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This course provides a foundational overview of Great Britain, its people and culture. There are two blocks: the British Present and the British Past. As their names suggest, they deal with contemporary British politics and society and with key formative moments in English history. While there is a formal structure to the course we will not live in isolation from the world outside. There will certainly be events which illustrate or contradict what has been discussed in class: you are encouraged to bring your thoughts on these into class discussions.

Over the last 30 years, Britain has become a vibrant and fertile center for the visual arts. This course attempts to relate the recent confusing range of artistic styles and media, both in Britain and internationally, to the development of "modernism" at the beginning of the 20th century. Because of the speed of communication and travel, new ideas in art spread rapidly and it is therefore impossible to look at modern art in Britain without reference to the art developments in the wider Western world. Consequently, we will look at art in Europe and North America during this course.

This course will provide a detailed study of those painters and sculptors who are deemed British masters/mistresses. Our studies begin in the early 18th century when a distinctive British School emerged and with it the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This flowering of home-grown talent was supported in the nineteenth century by an increasingly wealthy middle class who wanted to ‘buy British’.

This course is an undergraduate writing workshop designed to help you take full advantage of the possibilities for creative writing in London, using the capital as a setting for fiction or as a base for travel writing, reportage and the personal essay. It introduces the basics of good writing in any form: you can choose whether to focus primarily on creative nonfiction or fiction in your final portfolio.

This course is designed to introduce you to the particularities of the British media market and the unique character of British journalism.  Along the way, we will explore some of Britain’s journalistic traditions, from the respectability of the BBC to the scurrilous tabloid press. We will look at some of the critical academic reaction to these institutions and the role and practice of journalism in Britain today. Students are encouraged to compare and contrast the British media to that of the USA. Excursions will be worked into the timetable where possible.

This course looks at the nineteenth and twentieth century British novel in terms of historical context and literary technique. The novels have been selected, not only because they are among the greatest British novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also because they provide a coherent illustration of the development of the genre itself.

This course provides a comprehensive examination of the processes of European economic integration and offers a critical analysis of EU policies in their broader political-economic context. In addition, the course also addresses the peculiar and often problematic relationship between Great Britain and the EU, while also focusing on the external dimension of Europe in the global economy.

This is a course which addresses the potentially life-changing effects that theatre’s practitioners and critics, over more than 2,000 years, have thought different kinds of theatre can have on audiences.

This course highlights how, over the last 30 years, Britain has become a vibrant and fertile international center for the visual arts. Through the work on display in the museums and galleries of London, the course will attempt to relate the current confusing range of artistic styles with the revolutionary ideas of the first 25 years of the twentieth century, the impact of two world wars and more recent social and global events. Some reference will also be made to parallel developments in architecture.

The intent of this course is to expose students to the various aspects of theatre that make it work. This will include looking at the role of the audience as participants. Students will analyze how the playwright is able to teach the audience about themselves through his/her construction of the play to achieve an expression of truth.