European Studies: Cultures, Societies & Languages

Semester 1: Core Course

Questions and Readings in Europe and Beyond

•  Questions
  A series of seminars and workshops exploring central issues and themes in approach and methodology. Discussion will in part be framed by Research Council UK themes and research activity within the SMLC, however students will be encouraged to engage with theoretically informed or methodologically innovative work of pertinence in their own areas of interest. Topics vary from year to year but will include the following areas: 
  Cinema / Visual Studies
  Gender studies
  Text-image studies
  Intercultural studies/ postcolonialism / subaltern studies
  Psychoanalysis
  Translation studies
  Deconstruction
  The Frankfurt School
  Structuralism and its afterlives
  Power/ Strategy vs. tactics
  Narratology/ Formalism
  Modernisms, modernities and cultures of the avant-garde
• Readings
  Seminars led by and showcasing individual staff members who offer an overview of current work in progress, as well as a research/disciplinary context and background for work in progress. This interfaces with and supplements related material pertinent to individual students’ areas of focus. Seminars will not be limited in terms of medium, genre or indeed a single item, but may span categories or offer comparative approaches within or across particular milieux, e.g. How do we read emblems in relation to fables? How does music read poetry? How do European cultures read philosophy as a footnote to Shakespeare? How does the psychoanalytical essay read the short story? How do historians read the archive? How does cinema read the novel? How do censors read anything and everything? How does (any part of) Europe read the rest of the world or indeed itself? 

Optional Courses

Building on  the social and cultural theory of the core course in Semester 1, you can pick from a wide range of topic courses provided within the School in a variety of subject areas, such as Comparative Literature, European Cinema, French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic/Ibero-American Studies, Italian Studies, Slavonic Studies. In addition, you can pursue your own choice of study through Specialist Options as well as in your dissertation topic. For students with interests in Politics or Social Sciences, courses are available elsewhere in the Colleges of Arts and of Law, Business and Social Sciences. Thus, students have access to a wide provision of expertise whether wishing to widen their undergraduate-level experience or gain research training before embarking on a longer research degree.