BSc (Hons) Politics

ANT5008MX
Brave New Worlds: Ethnography of/on Online and Digital Worlds 20 credits

This module teaches students how to use ethnographic methods to make sense of the internet, which we now increasingly inhabit. Students learn how to navigate and analyse platforms such as Facebook or TikTok. They study how these technologies transform our relationships, identities, and ideas of truth. The module also examines the socio-cultural and ethical aspects of digital worlds (e.g. Second life).

ANT6008MX
Coastal Cultures: Marine Anthropology in the age of climate change and mass extinction. 20 credits

Using ethnography, we analyse how coastal communities use the sea – not only as a source of livelihood, but as a key ingredient in the construction of their identity and place in world. Drawing on a range of cases from across the world – from Polynesian sorcerers, to Japanese whale mourners, to Cornish surfers – we study how coastal communities are responding to climate change, sea level rise, pollution, and extinction.

ARH5002MX
Imagery in Online and Offline Worlds: Film, Television and Video Games 20 credits

This module provides students with a comprehensive understanding of current approaches towards mass media and visual culture. Particular emphasis will be put on medium-specificity, content analysis and audience studies.

ARH6002MX
Questions in Contemporary Art 20 credits

The module introduces and examines selected questions raised in the last three decades in contemporary art. Case studies drawn from art history, critical and cultural theory, and where appropriate related disciplines, will be examined.

ENG5010MX
Writing Creative Nonfiction: Autobiography, Travel Writing, Reportage 20 credits

This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in contemporary works of creative nonfiction, or 'life writing'. Included in our readings will be works of memoir and autobiography, travel writing, personal essays and reportage. The module is entirely taught in workshops where we experiment with producing our own works of creative nonfiction and learning to refine them, as well as critically evaluate and contextualise them.

ENG6008MX
Features Journalism Workshop 20 credits

This module offers students an in-depth experience of professional writing. We will explore technique in features and literary journalism; music reviews, opinion columns and longer immersion features as well as other contemporary works of non-fiction feature writing, both short- and long-form, from sub-genres including profiles and interviews, autobiography and columns, travel writing, and reportage. We will learn to research and produce our own works of professional nonfiction and critically evaluate them.

ENG5002MX
Gothic Fictions: Villains, Virgins and Vampires 20 credits

This module looks at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels to trace the variety and scope of literary contributions to the Gothic. It begins by discussing the origins of the Gothic novel, then moves to the heyday of the genre in the revolutionary 1790s, on to authors writing in the early and mid-nineteenth century, through to the decadence of the 1890s.

ENG6005MX
American Crime Writing 20 credits

This module considers the development of twentieth-century American crime fiction from hard-boiled detectives, to myths of the mafia, and postmodern reinventions of the genre. This module will explore the cultural contexts of American crime writing, prevailing conventions of the genre, as well as challenges to those conventions.

HIS5009MX
Middle Kingdoms: Themes in Early Modern Asia 20 credits

This module introduces the history of early modern Japan (c.16th-19th centuries). At one level, it explores key questions shaping the histories of the late Sengoku (‘Warring States’) and Tokugawa Japan. Building on these questions, it then situates the Japanese experience in a trans-regional perspective with reference to early modern China, Korea, Ryukyu, as well as Europe.

HIS5014MX
Dunkirk to D Day: The Second World War in Europe 20 credits

The module examines the Second World War in Europe and the Atlantic Ocean from 1940 to late 1944.

HIS6002MX
Piracy and Privateering, c.1560-1816 20 credits

This module explores piracy and privateering activity in the seas around the British Isles and further afield from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the end of the second Barbary War in 1816. This course focuses on the social history of piracy and privateering, the organisation of pirate society, and the economic impact of piracy and privateering.

HIS6006MX
America, the United Nations and International Relations 1945 to the present 20 credits

This module provides a detailed examination of the relationship between the United States of America and the United Nations in the management of international relations from 1945 to the present.

CRM5009MX
Crime, Harm and Culture 20 credits

The module aims to provide students with a critical appreciation of harm and crime by exploring relevant issues from film, television, music, fiction literature and art. By applying a criminological lens to different forms of popular culture, students will be able to examine a variety of media forms in terms of its content and its contemporary political, social and economic context using different theories and concepts.

CRM6016MX
Green Criminology: Climate Justice and the Planetary Crisis

This module will address theoretical perspectives, methodological issues, and empirical research related to the field of green criminology, including applied concerns, such as policy and social/political praxis, through a range of concepts, topics, and themes that are central to green criminology.

PIR6009MX
Mao to Now: the Politics of Modern China

This module introduces students to politics in China. It provides them with the analytical skills and historical understanding to examine the structure of the contemporary Chinese state, looking in particular at Maoist legacies, nationalism and ideology, the relationships between party, law, state and market, and China’s involvement in international affairs.

PIR6007MX
Global Environmental Politics 20 credits

This module examines the problem of environmental degradation and its implications for our global political economy. It discusses the major debates in political thought around the primary causes of environmental degradation. The module outlines the major attempts to build international regimes for global environmental governance, and the difficulties and obstacles that such attempts have encountered. A range of ideas, critiques, policy proposals, innovations in governance, and templates for political activism within the environmental movement are critically evaluated.

PIR5009MX
Refugee Studies 20 credits

This module focuses on the political, economic and social context of forced migration and considers the complex and varied nature of global refugee populations. It analyses responses at international, national and regional level and engages with a range of challenging questions around international co-operation, the framework of international protection, humanitarianism and the causes of displacement.

SOC5005MX
Globalisation and Social Justice 20 credits

This module investigates the key debates of globalisation and critically evaluates, in terms of its economic, political, socio-cultural and legal dimensions, the causes and consequences of a globalising world. It furthermore explores a range of international social justice issues to examine the relationships (causative and ameliorative) between policies and (in)justice

SOC6004MX
Health, Medical Power and Social Justice 20 credits

This module considers a range of issues concerning health, illness and medical power in contemporary society. The module seeks to develop an understanding of the impact of ‘medicalisation’ on everyday life, as well as the importance of social divisions, such as age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. There will be a focus on a range of sociological perspectives on health with an opportunity to focus upon areas of particular interest.

LAW5009MX
Environmental Law 20 credits

The module provides an examination of key themes in environmental law, with a focus on the generation, application and enforcement of this law within a critical and applied context.

LAW5011MX
Intellectual Property Law

This module focuses on the law and concepts of intellectual property, examining in addition related legal themes of information access, dissemination and control.

LAW6018MX
Law, Literature and the Screen

To introduce students to fictional and factional representations of the legal order in prose, film and TV, and to examine the inter-connections between law, literature and the screen.

LAW6012MX
Public International Law 20 credits

A module that focuses on the primary legal principles of the public international legal order, before exploring a range of substantive areas, such as, for example, the use of force, the law regulating the conduct of war, International Human Rights, International Criminal Law and International Environmental Law.

CRM6011MX
Security Management 20 credits

This module provides students with a critical insight into the professional domain of security management. It provides an overview of the theories, policies, procedures and practices that underpin the work of the security manager, and focuses upon a career-relevant knowledge and understanding of this significant area of expertise.

CRM5003MX
Harm in the 21st Century 20 credits

This module explores the global challenges of harmful behaviours and activities in contemporary society by considering specific areas of concern for criminologists. By drawing on real-world examples in everyday life, the module examines how social problems and issues have arisen due to processes of globalisation that have changed the social, political and economic landscape of the 21st century.

CRM5009MX
Crime, Harm and Culture 20 credits

The module aims to provide students with a critical appreciation of harm and crime by exploring relevant issues from film, television, music, fiction literature and art. By applying a criminological lens to different forms of popular culture, students will be able to examine a variety of media forms in terms of its content and its contemporary political, social and economic context using different theories and concepts.