Courses / Module

We are living in a world where the key discourses which have dominated our understanding of politics, economics and culture at large feel inadequate to the task of addressing the urgent and multiple crises consuming our world. This module will continue our consideration of the significant role that books have played, both in the past and in the present, in reproducing and analysing cultural values and ideologies, but also in articulating responses and resistance to those. Through the prism of a range of books students will explore the impact of writing in a range of areas, such as economic and social conditions, power structures, individual desire, sexuality, gender, the unconscious, art, literature, science, and philosophy. The module’s themes will vary from year to year and include issues such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, migration and ecology. Books will be selected on the basis that they influence, directly or indirectly, the assumptions and contexts of the world in which we live. The module emphasises the study of primary texts in their original contexts and the history of their subsequent transmission and reception.