This aim of this module is to introduce students to contemporary electoral and party politics in democracies worldwide with a particular emphasis on the...

Parties and Elections in a Global Perspective (SESS0052)

This aim of this module is to introduce students to contemporary electoral and party politics in democracies worldwide with a particular emphasis on the comparison of Central and Eastern Europe to long-standing democracies and other newer democracies worldwide. The main focus is on the changing nature of political parties and electoral competition and its implications on democracy and political stability.

In the first six weeks, we discuss key topics for understanding the contemporary and changing role of political parties and elections including issue spaces, party system change, the relationship between electoral and party systems and patterns of party organisation. Introductory lectures are complemented by in-class group exercises and Q&A sessions on the progress of group projects (formative assessment). In the final weeks, groups of students will present their projects connecting the review of significant contemporary research with country case studies.

The objective of the module is both to familiarise students with the state-of-the art research on electoral and party politics but also to hone their skills of group work, presentation and knowledge transfer (part of the assessed election report).

This module introduces students to the multiplicity of representations of Polish Jewry in Polish culture and serves as a broad survey to how Jews and Polish...

The Jews in Polish Culture: Beyond Stereotypes (SEES0015)

This module introduces students to the multiplicity of representations of Polish Jewry in Polish culture and serves as a broad survey to how Jews and Polish Jews were perceived over the centuries. As such, it complements modules that focus exclusively on the Holocaust or on the history of European Jewry. The module aims to present Polish Jews within the complexity of Poland’s multi-ethnic past and not as an isolated phenomenon in itself. It focuses on literature written only in the Polish language (both in Poland and abroad) by Polish and Polish-Jewish writers. The module employs not only historical perspectives but also looks at the presence and then the absence of Polish Jewry through such concepts as cultural trauma.  We will analyze various representations of Polish Jewry in  literary works but also in art (paintings) and films that focus on various aspects of Polish-Jewish relationships and interactions, such as the attitude towards “the Poles of the Mosaic faith”, the acceptance of Frankists into the ranks of Polish nobility, the suspicions towards the Jews, the economic antagonism, and anti-Semitism. An essential part of the module focuses on the representations of the Holocaust and WWII in modern Polish literature as well as the revival of interest in Jewishness and Polish Jews in democratic Poland after 1989.