Description

Undergraduate

Module Content

Today, over half the world’s population lives in cities. By 2050, this is expected to be two-thirds. The...

This course has two intertwined themes: the ways in which people made sense of the world in one of history&#039;s first urban societies; and the ways in which...

Understanding the Early Mesopotamian World (HIST0021)

This course has two intertwined themes: the ways in which people made sense of the world in one of history's first urban societies; and the ways in which that society has been interpreted since its rediscovery some 200 years ago.

We will study how literacy and numeracy developed in the cities of southern Iraq (Mesopotamia), some 5–6000 years ago, then focus on urbanism and kingship, as well as the training of scribes, scholars and intellectuals in the third and early second millennium BC. Next we turn to understandings of the body and the high social status of doctors and healers, despite their apparent ineffectiveness. Finally, we investigate how divine will was discovered and interpreted, through observation of the natural world.

In parallel, we will consider how big themes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, such as exploration and war, empire and race, religion and science, shaped and reshaped popular and learned views of the ancient Middle East, and continue to do so today.

This module examines the European tradition of political thought from the fifteenth century until the twentieth century through close study of significant...

The History of European Political Ideas (SESS0027)

This module examines the European tradition of political thought from the fifteenth century until the twentieth century through close study of significant works by key thinkers. This means looking at: the contractarian tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau; the enlightenment thinker, Kant; ‘ambivalent modernists’ such as proto-sociologist, Montesquieu, and the champion of liberty, J.S. Mill; political realists like Renaissance thinker, Machiavelli, and the Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt; Hannah Arendt whose thought tries to revive the promise of the polis in modern times; and the genealogist of morals, Nietzsche.

The module's approach is both contextualizing and analytical. That is to say, it sees the ideas of these thinkers in the context of the times in which they lived and wrote, but it also encourages students to think analytically about key concepts in political philosophy and political science such as sovereignty, obligation, freedom, equality, change, morality and progress. Learning happens through a combination of lectures and seminars.