This module takes a global and world-historical view of belief systems and values, in order to illuminate our own contemporary ideas about life and death, justice, and morality, in new ways. We begin with philosophy in Ancient China, before turning to Indian philosophy, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Next we examine Judaism, before examining Christianity and Islam, the other two monotheistic world religions. Throughout we will be comparing and contrasting the moral and metaphysical systems in East and West and, along the way, reflecting on the importance, value and nature of comparative philosophy within an interconnected world. You will develop a sound understanding of the development of religion and philosophy in the Far East, as well of the essential features of Judaic, Christian and Islamic medieval philosophy. Linked workshops will allow for further exploration of ideas and questions concerning the meanings of life, inspired by the main module themes, and will also form the basis for a practical project management assessment which will take place at Level 5. The workshops will also allow us to examine the history of these key ideas through material objects. We will visit local museums to enhance our understanding of the link between beliefs and values and practical everyday life concerns (field trip free of charge). This module emphasizes the development of cultural and intercultural awareness, together with strong communication and presentation skills. Group homework questions and class debates will enhance your capacity for teamwork. The comparative approach will build your capacity to be open, empathic, global citizens and the knowledge base of world philosophies is an advantage for possible future careers in teaching, for example.
View the full module definitionIn this module you will survey the history of English Literature between William Blake and the present day. Mainly using Volume 2 of The Norton Anthology of English Literature you will study period, genre and form through a range of texts including: the novel; the short story; the essay and manifesto; poetry; drama; letters and graphic art.
View the full module definitionThis module provides an introduction to the study of Philosophy at degree level, and encourages you to explore some of the ‘big’ questions: the existence of God; the nature of knowledge; the nature of time; the nature of the self; free will; the mind, and the nature of ethical deliberation. You'll be actively involved in discussing and debating some of the key arguments about these questions through the study of contemporary philosophical work in this area. You'll also develop some key degree-level skills. These skills include: a) learning about the structure and ‘logic’ of argumentation (critical thinking); b) learning about how to engage in independent and reliable research (working in the knowledge economy) and c) learning how to structure and prepare essays and assignments (content curation). There will be corresponding interactive workshops to help structure and develop your skills in these areas. You'll get the opportunity to develop your writing and presentational skills, as well as gaining knowledge and understanding of the foundational issues in contemporary philosophy. This module will help you to become adaptable, flexible and analytical in your thinking, and to strengthen skills in developing creative approaches to problems.
View the full module definitionOn this module you will survey the history of literature in English between the Old English period and the end of the eighteenth century, using volumes A-C of The Norton Anthology of English Literature as your key text. The juxtaposition of pieces by well-known authors (who may include, for example, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton) with less familiar texts is intended to encourage reflection upon what constitutes the ‘canon’ and the discipline of literary study more broadly. At the same time, you will be introduced to an exciting range of social, cultural and political theories that can be used to further the analysis of literary texts. These include psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, feminism, postcolonialism and queer theory. You will put these theories into practice by applying them to the set literary texts during seminars. You will also exercise your theoretical knowledge beyond the classroom, by applying theory to your critical review of a historical artefact in a local museum.
View the full module definitionEntering higher education is exciting; but it can also be a daunting experience. At ARU, we want all our students to make the most of the opportunities higher education provides, reach your potential, become lifelong learners and find fulfilling careers. However, we appreciate that the shift from secondary education, or a return to formal education is, in itself, quite a journey. This module is designed to ease that transition. You'll be enrolled on it as soon as you receive an offer from ARU so you can begin to learn about university life before your course starts. Through Into ARU, you'll explore a virtual land modelled around ARU values: Courage, Innovation, Community, Integrity, Responsibility, and Ambition. This innovative module is designed as a game, where you collect knowledge and complete mini tasks. You'll proceed at your own pace, though we you to have completed your Into ARU exploration by week 6. If for any reason you're unable to complete by that date, we'll signpost to existing services so that we can be confident that you are supported.
View the full module definitionThis module offers complementary approaches to the topic of ethics, one theoretical and one practical. In the theoretical part, we will explore normative and metaethics, including Kant's ethics and utilitarianism. Questions raised will be about the role of the emotions within moral decision-making, and particularly the importance of empathy and compassion for moral awareness. We will also be reflecting on the relationship between religion and morality and whether animals can be said to have moral value or, indeed, be themselves capable of moral behaviour. In the practical part, you will have the opportunity to reflect on the way such theoretical discussions can have real-world application. Topics covered may include animal rights, environmental ethics, or the ethics of body and identity (including topics such as the beginning and end of life, reproductive technologies, or sexualities). Group-work and class debates will also enhance teamworking skills. Presentations will help you development your communication skills, and a peer-led question and answer session after each presentation will help to develop your ability to seek and act on constructive criticism by incorporating the feedback into your written report. The module as a whole will help your development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
View the full module definitionThis module examines ethical issues arising in areas such as healthcare, criminal and international law, and the environment. We'll be debating questions such as: 'Should assisted dying be legalised?', 'What are the arguments for and against abortion?', 'Is a patient's autonomy more important than their welfare?' In the area of law, we'll be debating the justification for criminal punishment, the ethics of war and peace, the philosophy of sex and gender, and whether we have a duty to give to charity, amongst other things. In relation to the environment and non-human world, we will interrogate recent work on animal rights and the politics of animal ethics, including debates about the morality of human intervention to stop predation and the concept of animal citizenship. Through this module you'll develop critical thinking, employability, and problem-solving skills. You'll enhance your teamworking and communication skills through group-work, class debates, and presentations. Peer-led question and answer sessions after each presentation will help to develop your ability to seek and act on constructive criticism. The Live Brief element, co-designed with a professional external partner, will help you evidence the practical application of your learning in a work context.
View the full module definitionOn this module you'll study an exciting period of literary history, the Renaissance, from the different perspectives of cross-cultural encounters and their impact on English imaginative writing of the period. This research-based module gives you the opportunity to explore, in-depth, the early modern literary fascination with travel and other cultures, debates around colonialism, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial ‘other worlds’, theories of creation and knowledge of nature, and relations between humans and animals. You'll explore these issues in weekly seminars, investigating the relationship between the set texts and their literary, cultural and historical contexts, including politics, race, religion, scientific knowledge, gender and the environment. Upon successful completion of the module, you'll have a greater understanding of poetic, prose and dramatic texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well the cultural, historical and literary contexts in which they were written and performed.
View the full module definitionRuskin Modules are designed to prepare our students for a complex, challenging and changing future. These interdisciplinary modules provide the opportunity to further broaden your perspectives, develop your intellectual flexibility and creativity. You will work with others from different disciplines to enable you to reflect critically on the limitations of a single discipline to solve wider societal concerns. You will be supported to create meaningful connections across disciplines to apply new knowledge to tackle complex problems and key challenges. Ruskin Modules are designed to grow your confidence, seek and maximise opportunities to realise your potential to give you a distinctive edge and enhance your success in the workplace.
This module introduces you to the philosophies of the three major figures of the Rationalist movement: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, as well as looking at how those ideas interacted with the less well-known work of women philosophers in the 17th Century (Margaret Cavendish, Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Anne Conway). The module will look at some of the fundamental philosophical questions that arise in the early modern era, and continue to be of relevance today: the nature and scope of human knowledge; the relation between matter and mind; the nature of God; and the possibility of freedom of the will and ethical responsibility in the face of an apparently mechanistic universe. Together with the companion module Kant and The Empiricists, this module will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the key figures and ideas in Early Modern Philosophy, one of the most vibrant and important periods in the history of philosophy, which lays the groundwork for much of the science, philosophy and intellectual thought of today. This module has been designed to further support you in developing skills in understanding and critically analysing complex ideas, clearly presenting those ideas and analyses in both oral discussion and writing, and providing creative solutions to complex problems. The module will allow you to further develop skills of scholarly research and working to a deadline. Introducing the work of women philosophers who are less well-known in traditional philosophical circles will also develop your historical and cultural awareness and broaden the context of debates of this period.
View the full module definitionBuilding on work you have done at Level 4, this Level 5 module examines ways of thinking about the social that are ‘critical’ in that they, in a variety of ways, challenge or decentre taken-for-granted assumptions and structures. In doing so, it will consider the ways in which knowledge of the social world is itself political. The module will show you how social theory can be both challenging and useful. The module is organised around four themes: Bourdieu and beyond: knowledge, culture, and the reproduction of inequalities; Intersectional approaches to social divisions; Humanity 2.0? Self, embodiment, and enhancement; and Reassembling the social: encompassing non-human actors. You'll develop your understanding and confidence of theories through close reading of primary texts. In the latter stages of the module, you'll have opportunities to apply the concepts and approaches we have learnt to real world issues in a series of theory mapping workshops.
View the full module definitionIn this module you will study the development of science fiction as a genre, concentrating on major texts from the postwar period. You are expected to acquire an understanding of the history of science fiction and an awareness of debates around its origins, as well as a critical understanding of the problems of defining it in relation to other forms of literature. The emphasis is on science fiction as a literature of ideas, and you will have the opportunity to explore and compare examples of several key science fiction tropes. These would typically include alien invasion, posthuman identity, utopias and dystopias, alternate history, time travel and post-apocalyptic science fiction. You would also be invited to consider changes in the representation of issues such as race, class and gender in science fiction. The main focus will be on science fiction as a literary form; however there will be opportunities to consider science fiction in other media – film, comics, TV and computer games – as well as engage with aspects of the history of science fiction publishing, such as book cover design and marketing.
View the full module definitionThis module provides training and experience in writing film reviews within a professional context. You'll begin by exploring the nature and purpose of reviewing films, and consider the impact and influence of film reviewers on notions of taste and cultural and social value. You'll then work through the professional practices of the reviewing process. You'll gain experience in writing reviews for a variety of different readerships, across a range of print and digital formats. Seminars are designed to illustrate review philosophies; planning and structuring of reviews; tailoring the review according to a brief; keeping film diaries; and developing a personal writing style. You'll share and develop ideas in small peer groups and will benefit from regular formative feedback from the module tutor. You'll also have the opportunity to review films in a live context, through our links with the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse and Take One magazine. You'll also be encouraged to keep a film diary and to review for the student-led Ruskin Journal.
View the full module definitionIn this module, you will be introduced to various strategies of adaptation and to the afterlives of a range of nineteenth-century literary texts. We will look at sequels and prequels to nineteenth-century novels and will also analyse the move from page to screen, web series, and other forms. The module is likely to cover the afterlives and adaptations of the work of writers including Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Charles Dickens. Throughout, you will develop a comprehensive knowledge of the texts studied in relation to their original context, as well as the context in which they have been adapted.
View the full module definitionIn this module you'll study 20th-century literature. You'll start by examining the literary experiments of Modernism which arose as an artistic response to the social conditions and technological advances of modernity. You'll learn to identify the distinctive features of Modernist writing - subjectivity, the psychological, innovations in form, style and genre – in order to consider their continued creative and critical impact on the literature that followed. You'll consider trends and movements of the later part of the century, including Postmodernism, which refuted “grand narratives” and deployed self-conscious appropriation of a mix of styles in order to challenge epistemic certainty and consider the role of ideology in maintaining power. You'll also consider how the study of literature developed during the 20th-century from the close reading of IA Richards’ Practical Criticism in the 1920s to theories which considered history, society and identity by the end of the century.
View the full module definitionThis module is an introduction to foundational issue in the Philosophy of Mind. We will discuss three key features of the mind – consciousness, rationality and intentionality – and we will try to understand how and whether these features can have a place in the natural world. Is the mind just the final barrier to a scientific understanding of the world, or is it something that will forever remain outside such an understanding? The module has three parts: In the first part you will look at the major contemporary theories about the nature of the mind, including Dualism, Behaviourism, Functionalism, Eliminative Materialism and the Extended Mind Thesis. In the second part you will look specifically at the problem of consciousness – discussing puzzles such as Mary's Room and Philosophical Zombies. In the final part of the course we will look at specific areas of contemporary interest including Perception, Social Cognition, and Animal Cognition. The module is highly interactive, encouraging you to develop a self-generated understanding of the philosophical issues that surround the relation between the mind and the brain. Working together in teams you will a) co-create your own imaginative and creative ‘thought-experiments’ to illustrate key philosophical issues and problems; b) be supported to develop self-managed research, looking at how the philosophical issues relate to empirical and practical evidence within Cognitive Science, Psychology or Medicine; c) explore how the topics discussed might have practical relevance to issues of mental health and mental illnesses.
View the full module definitionThis module will introduce you to the field of contemporary performance theory and practice in relation to Shakespeare. You'll study a range of 20th and 21st century critical and directorial interpretations of plays by Shakespeare in the theatre and on film, exploring issues like power, sexuality, gender, justice, morality, religion and war. You’ll look at how critics, directors and actors generate meanings from Shakespeare's plays, drawing on details from primary texts, secondary criticism and examples of contemporary creative responses to the plays. For your assessment, you'll select a sequence from one of Shakespeare's plays to stage as an ensemble performance, supported by practical workshops. This performance may include interdisciplinary work involving music, song and a variety of performing styles. You'll also attend seminars that will guide the development of your project proposal, and group tutorials to help you set up your group project. In preparation for the ensemble performance, you'll submit a 1,500-word analysis of how your chosen play has been interpreted in contemporary criticism, and examine a range of creative responses to it in the theatre and on film.
View the full module definitionKnowledge of a foreign language can be a major asset both in your academic and professional life. The Anglia Language Programme offers you the opportunity to study a foreign language as part of your course.
You will consider a range of plays from the period 1580 to 1642 in the light of issues of stage spectacle and representation in a variety of forms, including identity, sexuality, violence, and death. You will experience one of the greatest periods of dramatic writing that English literature has known, which has subsequently continued on the English stage under the UK’s great acting companies, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. Primary texts will be taken from Shakespeare and his chief contemporaries, including a changing range of authors chosen from Thomas Kyd, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, John Webster, John Ford, Richard Brome, and James Shirley. You should check the reading list each year to determine specific plays. You will become familiar with relevant theory and criticism of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In seminars you will be attentive to issues of performance, which can include active learning through play-reading and walking through a scene, or in independent learning through attending relevant performances or viewing film adaptations.
View the full module definitionIn this module, you'll explore the concept of ‘evil’ from a cross-disciplinary perspective examining immorality and criminality from theological, philosophical, sociological, political, ethical and psychological perspectives. You'll begin with the theological origins of evil and consider how this influences modern debates about crime and immorality and the connection to free will, whether individuals who commit evil acts lack psychological ‘barriers’ to harming others, and how wider social and political structures can enable or normalize evil, including extremism and violence. You'll also examine society-sanctioned forms of harm such as war and investigate what goes wrong when entire societies fall under the influence of destructive ideologies, as in Nazi Germany, and to question whether some acts challenge traditional ideas of justice, forgiveness, and punishment. Throughout, you will engage with influential thinkers—both classical and contemporary—such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Mary Midgley, Jean Hampton, Susan Neiman, Quassim Cassam, and Raimond Gaita. By the end, you'll have gained insights that help you understand how concepts of evil shape real-world issues and contemporary moral debates.
View the full module definitionThe individual final Major Project module allows you to engage in a substantial piece of individual research, focused on a topic relevant to your specific discipline. Normally the topic will be agreed in consultation with academic staff and an appropriate supervisor will be appointed to supervise you in your chosen topic. The topic may also be drawn from a variety of sources including: Anglia Ruskin research groups, previous or current work experience, the company in which you are currently employed, or a professional subject of specific interest (if suitable supervision is available). The project topic will be assessed for suitability to ensure sufficient academic challenge and satisfactory supervision by an academic member of staff. The chosen topic will require you to identify and formulate problems and issues, conduct literature reviews, evaluate information, investigate and adopt suitable development methodologies, determine solutions, develop software and/or media artefacts as appropriate, process data, critically appraise and present your findings. Regular meetings with the project supervisor and or/group workshops should take place, so that the project is closely monitored and steered in the right direction. The assessment will normally include a substantial written report, including a bibliography, and a Personal Development Plan, including an up-to-date CV. This module involves secondary research only and does not require primary data generation. You will be required to carry out a literature review using publicly available documents. Any use of the internet is limited to searching for publicly available documents only. This module is exempt from the full ethical approval process in accordance with section 6 of the Academic Regulations (aru.ac.uk/academicregs).
View the full module definitionThe individual Dissertation/Major Project module allows you to engage in a substantial piece of individual research and/or product development work, focused on a topic relevant to your specific discipline. The dissertation topic will be assessed for suitability to ensure sufficient academic challenge and satisfactory supervision by an academic member of staff. Your chosen topic will allow you to develop your identity as a researcher, critical-thinker, creative agent, and enhance your confidence and adaptability.
View the full module definitionOn this module you'll have the opportunity to specialise in an exciting period of literary history – the English Renaissance – and to pursue a thematic interest: the early modern literary fascination with magic. ‘Renaissance Magic’ explores the intersections between imaginative literature, science, religion and the occult, through the close study of various literary forms (from journal entries and essays, to epic poetry and drama) both canonical (including the works of Shakespeare, Jonson and Spenser) and more marginal (including seventeenth-century women’s writing, and anonymous alchemical poetry.) You'll be introduced to various aspects of magic/occult culture of the early modern period: attitudes toward angelology and demonology; the learned figure of the ‘Renaissance magus’; alchemy; the fascination with and persecution of witches; and early science fiction. The variety of different texts is designed to challenge perceptions of the ‘canon’, and to broaden views of what constituted ‘literature’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
View the full module definitionIn this module you’ll gain the technical skills required in the writing of poetry by facilitating a flexible use of traditional forms and rhythms. You’ll look at contemporary and modern poetry and explore important developments in technique and learn to appreciate the benefits of close reading to open up possibilities for language use. Seminar workshops focus on reading poetry and on creative exercises, aimed at helping to develop sophisticated approaches to the relationship between form and content.
View the full module definitionThis module will help you understand and compare different philosophical approaches to the problem of knowledge (how can we be sure that we know anything) by looking at how they deal with the foundational philosophical topic of Scepticism. You will see how Scepticism arises throughout the history of thought, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, and how it shapes whole philosophical systems and world-views, often taking hold at times of great philosophical and political change. Beginning with scepticism in ancient philosophy, and then in its rediscovery in the 16th/17th Centuries we look at how different philosophical schools of thought attempted to answer the problem of scepticism. We will discuss scepticism in relation to empiricism; common sense; scientific naturalism; Wittgenstein’s therapeutic method of philosophy; the philosophy of mind; and the philosophy of language. We will also consider the re-emergence of the challenge of scepticism in relation to contemporary media, ‘fake’ news’ and conspiracy theories. This module is part of a core strand of the Philosophy curriculum at Anglia Ruskin, which looks at issues of relevance to contemporary Anglo-American Philosophy. It will build on topics discussed in Mind and World and Introduction to Philosophy, as well as allowing you to understand how the philosophers and ideas discussed in Ancient Philosophy, The Rationalists and Kant and the Empiricists relate to contemporary research in this area. This module will support you in further developing key transferable skills of critical analysis and complex problem solving as well as the high-level ability to undertake scholarly research and complete a project to a deadline. The presentation will enable you to further develop skills of public speaking, creating professional public presentations, and teamwork.
View the full module definitionOn this module, you'll study historical and contemporary works of crime and detective fiction in English. Texts will include classics of the genre, particularly from the ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction, being further attuned to how the genre accommodates female writers and writers of colour. Your key considerations will be the development of the genre across time, while being inclusive of new developments and contexts, especially gender, race, and national identity, and how these concerns are crafted by in the novel form. Your understanding of the representation of trauma, victim and police perspectives, and wider contexts of identity will be showcased in the final assessment.
View the full module definitionThis module introduces you to a range of C20th and C21st literary representations of exile. To be in exile is to be banished from one’s home, to be displaced and/or estranged from one’s country, family, community, and even one’s self. Exile takes many forms: it can be literal or metaphorical; it can be enforced or self-imposed. Through close readings of novels, graphic novels, poetry, autobiography, and short stories, many of which were written by authors in exile, you will explore various forms of exile writing and consider various conditions and contexts of exile, including politics, race, sexuality, gender and disability. At the start of the module, you will be introduced to a range of theories of exile; you will explore these theories each week in relation to the selected literary texts and related themes of memory, home, identity, community, nostalgia, self, and language.
View the full module definitionThis module explores the importance and significance of computer-mediated communication, digital media and contemporary communication methods. It explores how new technologies have changed the way we communicate with others. You'll be introduced to a wide range of theories and theoretical and analytical frameworks. As well as critical sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis, this will also include more pragmatic approaches to the study of digital communication. You'll understand how these approaches could be meaningfully used to analyse real and authentic digital texts. The key employability skill developed in this module is the development of digital communication skills, which are of contemporary relevance and popularity
View the full module definitionThis module will introduce you to key ideas, concepts and thinkers in the philosophy of education. It will ask you to think about the history of philosophical views about education (in thinkers such as Socrates, Confucius, Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey); the nature and purpose of education; different theories about teaching and learning; how education relates to wider issues such as citizenship, self-fulfilment, positive freedom, critical thinking, morality and authority; and how to think about the role of diversity in education, including multicultural education and justice and inclusion within special education.
In this module you will focus on language as a symbolic system and practice where meaning is produced and reproduced under specific cultural conditions and is characterised by fragmentation and conflict as much as by cohesion and consensus. You will relate the study of language to issues concerning, for example, identity, cultural power and domination, representation, and real life, examining the social corpus, the individual body and the radical/transgressive body. You will explore post-structuralist critiques of linguistics, which may include theories of language as a means by which identity is produced through the interconnectedness of language and ideology. In addition, you will encounter the physical body not as ‘natural’ but as a linguistic phenomenon: where the body is a text to be read. Challenging binaries such as mind/body and biological/textual, you will query the role of language in creating bodies and the ways in which the flesh has been historically created through discourse. You will also look at the ways the body has transgressed these discourses. In examining the relationships between language, power and bodies, you will explore the links between language, power, knowledge, ‘truth’ and identity, especially in reference to difference (gender, race, sexuality, ability) and extend these links to ecological concerns and the connectedness of the human to the nonhuman and nature. You will learn to question how truth and knowledge are challenged in post-structuralist/ deconstructionist projects, and how this challenge can lead to what is known as posthuman ethics and the ecological revolution: currently known in linguistic philosophy as ‘ecosophy’.
View the full module definitionIn this module, you'll take as a starting point the need to be critical about literature written for young audiences, including early years and YA fiction. You'll read children’s literature primarily as literature, instead of as a contributing factor towards childhood development. Children’s books have been controversial since their inception. Your special focus on this module will be to investigate a historical sweep of controversial books, including banned ones, and the reasons behind their censorship. We'll explore primary texts from the ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries and form more contemporary works. You'll engage with changing historical constructs of childhood and the generic fluidity of children’s and fantasy literature.
View the full module definitionGlobal Feminisms will introduce you to the plurality and diversity of feminist thoughts and debates, practices and activism(s). The heterogeneity of feminist action and strategies on a range of issues will be emphasised to enable learning on historic and contemporary feminist movements. An intersectional approach will be adopted to highlight how feminists have engaged with anti-race politics alongside challenging norms around gender and sexuality. You'll be exposed to feminist knowledges and scholarship on issues viz. women’s political participation, gender-based violence, trans identities and rights, sex work, etc., as well as learn about different forms and strategies of feminist activism. You'll also learn about feminist research methodologies and epistemological approaches to understand what it means to ‘see’, ‘think’ and ‘do’ sociology using a feminist approach. Teaching will comprise a combination of lectures and seminars and will involve guest speakers who are feminist activists and scholars across diverse contexts nationally and internationally, facilitating connections with a global network of academics and practitioners in the study of the sociology of gender. You'll be able to connect theory and practice through ‘real-world’ applications of feminist knowledges and pedagogies, including a feminist manifesto and critical case study of a feminist global campaign. Through this, you'll develop communication skills, computer literacy, creativity, critical thinking, decision marking, planning and organisation, problem-solving, project and time management, and research skills. Specifically, you'll learn to evaluate feminist campaigns, strategies and policies which you can draw on to enhance employability in the statutory and voluntary sector, among others.
View the full module definitionEnvironment, Nature and Society explores the relationship between social and natural worlds and, in the process, considers sociological debates about how best to engage with biological knowledge. You will address the following interlocking questions: - How can sociological approaches take account of the ways in which people are at once social and biological beings? How can we fully integrate non-humans into an account of social life and social change? How are recent developments in the life sciences challenging existing views and experiences of group identity, self, life and kinship? What are the likely social causes and consequences of world-wide environmental catastrophe? To answer these questions, you will be required to consider both the future of the discipline of Sociology and the future of society.
View the full module definitionIn this module, you'll examine biographical and autobiographical writings from St Augustine to the present day. You'll consider the history of biography; from early hagiographic accounts of revered men (largely) and (some) women to irreverent portraits of celebrities or glimpses into the lives of “ordinary” people in the present day. You'll examine auto/biographical theory in which the forward slash denotes the relationship between the self and the other, the private and the public, and consider the inevitability of the impact of the biographer on the biography. You'll look at source material such as letters when considering the choices made by biographers. You'll consider the impact of social and historical contexts on whose lives are written and how generic conventions impose structures onto the lives written. You'll learn the difference between an autobiography and a memoir and think about the variety of methods used to write a life, including those which blur fact and fiction, and those which disrupt linear chronology.
View the full module definitionWe live in a world dominated by media. Our first port of call when we want to know something is to Google it. Landmark books have shaped and influenced wide-ranging historical and contemporary issues such as the French Revolution, feminism and Black Lives Matter. Social media has played a central role in presidential elections, as well as been linked to a decline in people’s mental health. In this module you'll learn about the past, present and future of media and its role in society. Media is very broadly defined here to include the publishing industry, the internet, social media, TV, radio and many more. Each week, we will focus on one particular form of media and consider its history, before moving on to analyse its role in today’s society and its future. To do this, we will use a wide range of case studies relating to elections, referendums, conspiracies, celebrity culture, censorship, and many more. You'll develop a keen awareness of the importance of media from this and have a sound understanding of how the industries look today. This will put you one step ahead of many candidates on the job market as digital proficiency and understanding media is vital to many positions and businesses.
View the full module definitionKnowledge of a foreign language can be a major asset both in your academic and professional life. The Anglia Language Programme offers you the opportunity to study a foreign language as part of your course.