and engaging closely with problems of historiography. This module explores this question, examining the political currents that shaped England during the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century.
Formatives include: Oral presentation and primary source commentary
HIST46330: The Nature of History: Approaches to Environmental History -
Environmental history is one of the fastest-growing subfields of the historical profession. Rising interest in the mutually constitutive relationship between humans and the environment has spurred new approaches to historical research. The objective of this module is to provide a thorough introduction to environmental history from a global perspective. It will examine the development of environmental history and explore some key debates within the field. As a team-taught course, individual seminars will be taught be a variety of regional specialists working on a wide range of historical periods.
Summatives include: One long essay and one short essay
HIST46730: The City in History -
It is projected that by the middle of the twenty-first century, two thirds of humans will be city dwellers. Yet the dramatic urbanisation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is only the latest wave in a long-term process. Cities have centres of innovation and change for thousands of years; human history is a story of the growth of the city. This module will ask what it means to think of the city as an object of historical study, tracing the contours of urban history from ancient through medieval to modern times. We will explore how city-building gave shape to imperial power and how urban segregation inflected the creation of racial ideologies and religious practices. Some weeks will take particular cities as case studies, while others will adopt a wide, thematic lens. This is a team-taught module led by specialists from a range of historical subfields who will introduce students to a range of approaches to understanding the city and urban life.
MELA45630: Visual Modernities – In this module students will explore how cultures around the globe have used visual mediums to imagine themselves as ‘modern’, and how avant-garde and modernist ways of seeing help construct social realities in modernity. The module studies particular forms of representation in a variety of colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial cultural contexts, including Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Levant, Southeastern Europe, and the Jewish diaspora.
Formatives include: Individual Presentations, student-led group discussion
MELA46130: Selected Topics of World Literature – This module will use selections from different literatures from around the world, to interrogate the concept of “World Literature”. The module is organised around themes that recur in different literatures and traditions as they speak to the experience of living in the (modern) world. Texts will be read in translation, but students will be encouraged to engage with texts in their original language if they are able to do so. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following: postcolonialism; translation; migration; gender; authoritarianism; futurism. The module will use a variety of texts to ask what it means to be write literature in the world and if that is the same as writing World Literature.
Formatives include: Presentations, student-led group discussion
MELA46230: Science, Technology and the Remaking of Nature - This module will analyse how the arts - and culture more broadly - have engaged with technological invention and scientific discovery, taking inspiration from their promise while also criticising their amenability to ideological exploitation. A combination of topics taken from across the globe and over the course of history will enable students to explore debates about the relationship between nature, culture and technology. An indicative range of topics and periods for consideration will include scientific revolutions; the Enlightenment and colonial science; evolution and the rise of industrial capitalism; the porous borders between science, technology and fiction; the Anthropocene, citizen science and technological life.
Formatives include: None
MELA45230: Critical Curatorship - This module involves a series of workshops with academics and practitioners, and an extended work placement. The workshops will offer critical engagement with key theoretical texts in the field of museum studies and critical curatorship, drawing on work by Hooper-Greenhill, Obrist, MacDonald, Weibel and others. Students will foster an understanding of the museum and gallery environment and of how to interrogate and handle a range of museum objects. The placement element of the module will provide valuable work experience in a museum or gallery.
Formatives include: Informal placement feedback, short podcast style presentation
Summatives include: Reflective Report
MELA47830: World Drama: Themes and Trends – This module approaches world drama through a focus on specific playwrights and theatre movements that are structured around specific themes such as bodies and subjects, borders and migration, land and ecology, translation, justice and rights, colonial and postcolonial histories, illness and disability, science and technology.
The module offers a chronologically and generically diverse range of dramatic texts from the modern and pre-modern period which will be read in translation but with the option of engaging with the texts in their original language.
Formatives include: Presentations, student-led discussions
MUSI42330: Audiovisual Media Creation for Research - This module will discuss and demonstrate advanced techniques of capturing and editing audio and video and teach how to produce high quality digital audio and video. In addition to developing technical skills, students will explore structure and narrative in video production and develop understanding of the use of digital audio and video for documentation, analysis and creative work in a research context. Students will acquire theoretical background, comprising elements of visual anthropology and visual arts, and will be expected to reflect critically on their work.
Formatives include: Short audio and video recordings, project proposal, short edited audiovisual project
Summatives include: Independent audiovisual project, commentary and technical appendix
PHIL42730: Current Issues in Metaphysics – The module introduces students to central issues within current metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and the interrelations between mind, language and metaphysics. Seminars will be focused around a specific text and indicative topics may include; identity and persistence; metaphysics of science; space and time; emotion; perception; self-consciousness.
Formatives: Short Essay Summatives: Long Essay
PHIL40830: Current Issues in Ethics - This module will address a range of topics within metaphysics that have been the focus of recent attention. Topics may include (among others): consequentialism and deontology, rationality, the idea of virtue, ethics and emotion: love, ethics and emotion: death, the idea of evil (with reference to the Holocaust).
Students will gain the knowledge and skills required to pursue self-directed research on a specific topic under the direction of a member of staff.
Formatives may include: Short Essay(s)
Summatives may include: Essay(s)
PHIL41130: Current Issues in Aesthetics and Theory of Art – This module will provide students with an overview of recent work in philosophical aesthetics in its relation to artistic criticism and art history, discussing what is meant by the terms 'aesthetics' and 'theory of art'. Questions and debates central to the field of philosophical aesthetics will be addressed, including but not limited to the following topics: art and nature, Kantian aesthetics, criticism and taste, adorno and modernism, art and emotion.
PHIL42130: Current Issues in Environmental Philosophy - This module seeks to address some of the pertinent philosophical questions raised by environmental issues. This includes but is not limited to the following topics: our moral duties to non-human sentient beings, biocentrism, the preservation of endangered species, moral duties to ecosystems, ecologism and political ideology, the idea of wilderness, phenomenology and environmental philosophy, naturalness, epistemic and moral issues surrounding anthropogenic climate change.
PHIL42630: Knowledge, Power, and Health - The topics covered in this module may develop in response to events in both the world and the literature, and will include well-developed literatures such as the essentials of philosophy of medicine, epidemiology and public health, the literature on social determinants of health, as well as issues coming to prominence more recently such as the epistemology and politics of expertise, race and medicine, the ethics, epidemiology and ontology of intercultural medical disagreement, and the decolonisation of public health.
Formatives may include: Formative feedback during seminar engagement
Summatives may include: Two short essays and one public-facing project
THEO43830: Ecclesiology and Ethnography – In this module epistemological issues that arise in work that combines theological and qualitative empirical methods will be explored. The theological dimension in research design, data analysis and methodology will be discussed. Students will be introduced to the prevailing methodological frameworks in Practical Theology and issues of normativity and judgment in theology will be explored in relation to qualitative methods.
THEO46030: Conceiving Change in Contemporary Catholicism (Distance Learning) - In this module we will explore the ecclesial and theological dynamics of conceiving change in the Catholic Church through an in-depth examination of the concept of catholicity, approaches to understanding the development of tradition, and the potential for receptive Catholic learning in relation to key sites of stress within the Catholic ecclesial system. Texts for study and discussion are generally drawn from 20th -21st century Catholic teaching and theology, although key 19th century texts are also examined (e.g. Möhler and Newman).
Formatives may include: Recorded Presentation with supporting essay
THEO46130: Twentieth Century Catholic Theology (Distance Learning) - This online module will combine an exploration of the breadth and range of 20th century Catholic theology with a deep engagement with its two most challenging and influential thinkers, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Students will be enabled to read deeply in Rahner and Balthasar and reflect on the different theological style and ecclesial orientations of their ouevres. Student will encounter a range of other important figures and theological movements and will have a chance both to explore these and to reflect on their relationships to the differing theological visions of Rahner and Balthasar.
THEO46230: Catholic Social Thought and Practice (Distance Learning) - The end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a significant new tradition of Catholic papal teaching: the social encyclical. This module attempts to map the emergence of key themes, trajectories of thought, principles and propositions within the broad CST field. It explores the encyclicals chronologically and thematically. It relates the development of theory to praxis and reads the tradition critically. In addition to the popes, students will encounter the work of Joseph Pieper, Simone Weil, Gustavo Gutierrez, Dorothy Day, Charles Taylor, Ivan Illich, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, John Courtney Murray amongst others.
THEO46330: The Theology of Thomas Aquinas: Selected Topics (Distance Learning) - This module will offer an in-depth exposition of key aspects of Aquinas’s theology, such as, for instance, how Aquinas conceives of Sacra Doctrina and its relation to philosophy; the divine attributes and the Trinitarian understanding of God; theory of analogy; creation; the human person as made in the image of God; the Christian life of virtue; salvation in Christ; the active and contemplative lives; sanctification. It will also consider the sources, influence and legacy of Aquinas’s theology.
Summatives may include: Oral Presentation, Essay(s)
THEO46430: Faith and Reason (Distance Learning) - This module examines the ways in which Christian tradition has conceived the relationship between ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ and concomitantly theology and philosophy. Diverse ways of framing the question of the relationship between reason and faith, philosophy and theology, will be presented chronologically through engagement with a series of primary texts taken from key thinkers in the Christian tradition. This module will typically include texts from antique, medieval, early modern and modern periods in Christian thought, and will be framed by contemporary approaches.
THEO46530: Trinity, Incarnation, and Creation: High Medieval Franciscan Theology (Distance Learning) - This module will offer an in-depth exposition of the key contributions to Christian doctrine made by the leading Franciscan thinkers of the 13th and 14th centuries. Through engagement with the relevant primary sources, it will familiarize students with the highly innovative theological and philosophical contributions made by the early Franciscan masters. The areas of doctrine studied will include areas such as: Trinitarian theology, the Incarnation, the doctrine of creation, human nature and cognition, the relationship between faith and reason, and the purpose and nature of theological enquiry.
Formative: Short essay
Summative: Long essay
THEO55130: Literature and Religion – This module explores the work of a range of influential writers from a theological and critical perspective. Novels, historical literary texts, poetry and song will be explored, examining the ways in which Christian thought has shaped Western literature. Students will develop mature literary judgement and critical ability to relate theological insight to literary texts.
Formatives may include: Essay(s)
MELA41730 Specialised Translation Chinese <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Chinese into English and from English into Chinese. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Chinese and English.
Formatives include: In class oral feedback and discussion
Summatives include: Translation commentary, Translation text Target Language --> English, Translation text English --> Target Language, Timed translation
MELA45830 Specialised Translation Arabic <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Arabic into English and from English into Arabic. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Arabic and English.
MELA42130 Specialised Translation Russian <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Russian into English and from English into Russian. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Russian and English.
MELA41930 Specialised Translation German <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from German into English and from English into German. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between German and English.
MELA42030 Specialised Translation Italian <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Italian into English and from English into Italian. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Italian and English.
MELA43930 Specialised Translation Japanese <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Japanese into English and from English into Japanese. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Japanese and English.
MELA42230 Specialised Translation Spanish <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from Spanish into English and from English into Spanish. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between Spanish and English.
MELA41830 Specialised Translation French <> English - This module aims to provide students with a solid grounding and training in translating from French into English and from English into French. It provides intensive practice in both directions of translation. Students will receive a dossier of texts for translation, with the classes being designed to provide translation practice over a range of text-types and genres. The texts will be drawn from a range of relevant subject areas. Through abundant examples, the module focuses on crucial aspects of translation and contrastive stylistics between French and English.
MELA47730: Translation Practica - The aim of this module is to introduce students to modern translation practices which are used in the present-day translation industry and as part of intercultural projects. It will feature practices in a variety of interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic types of transfer, such as gist translation, translation-compilation, localisation, transcreation, pre- and post-editing for machine translation, editing, precis writing, plain language, terminology management, and cultural consultation. Students will gain skills of various operations with source texts going beyond full-text interlingual translation.
Formatives include: In class presentations, student led group discussions, prepared assignments
MELA47530: Subtitling Theory and Practice - This module is designed to prepare students for work in the fast-growing Audio-Visual Translation (AVT) sector of the language industries. It develops students’ understanding of the semiotic features of subtitling, and of the linguistic and technical constraints and challenges of subtitling. It also provides hands-on training with audiovisual material taken from various sources (e.g., films, documentaries), aiming to enhance students’ technological competence and skills in using professional subtitling tools to do spotting and to produce accurate, relevant, and reader-friendly subtitles in a broad range of genres.
Formatives include: Oral feedback on coursework during seminars
Summatives include: Practical test – (subtitle spotting and translation), Reflective commentary on practical test
MELA47630: Translation Ethics and Intercultural Project Management with Work Placement - This module provides grounding in the international regulations that govern the translation profession. The module focuses on several essential issues which contemporary professional translators need to deal with. The integrated and focused plan of the course provides students with a coherent and accessible way to discern and manage the legal and ethical issues within the profession. This module also provides the opportunity to learn via a work placement, either in the UK or abroad, in agreement with the University regulations, acquiring skills from practitioners in a professional environment. As well as introducing project management methods and practices.
Formatives include: Student presentations, Feedback on report plans and placement experiences
Summatives include: One short essay, one placement report
This module will explore a selection of the various literatures in English written in response to slavery and the subsequent black diaspora. The texts will be examined, mainly prose but including some poetry, span over two hundred years, ranging from early slave narratives to contemporary fiction which addresses a past involving slavery. Particular emphasis will rest on literature emergent from North America, but a significant proportion of Caribbean and British writing will also be integral, in part as a reflection of the transatlantic nature of the slave trade and the interactions ensuing from it. The work of black and white authors will be placed side by side to facilitate debate about representation and histories of oppression. Preoccupations with memory and themes of haunting, trauma and resistance are shared by many of the texts that will be under consideration.
Formatives: 1:1 Essay ConsultationSummatives: Two Essays
Sports, from their earlier manifestations in late medieval and early modern Europe to their current role in occupying much of the leisure time of the populations of an increasingly globalized world, are an exceptionally rich subject of historical investigation. The history of sport allows students to focus on a wide variety of topics. These range from the educational, moral, religious and political discourses that have surrounded sport, to the history of the body, of bodily practices and individual sports, to sport’s role in mirroring and shaping narratives of class, gender, ethnicity, ideology, nation, empire, trans- and internationalism. Special attention will be dedicated throughout to sport’s semi-autonomous status between following its own rules and functioning as a sub-system of society.
Formatives: Oral presentation and CommentarySummatives: Long Essay
By the end of the module, students will be familiar with the entirety of Cicero’s philosophica (in translation), as well as current debates in the recent renaissance of scholarship in this field; likewise, students will gain a deeper appreciation of the relationship between Roman and Greek literature, as well as gain insight into the process and difficulties of translation by analysing a Latin speaker grappling with how to introduce Greek terms to a Roman audience. Students with backgrounds in either the history of Greco-Roman philosophy or the history of Latin literature are welcome; given Cicero’s essential value as a source for Republican history, students interested in Roman history will also profit from taking this course.
This module takes Tony Bennett’s concept of ‘the exhibitionary complex’ as the starting point for considering the development of museums over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries – and up to the present day, as museums confront their colonial and imperial roots. The module will equip students with an understanding of museum and collecting history as well as key literature in museum studies. Although British and continental European museums are one focus, the module views museums through a global lens. It considers how colonial and imperial ways of collecting, curating, and visiting museums have shaped the imagination of peoples, places, and pasts, and how that relationship informs contemporary debates around repatriation and decolonisation.Formatives: Oral presentationSummatives: Long Essay
This module explores the significance of the Partition of India as a defining political and socio-cultural event in South Asian history. We will examine, through an interdisciplinary lens, how a range of works in different genres address the trauma of Partition and problematize the idea of ‘official history’. We will analyse the ways in which the works under discussion shed light on the experiences of women at the time of Partition and compel us to confront the various kinds of gendered violence that marked not only the months leading up to Partition in August 1947 but also the years that followed. Finally, we will explore how Partition and the politics underpinning it continue to inform the cultural and literary landscape of the region and reflect on the poetics of Partition literature in the light of relevant postcolonial scholarship.
This module investigates spheres of the political and political protagonists in early modern South Asia. Building on recent advances in the field of political culture in the subcontinent we will study the sources of power that ambitious people needed to tap into to formulate, build and consolidate political rule, to challenge it and to overthrow it. From warrior gangs to warrior queens, former slaves to imperial princes, renegades and rebels to prophets and saints, we will study what constituted political power in early modern South Asia and how it changed, who was able to articulate it and how. A particular focus will be on the transregional histories of political power and traditions that connected the subcontinent with western and Central Asia as well as the Red Sea region. Global and locally sensitive approaches to history will complement each other to gain a multi-layered insight into the historical trajectory of political formations of the period.
Formatives: Oral and written work in preparation for and during seminarsSummatives: Long Essay
This module investigates spheres of the political and political protagonists in early modern South Asia. Building on recent advances in the field of political culture in the subcontinent we will study the sources of power that ambitious people needed to tap into to formulate, build and consolidate political rule, to challenge it and to overthrow it. From warrior gangs to warrior queens, former slaves to imperial princes, renegades and rebels to prophets and saints, we will study what constituted political power in early modern South Asia and how it changed, who was able to articulate it and how. A particular focus will be on the transregional histories of political power and traditions that connected the subcontinent with western and Central Asia as well as the Red Sea region.
This module introduces students to historical and contemporary research in the Post-Kantian tradition and to critically engage with the distinctive and exciting ideas and methods of a range of Post-Kantian philosophers and philosophical topics. The first seminar will provide students with an overview of Post-Kantian philosophy and its relation to other relevant philosophical methods. Following this, topics, questions and debates that are central to the field will be outlined. Indicative topics will include Hermeneutics; Post-Structuralism; Pragmatism and German, British and American idealism.
Formatives: Short EssaySummatives: Long Essay
This module aims to develop the critical and theoretical frameworks necessary to evaluate games in terms of their aesthetic, narrative, political, social, structural, ludic etc. qualities. Most weeks students will study a game or games from a theoretical perspective that resonates with a recognisable (but contested) critical keyword. Examples include ‘Utopia’, ‘History’, ‘Nature’, ‘The Posthuman’. Games will be paired with relevant secondary reading or primary source material (literary, visual, historical etc.) as a prompt for discussion. Students will also be encouraged to bring their existing cultural, theoretical, and subject-specific capital to bear, and to start with ‘where they play from’ in the interpretation of these topics and their associated games.
Formatives: 15-minute consultation & feedback session.Summatives: Mood board & Proposal
This module offers a focused overview of transnational cinema with a non-exclusive emphasis on the recent cinemas of the Global South. Firmly grounded on a solid practical understanding of film and visual culture analysis, this module provides a focused overview of the theories, debates and interpretive tools that constitute transnational cinema as an influential approach to the study of cinema beyond the English-speaking world. The module demonstrates the importance of studying, analysing and interpreting the varieties and genres of global cinema through an emphasis on different geo-linguistic areas and contexts. Case studies will rely on local genealogies and historically relevant detail and we will also explore aspects of local, regional and hemispheric filmmaking that both transcend and imply national, transnational and global phenomena.
Formatives: Individual student presentations; short film analysis, commentary or review.Summatives: Long Essay
This module will provide an overview of the major issues in the history and philosophy of medicine and health, covering themes such as: the nature of health; the goals of medicine; population and individual; kinds of evidence, value theory in medicine and health; and epistemic injustice in medicine. Ethical issues in the history of medicine and biomedical research, including themes such as medical confidentiality, informed consent, animal experimentation, and human trials will be discussed. We will also consider the social history and philosophy of medicine and health research, including topics such as race, class, gender, and health inequalities.
This module aims to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of the scope and tasks of Christian theology by means of an advanced study of 'nature’ in theological perspective.
We will look at various topics including; the relationship between ‘theology’ and ‘ecology’ as disciplines; the history of ‘nature’ in the Western tradition; theological analysis of contemporary environmental and ecological debates; theological ethics of the environment and nonhuman life; the relationship between nature and 'the sacred'; the place of human beings in the natural world and the so-called 'wilderness debates' and 'the end of nature'.
Formatives: EssaySummatives: Essay
This module engages with one of the most pervasive forms of literature from the ancient world: the novel. Storytelling is one of the most fundamental forms of human communication. From the late Hellenistic Period and culminating in the first century CE, Greek and Roman authors introduced a form of stories typically classified today as the ancient novel. These novels gradually came to repeat similar themes and patterns so as to be identifiable as a distinct genre. In time, Jewish and Christian writers borrowed the schematics of the Greco-Roman novel and added their own religious designs. The result was a long, complex development from the Greco-Roman novel to Jewish novels, to Christian Acta, and, finally, Christian hagiography. This module is designed for students interested in the literary, artistic, and religious developments of the Hellenistic through late antique periods, as well as for students who enjoy reading good stories.
Formatives: Normally an outline or draft of the summative
This module provides an advanced introduction to the theme of war and religious experience in the modern history of Western Christianity. We will explore the development of different religious traditions under the impact of armed conflict and examine the relationship between faith and meaning making at moments of crisis. We will study selected historical case studies of the encounter between Christianity and war, both individually and in comparison with one another.
This module will help students to explore the application of academic research for societal improvement. Diverse modes of policy engagement will be examined and evaluated in terms of their audience, reach and impact including written submissions of evidence to public consultations, select committee inquiries, expert witness oral testimonies and policy fellowships to name just four.
Students will consider what makes a successful academic-policy partnership and will analyse the extent to which those Humanities academics working with policy partners are motivated to do so for personal, professional or civic reasons. Students will engage directly with an area of policy interest and will investigate ways in which their own research, and that of others across the university, can inform policy thinking in real time. They will take ownership for this project and will liaise directly with relevant external organisations, extending their professional network.
Summatives: Written or oral presentation and independent project
What is culture? What is translation? How does culture travel across space and time? We will explore concepts and case studies from the perspective of cultural materialism and the new philologies and migratory texts through the lens of reception theory, cultural materialism and migratory aesthetics. Case studies are likely to include: keywords of culture and society and the inter-medial space they occupy between literature, society and art; canonical as well as non-canonical texts and their travels across cultures and time; iconic and less familiar images, their prehistories, afterlives and legacy across cultures. There will be a strong transhistorical element with cultures of the global past engaging in fruitful dialogue with cultures of the present. At least one case study will involve practitioners reflecting on and theorizing their own exercises in cross-cultural translation or adaptation.
Formatives: Student-led group discussion and presentations including commentarySummatives: Essay and Project
This module will consider one of the most consequential if understudied periods in Christian history. Beginning with the immediate legacies of the Apostles, this module will chart a history of early Christianity through the second and third centuries until the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. This module will explore how this nascent faith grew from a handful of Jewish believers into something that could count even the emperor himself as a convert. As we chart a path through this turbulent and fascinating history, we will give over much of our time to key theological developments that shaped early Christian thought in this period, including the doctrines of Christ and the church, as well as intra-Christian competition and debates.
Global gender history encompasses—among other things— women’s histories, queer histories, and histories of masculinities. The global lens on gender enables historians to better understand the interplay of local, regional, and planetary processes at work. Global gender histories are concerned with the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, (dis)abilities and draw on interdisciplinary methodologies, to explain how people and publics have experienced, enforced and transformed gender. As a team-taught module, individual seminars will be taught by a variety of regional specialists working on a wide range of historical periods, broadly focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While topics will range from medicine and economics to performance and law, the seminars will each attend to gender’s historical relations to archives, power, and publics. They will also encourage students to develop their own areas of expertise.
Formatives: NoneSummatives: Long Essay
This module explores representations of mental distress across different cultural contexts and creative modes of expression in often under-studied contemporary literary and visual material from the 21st century. Students will explore the multiple modes of representing and relating to ‘madness’ that are historically-rooted and culturally-salient. The question of what madness and mental health is, and how we can or should respond to those experiences, is of great public and popular significance. This module will not only appeal to students’ intellectual interests, but will also be relevant to them in a wide range of possible future careers, from journalism to teaching, from literary editing to third sector work.
Formative: 500-word essay/creative portfolio proposalSummatives: Presentation and an essay or creative portfolio
PHIL42930: Science, Technology and Society - The module aims to explore conceptual issues arising in science, technology and society such that, by the end of the module, students will have obtained skills in understanding and interpreting philosophical theories and arguments concerning science, technology, and society in contemporary and historical perspective. We will cover topics in the philosophy of science, technology, and society, including themes such as scientific evidence, explanation, method, revolutions, artificial intelligence, science communication, and truth. Topics in the history of science, technology, and society, including themes such as scientific revolutions, Darwinism, science and religion, and the continental drift controversy will also be considered.
This module will take as its starting point the recognition of there being significant areas of stress and strain within contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesiology and practice. Most pertinent from amongst many other possible issues are those relating to the exercise of authority and magisterium, the relationship between Roman primacy and the episcopacy/local churches, the relationship between institutional identity and integrity and the fact of significant internal plurality and cultural and contextual diversity, the relationship between lay and ordained, the question of married priesthood and, likewise, of ordained female ministry. Set in this perspective the integrating concern of the module is to examine, project and test how Catholicism might appropriately negotiate such issues both with responsible integrity and with receptive, expansive, creative imagination.
Formatives: Essay Summatives: Essay
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