BA Global Liberal Arts

This module introduces the idea of global liberal arts and the interdisciplinary programme at SOAS that brings together the Arts and Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences. Over ten weeks we will examine the conditions of being human in the ever-changing world. By applying a self-reflexive praxis, we will interrogate both our standpoints and our understanding of knowledge and knowledge production by engaging with critical theories as well as our own experiences as learners. Additionally, these critical theories provide an introduction to core concepts in the interdisciplinary fields of Global Studies, and Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, which you will encounter throughout the programme.

This course examines development processes and policies from a political economy perspective. It is designed to provide students with a core competency in economic theory and policy relevant to the study of international development theory and practice.

This course not only covers major concepts and theories in the study of Comparative Politics, but also offers empirical analyses of the government and politics in a select group of countries. The course covers a wide range of issues, including the formation of the nation-state, democratization, authoritarianism, political culture, political development, comparative political economy, nationalism, ethnic politics, politics of religion, and political institutions. The course will also discuss some debates in Comparative Politics that have been important in the policy-making community in recent decades, such as state-building, role of the state in economy, the concept of social capital, and the effort to promote democracy around the world. Although paying attention to countries in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, a select group of Western countries will also be studied in a comparative format.

Comparative Growth: Theoretical Approaches offers an introduction to theories of economic growth and structural change with reference to major economies of Asia and Africa. It introduces students to issues of measuring development, growth trends, and debates on demographic factors, physical and human capital investments, roles of institutions, and the state and natural resources. The module is a co-requisite for Comparative Growth: Contemporary Debates and a prerequisite for Issues in Development Economics.

This module explores the history of humankind from the Paleolithic period to the globalized twenty-first century. It proceeds chronologically to understand how the world as a whole got to be the way it is while also exploring the process from different angles, allowing us to make comparisons between and connections among different parts of the world.

This course provides an insight into how society has been conceived of in different places and times.You will read a broad range of classic texts of social theory from ancient China and classical Greece to eighteen century Enlightenment and onwards to the birth of anthropology and sociology as academic disciplines. You will attain a sense of the long conversation of social thought that preceded and produced the discipline of social anthropology. And you will be introduced to the art and skill of interpretation.

In this course we explore social thought between, roughly, 1900 and 1960. We do so by studying a sample of the writings of influential social thinkers hailing from Europe, the Caribbean and China, and by situating these in their social, intellectual, and wider historical contexts. The age we look at was one of extremes - of imperialist domination and struggles for national liberation, of free-market capitalism, the Great Depression and protectionism, of communist revolutions, world wars, fascism and genocides, and of women’s suffrage, workers’ rights and the rise of the welfare state.

This module introduces students to key topics in global linguistic diversity, enabling students to put into a global context the language, region or culture that their degree programme focuses on.

This module is designed to introduce all first-year students of Languages and Cultures to ideas, theories and examples of the representation of Otherness. The overall aim is to introduce a greater degree of awareness and self-reflection in relation to their own study of “other” cultures. The module begins by inviting students to consider their own experiences of “Otherness” that they bring to their interest in the geographical region on which they are focussed. What experiences, for example, of travel to other countries and engagement with other cultures and people from those cultures do they have. And how have these experiences shaped their understandings? What differences exist between the categories of tourist, traveller and student. The module then goes on to introduce key terms and ideas that will be used to structure the subsequent discussions in the module.

This module provides a critical introduction to the film and screen cultures of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Approaching film in terms of cultural identity and self-expression, this module will place screened films within a general framework of national tradition and identity and provide a platform for students to reflect on the unity and diversity of the human condition across different regions. A selection of 21st century films will be explored within their cultural, social and political context of production, exhibition and reception, and students will be guided to reflect on different functions of cinema.

This module will explore genres such as the oral epic, the graphic novel, puppet theatre, and internet literature with particular attention to the ways that texts interact with other forms of expression from music and dance to the visual arts. Each of the stories studied will be presented in its cultural context, and connections between cultures will be interrogated in an effort to solidify conceptions of the universal and the local.

This module is primarily designed to introduce students who have no background in Film Studies, or in analysing cinema, to the vocabularies used to understand and analyse film language. The module will thus focus on the close reading of specific films – from the early days of cinema, just after its invention in 1895, to the present – so as to deconstruct and analyse their technical, visual, aural and spatial features. While it will be inevitable that we look at certain European and North American films – particularly when analysing ‘mainstream’ film language – we will put the emphasis on our regional film expertise to introduce students to important films from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and also the Soviet Union and Latin America.

Based around the three broad themes of Religion, Trade and Empire, this module examines a series of individual objects in context from across Asia and Africa to explore the role of material and visual culture in understanding the history of global connectivity. Each case-study will demonstrate the transmission of ideas, motifs, materials, objects and people within Asia and Africa and in interaction with Europe, over around 1500 years from the 2nd-3rd to the 18th centuries CE.

Building upon Global Arts: connected histories (to 1800)(Term 1), this module develops an understanding of the arts of Asia and Africa from the 19th century to the present, encompassing the period when many regions were impacted first by European colonialism and later by nationalist and postcolonial movements.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

This introductory module surveys the entire sweep of Africa's history, north and south of the Sahara, from the emergence of civilizations to the present day. Themes covered include Ancient Egypt and Nubia, Christianity and Islam in Africa, state and society in Sudanic and in Bantu-speaking Africa, slavery and the slave trades, colonisation and the postcolonial period.

This module introduces students to the History of the part of the world that was profoundly influenced by the Chinese cultural sphere. Chronologically it covers the period from early state formation and the rise of the first unified empires, through diversification and the social and political transformations in the middle period, to the early modern empires and the late nineteenth-century reforms.

This module is designed to provide first-year students with a foundational overview of the history of the Middle East from Antiquity and the emergence of Islam to the end of the Islamic Middle Period and the beginning of modernity. Students will be introduced to the main themes, problems and debates in the history of the region, providing them with foundational knowledge and research skills for more in-depth study of the region at more advanced levels.

This module is designed to provide first-year students with a foundational overview of the history of the Middle East from Antiquity and the emergence of Islam to the end of the Islamic Middle Period and the beginning of modernity. Students will be introduced to the main themes, problems and debates in the history of the region, providing them with foundational knowledge and research skills for more in-depth study of the region at more advanced levels.

This module introduces the historical processes that shaped the society, culture, economy and political landscapes of the subcontinent over this period. Students will study the principal historical themes, debates and controversies that have concerned scholars over the decades and thus build a foundation for further study of the history of South Asia at more advanced levels.

This course will be following a thematic trajectory, where economic and ecological factors, the transformation of rural society and the creation of new urban groups and classes will be analysed. The same transregional approach will also be implemented in the analysis of political ideologies and of cultural beliefs – including religious life and the role of age and gender in the family.

This module is an introduction to the history of the early modern and modern era Middle East. It begins roughly around the time when Islamic empires became the dominant powers of the region and explores thenceforth the political, social and cultural developments up to the present.

This module will critically engage with theoretical texts from a range of disciplines that engage critically with today’s globalised world with a focus on the Global South. Students will be given support and training to explore how they can apply these theories and approaches to answer a range of questions and contexts that go beyond the classroom and link them to everyday experiences.

Business across borders offers both challenges and opportunities. This module provides a framework for analysing decisions made by firms in an international context. While the foundations of the course are concepts developed in economics, they will be combined with (and challenged by) insights from strategy, international finance, marketing, human resource management, and other areas. The final aim of the course is to provide you with a critical understanding of whether and to what extent the ways economists have studied and modeled firms’ internationalization decisions offer any support in real world decision making.

This module introduces students to the basic principles of economic analysis and decision sciences. It applies economic theory and decision sciences to business and management decision making.

This module introduces the basic concepts of corporate governance and theory of the firm. It is specially designed for the undergraduate study of such areas as management, finance, financial law, corporate law, economics and related subjects. The course is designed to increase the depth of your understanding of corporate governance issues. As corporate governance is a multi-disciplinary subject – covering such topics as law, politics, management, finance, and economics - the course outlines the key theoretical and practical issues underpinning the study of corporate governance, and how they affect the governance of the modern corporation. International comparisons and differences in corporate governance are emphasised throughout the course.

This course introduces students to contemporary issues in the relationship between business and ethics. Through studying principles of academic thinking about these issues, and working on the problems experienced in actual case studies, students learn how to think through the complex problems of business ethics and consider how ethical principles could influence management decisions.

For international companies to achieve significant competitiveness in the marketplace, it is important that managers understand consumer behaviour. This module discusses the internal processes that occur within consumers´ minds as well as external processes that influence consumers’ experience, engagements and relationships with international companies/brands. Knowledge of how these processes can be useful for choosing marketing strategies is attained through the theoretical models and practical examples discussed during the lectures and seminars. The module is designed to develop students’ understanding of the specific models and concepts necessary when evaluating and analysing consumer behaviour.

This module is concerned with the ways the mind and mental illness are understood in different cultural contexts. We explore the cultural and historical shaping of Western psychiatry and its interaction with other diagnostic and healing traditions. Are psychiatric diagnostic categories like depression or PTSD universal or culturally and historically specific, bound to particular notions of mind, body or spirit? Is Western psychiatric knowledge imposed on other societies through Global Mental Health, or does the expansion of evidence-based treatments address a critical ‘treatment gap’? Is the globally rising diagnosis of mental disorders a consequence of new stressors, undiagnosed conditions or the medicalisation of ordinary sadness and coping responses? How might we understand the relationship between brain biology, adverse life experiences, and culturally experienced illness? How does social inequality, discrimination and abuse affect mental health? Is trauma a universally meaningful idea? The module uses ethnographic research, cultural psychiatry and anthropological theory to explore such questions. It will probe the universality of psychiatric knowledge, and examine how illness classifications are the result of political and epistemological struggles, both on local and global scales.

What is migration? Is this the “age of migration”? What is Diaspora and what challenges do diasporic communities bring to modern political constructions such as the nation-state, national “imagined” communities, citizenship and their associated metaphysics of sedentarism? This module explores these issues by critically engaging with the ways in which migration and diaspora have been understood historically and in modern and contemporary times.

This course explores the intersection and social construction of race" and gender through an anthropological lense. The course emphasises the lived realities of race and gender and how these have been shaped by cultural, historical and economic power relations. At the same time, we explore how the categories of race and gender have been the object of scientific discourses and technologies of control. A special focus is given to the ways in which anthropology has contributed to and been complicit in histories and experiences of oppression, empire and colonialism. By looking at whiteness as a system of power that undergirds gendered ideologies and privileges, the course critically analyses knowledge practices and the representation of race and gender in science and media."

This module introduces students to fundamental concepts and approaches in the study of the links between language and society. Using numerous examples, students will learn about the interplay of language with social factors such as class, gender, ethnicity and age, including how language varies and changes.

This module is designed to introduce all first-year students of Languages and Cultures to ideas, theories and examples of the representation of Otherness. The overall aim is to introduce a greater degree of awareness and self-reflection in relation to their own study of “other” cultures. The module begins by inviting students to consider their own experiences of “Otherness” that they bring to their interest in the geographical region on which they are focussed. What experiences, for example, of travel to other countries and engagement with other cultures and people from those cultures do they have. And how have these experiences shaped their understandings? What differences exist between the categories of tourist, traveller and student. The module then goes on to introduce key terms and ideas that will be used to structure the subsequent discussions in the module.

The amended module focuses on major concepts, theories, methodologies and academic approaches to the study of nationalism, national identity and nationhood. It begins with an examination of the historical contexts and socioeconomic conditions under which nationalism emerged in the West and subsequently spread across the globe. By familiarising students with the key concepts, theories and approaches to the study of nationalism, the module aims at enabling students to understand the processes which appear to make nationalism a powerful mobilizing and homogenising force and also point to its contingent, shifting and fluid nature. The module focuses on understanding the political contestations underlying the notion of nationalism in various regional contexts

This course introduces third year students in Politics degrees to diverse debates in gender and politics. Developed through a thematic, transnational approach, the module invites students to engage with majority world thinking on thematic questions and situate these intellectual debates within contemporary gender concerns

The course shall examine debates in the discipline of politics about the role of “culture” in politics – as practices of meaning-making in politics; as a series of everyday practices and rituals with implicit (or overt) political content; and as cultural products (art, films, etc.) both whose making and content reflects a specific politics. To do so, the course will require three activities outside class: A visit to the British Museum – as the basis of discussing Orientalism, but also Nationalism and empire in the politics of archaeology and artistic accumulation A visit to a diasporic enclave in London – as the basis of a discussion of questions of identity-making, immigration, and the political economy of “cultural” practices (restaurants, specific shops catering to specific communities, etc.)

. This course will chart the dominant features of this scholarly territory by familiarizing students with major issues and controversies in immigration research and by examining empirical cases in Africa, the GCC, and East Asia.

This course will explain 'how' and 'why' economic ideas changed in the way they did as well as identify and explain how economic ideas have interacted with other disciplines. It will bring the necessary elements of plurality and interdisciplinarity that economics students need in order to understand the 'wealth' of economic ideas and policy stances but also that there is no 'absolute economic truth' and that we need to contest existent and 'accepted' economic wisdom.

This course introduces students to economic perspectives on environmental and development issues. The course covers various macro and microeconomic issues as well as economics of climate change.

This module is a Year 3 optional module for Economics Undergraduates. It aims at providing students with a thorough understanding of core economic policy challenges in the contemporary global economy, and to equip them with the theoretical and applied skills necessary to evaluate policy debates and challenges and contemplate policy solutions to such challenges.

This module will introduce students to contemporary political theory through a focus on key concepts. These include liberty, rights, justice, democracy, representation, power, hegemony and secularism.

This module offers an advanced introduction to the politics of global environmental change. It focuses on problems of environmental transformation in the context of international power relations, the expansion of capitalism, and socio-political pressures for radical change.

This second year undergraduate class will focus on the variety of ways in which performance is enacted in politics, broadly construed. It will augment more conventional approaches to politics by demonstrating the ways in which performance either attempts to soften and legitimise or conversely challenge and subvert institutions, interests, and power.

This module introduces electoral and party politics in modern democracies. It will involve the discussion of a wide range of theoretical approaches to the study of parties and elections and assess their applicability to non-western cases.

The purpose of this module is to examine the effects of political factors on economic and social transformation (and vice versa) with reference to some of the most successful developing economies. It focuses on two main issues. First, how did political factors (i.e. types of regime and the conditions of their formation) facilitate the transformation of certain developing economies towards upper middle-income status during the GATT or pre-globalization era (c. 1950-90). Second, the module will examine how upper middle income economies are facing up to the challenges of the globalization era, notably mobile capital (financialization and the emergence of global value chains) and the complex of constraints that constitute the “middle income trap”.

This module seeks to provide UG students taking politics degree, alongside other interested students at the department, an advanced background in key issues in postcolonial political thought. It will work on some of the key issue and key authors in the field, including questions of translation and translatability, decolonization, subaltern studies, and more.

This course will familiarise students with debates on republicanism and revolution in both early modern western thinking and 19th to 20th century anti-colonial thinking. The course will focus on the ‘republican revival’ in western political thought of the 1960s to 80s that occurred in the context of decolonization and postcolonial republican foundings. It will examine the language of political activism and anti-colonial revolution and consider how this language constitutes republican theory both in the western canon and anti-colonial backlash against imperial domination.

This course provides a critical overview of economic theories, methods and economic policy-debates from a gender perspective. The course is designed to cover major debates in gender economics relevant to developed and developing countries.

This course introduces International Relations students to a wide range of issues in the contemporary world centred on conflict and the liberal world order. We look historically at the decline of inter-state war and the rise (and now decline) of civil wars, and at the rise of global terrorism and its implications, focusing on efforts to combat both the occurrence and conduct of conflict through international law and norms with a particular focus on the politics of human rights, international justice and humanitarianism. We look more specifically at the protection of civilians, torture, civil liberties, cyber warfare and drones, and the Responsibility to Protect. We also ask whether the rise of populism might erode the willingness of Western democracies to support, in principle at least, international norms and at the implications of this both for the liberal world order as a whole and the globalisation of democracy in particular.

This course is an introduction to urban history, exploring how cities have been shaped and in what ways urban dynamics have transformed human society. The idea is to examine urban history as a process in which economic, social, political, cultural, and morphological changes are interrelated, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of urban history.

This module embrace those frameworks but also challenge their limitations for understanding the history of the non-western world and the interconnectedness of global history. This module challenges students to explore new research methods, as they need to think creatively about source materials that can shed light upon the histories of regions about which there are often few historical records.

This module explores gender in historical perspective, combining a general introduction to gender history with a case-study based on the specialisation and research expertise of the tutor. The module provides a detailed introduction to the positioning of history as a discipline vis-à-vis gender studies.

This module therefore seeks to understand war and violence from a non - Western perspective - to understand how they emerge from particular historical circumstances and how they produce different consequences in different periods and geographical, cultural, ethnic, and even religious contexts.

The course is designed to equip students with a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to the study of museums. It examines the strategies and practices by which museums interpret, organise and display objects – especially non-Western objects – within diverse cultural contexts.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module aims to introduce students to a range of theoretical and legal approaches to the study of law, multiculturalism and rights and to equip them with the critical tools to apply a critique to the liberal conception of ‘rights’. In doing so it provides a critique of legal concepts, categories and reasoning in a variety of context while drawing upon debates on intersectionality and an interdisciplinary framework for the study of law, legal disputes and legal pluralism.

This course provides a critical introduction to the legal regulation of global commodities, with a focus on the colonial histories of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Taking some of the world’s most heavily exchanged primary commodities as examples, we will track the development of their production and consumption, from their domestic origins to their circulation in the global sphere today. The histories of the principle commodities – such as coffee, cocoa, rubber, oil – tell the story of today’s global economy in microcosm.

This course provides a critical introduction to the practice of environmental law from a comparative perspective, with a focus on the Global South. It considers the bases for environmental regulation, the links between use and protection of the environment and examines specifically issues related to the use of natural resources within the general context of sustainable development that informs environmental regulation worldwide.

The course highlights several key aspects of international environmental law, focusing in particular on their North-South dimension. It provides an introduction to the principles of international environmental law, sustainable development, issues related to the protection of the environment, the conservation of the environment and the use/exploitation of environmental resources. It also examines questions related to compliance and effectiveness of international environmental treaties. The course further examines environmental issues in their broader context. It thus considers, for instance, the link between human rights and the environment and may also consider links between intellectual property rights and the environment or war and the environment.

The module provides students with critical tools to understand of how state regimes have responded to 'terrorist' violence, and also how law itself can unleash regimes of terror. It engages with historical, anthropological and theoretical debates in order to understand the relationship between law, violence and state power.

The Music Business.

Presenting World Music On Radio

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

Hip Hop inspires strong opinions, whether in culture war debates or among urban youth born in the digital era. It is the music of grass-roots activists, but it is also big business. It is often described as a primarily lyrics-driven genre, but its best songs are condensed histories of migration and labour trauma that play out at the level of melody. This module considers how it came to be that this genre, born of post-industrial urban decay but gestated through decades of Afrodiasporic conceptions of versioning, has come to dominate not only the Music industry, but academic discussions of youth culture. Through consideration of Hip Hop’s history, pre-history, and global reach, we draw broader conclusions about migration and diaspora, ethnicity and gender, nation and place, all of which hide in plain sight embedded in musical style.

This module is designed for students who are interested and would like to build an indepth knowledge of theories of race, crime and the criminal justice system in the UK. It is set out to give a deep understanding of the theories and rationales underlying race, crime and the criminal justice and to help students critically reflect the system. It engages with some of the most important issues in the UK, such as the discretionary police power, stop and search, police questioning, prosecution policies, the under-funded and variable quality of criminal defence, the value and limitations of human rights, miscarriages of justice and its impact on racialised communities in Britain.

This module examines themes and notions of 'modernity' in the Korean cultural context, through a syllabus which considers issues surrounding representation, identity, landscape and memory in Korean literature and film. It aims to provide students with the skills to read, analyse and understand Korean literary works and films against past and present socio-historical contexts and critical discourses.

Afrophone philosophies (i.e. philosophies in African languages) are the philosophical discourses in African languages: the (oral or written) texts that are the channels of philosophical thought in Africa.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

This course builds technically on the second-year module, Econometrics, which is a prerequisite for this module. It also builds conceptually on the two second-year core modules: Microeconomic Analysis and Macroeconomic Analysis. The course is designed to provide students with a hands-on" environment. It aims to help students deepen and broaden their knowledge and understanding of econometric techniques needed for empirical analyses of both cross-sectional household-level data for micromodelling research and time-series data for macro and also financial modelling research. In addition, the course also aims to develop students' abilities in critical evaluation of what is taught in econometrics textbooks."

The objective of this module is to provide students with a firm understanding of what the financial system does and how it is organised. It is designed to examine a broad series of topics, including what a financial instrument is and how it is valued; what a financial market is and how it works; what a financial institution is and how it operates. It equips students with the core principles of finance such as time has value, investors need to be compensated for taking risk and information is the basis for investment decision.

The objective of this module is to provide students with a firm understanding of financial global markets. The module will focus on topics including the role of finance in economic development, the relevance of different financial system structures, and the European Monetary and Economic Union.

This module is designed to introduce students to the major theoretical approaches and concepts in contemporary Development Economics. Both mainstream and heterodox approaches to Development Economics will be covered. Students will have the opportunity to critically engage with international development policy debates by unpicking the theories, frameworks and methods underpinning these debates. The module will apply theories to contemporary issues in low income countries, relying on a variety of case studies throughout.

This course offers a historical and contemporary exploration of the important roles played by film festivals in defining, validating, exhibiting, distributing, and (increasingly) producing global cinemas. While it introduces students to the inner workings of the oldest and largest international film festivals, it takes a critical postcolonial approach to the analysis of festivals worldwide and focuses in particular on the treatment of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American films and filmmakers on the circuit.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

Looking at the story of this transition, this course locates SOAS within both the history of imperial education and the history of struggles to free academic scholarship from colonial world views. During the course we will examine the ways in which British imperial practices influenced the formation of contemporary academic disciplines, particularly those that are taught at SOAS today (languages, anthropology, history, art and archeology) but also those that are not (science).

This course will explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of philosophy from ‘the margins’, primarily examining epistemological arguments about the nature and form of knowledge, truth, subjectivity, and power (and their intersections) from perspectives traditionally marginalised by mainstream philosophy.

Can there be thought outside language? Does meaning come from universal truths or is it invoked by linguistic rules? How is language related to actions? Is it possible to escape the confines of language when doing philosophy? These and similar questions have been discussed by philosophers since antiquity and while seemingly abstract, they fundamentally relate to pressing questions in contemporary society from the role of speech in therapy on the one side of the spectrum to legislation surrounding hate speech on the other. Each time one encounters philosophical thinking about language, it brings with it a set of assumptions. This course will seek to understand the assumptions about the nature of language in various philosophical traditions and the relevance of those assumptions to issues in contemporary society.

The course is designed to explore themes – around the emergence of the cultural industries, the commodification of art and culture and the potentialities of digital culture – that are relevant across Media, Music and Arts and Archaeology, and to bring together expertise from each department in a team-taught course. It will give students an overview of the history and scale of the global cultural industries and how they intersect with politics, the economy, and ideas of the self and of community. It will use case studies drawn from across SOAS regions to ground the course in specific examples that address transnational and localised framings.

This half-unit introduces students from across the School of Arts to key texts of post-colonial theory that deal with aesthetics and the senses. The team-taught module mixes different disciplinary approaches from Music, History of Art and Archaeology, and Media to engage key concepts in post-colonial studies.

This School of Arts unit combines curatorial training with an exploration of key debates in the theory, history and practice of curating art, music and media in a global context. The course includes a series of off-site visits in galleries and arts institutions during which students will meet curators and engage with current perspectives on curating in London. Students will study the histories and debates of curating through a close reading of seminal exhibitions, manifestos and texts, and will cover themes including collecting and display, postcolonial exhibition practice, representation and the ‘other’, curatorial initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, curating sound and music, and the use of archives and digital technologies in curating. Throughout the course, students will work on group projects to develop practical and conceptual skills for curatorial research, and will end the course by producing an exhibition proposal. The course will appeal especially to students interested in pursuing a career in the arts sector.

This module is designed to introduce all first-year students of Languages and Cultures to ideas, theories and examples of the representation of Otherness. The overall aim is to introduce a greater degree of awareness and self-reflection in relation to their own study of “other” cultures. The module begins by inviting students to consider their own experiences of “Otherness” that they bring to their interest in the geographical region on which they are focussed. What experiences, for example, of travel to other countries and engagement with other cultures and people from those cultures do they have. And how have these experiences shaped their understandings? What differences exist between the categories of tourist, traveller and student. The module then goes on to introduce key terms and ideas that will be used to structure the subsequent discussions in the module.

The course is designed to equip students with a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to the study of museums. It examines the strategies and practices by which museums interpret, organise and display objects – especially non-Western objects – within diverse cultural contexts.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

The Music Business.

Presenting World Music On Radio

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

Hip Hop inspires strong opinions, whether in culture war debates or among urban youth born in the digital era. It is the music of grass-roots activists, but it is also big business. It is often described as a primarily lyrics-driven genre, but its best songs are condensed histories of migration and labour trauma that play out at the level of melody. This module considers how it came to be that this genre, born of post-industrial urban decay but gestated through decades of Afrodiasporic conceptions of versioning, has come to dominate not only the Music industry, but academic discussions of youth culture. Through consideration of Hip Hop’s history, pre-history, and global reach, we draw broader conclusions about migration and diaspora, ethnicity and gender, nation and place, all of which hide in plain sight embedded in musical style.

This module examines themes and notions of 'modernity' in the Korean cultural context, through a syllabus which considers issues surrounding representation, identity, landscape and memory in Korean literature and film. It aims to provide students with the skills to read, analyse and understand Korean literary works and films against past and present socio-historical contexts and critical discourses.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

This course offers a historical and contemporary exploration of the important roles played by film festivals in defining, validating, exhibiting, distributing, and (increasingly) producing global cinemas. While it introduces students to the inner workings of the oldest and largest international film festivals, it takes a critical postcolonial approach to the analysis of festivals worldwide and focuses in particular on the treatment of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American films and filmmakers on the circuit.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course is designed to explore themes – around the emergence of the cultural industries, the commodification of art and culture and the potentialities of digital culture – that are relevant across Media, Music and Arts and Archaeology, and to bring together expertise from each department in a team-taught course. It will give students an overview of the history and scale of the global cultural industries and how they intersect with politics, the economy, and ideas of the self and of community. It will use case studies drawn from across SOAS regions to ground the course in specific examples that address transnational and localised framings.

This half-unit introduces students from across the School of Arts to key texts of post-colonial theory that deal with aesthetics and the senses. The team-taught module mixes different disciplinary approaches from Music, History of Art and Archaeology, and Media to engage key concepts in post-colonial studies.

This School of Arts unit combines curatorial training with an exploration of key debates in the theory, history and practice of curating art, music and media in a global context. The course includes a series of off-site visits in galleries and arts institutions during which students will meet curators and engage with current perspectives on curating in London. Students will study the histories and debates of curating through a close reading of seminal exhibitions, manifestos and texts, and will cover themes including collecting and display, postcolonial exhibition practice, representation and the ‘other’, curatorial initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, curating sound and music, and the use of archives and digital technologies in curating. Throughout the course, students will work on group projects to develop practical and conceptual skills for curatorial research, and will end the course by producing an exhibition proposal. The course will appeal especially to students interested in pursuing a career in the arts sector.

This module is designed to introduce all first-year students of Languages and Cultures to ideas, theories and examples of the representation of Otherness. The overall aim is to introduce a greater degree of awareness and self-reflection in relation to their own study of “other” cultures. The module begins by inviting students to consider their own experiences of “Otherness” that they bring to their interest in the geographical region on which they are focussed. What experiences, for example, of travel to other countries and engagement with other cultures and people from those cultures do they have. And how have these experiences shaped their understandings? What differences exist between the categories of tourist, traveller and student. The module then goes on to introduce key terms and ideas that will be used to structure the subsequent discussions in the module.

This module serves as an introduction to the politics of Egypt, the Arab East (Mashriq) including the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, Turkey and Iran. On a country-by-country basis, it gives an overview of the major political issues, forces and developments in the region since the end of the First World War, providing an analysis of the wider political contexts in which they occurred.

This module will impart a solid grounding in the dynamic evolution of the Chinese state and Chinese nationalism, China's self-identified problems of weakness and underdevelopment, the difficult choices made by political elites over the course of three quite different regimes of the 20th and 21st century. Throughout the academic year, this module will stress how this legacy offers both the opportunity and constraint for the present politics of China.

International Relations of the Middle East

International Relations of South Asia will give students a broad and comprehensive introduction to this subject. Beginning with conventional IR theory disciplinary frames, it will explore inter-state relations in the South Asian region including the history of conflict between India and Pakistan, the nature of Indian dominance/hegemony over the South Asian region, the place of Afghanistan in conceptualisations of ‘South Asia’, as well as the security perspectives of smaller states in the region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Other topics in the course will examine non-conventional security issues including questions of economic and environmental security posed by the sharing of international rivers and climate change, as well as the human security issues provoked by ethnic and other forms of conflict in the region.

This module provides students with the relevant tools to undetake a critical study of Palestinian and Israeli politics in both a regional and international context. In the first part we focus on the emergence of Zionism, the impact of the British Mandate peirod, the Arab revolt of 1936-39 and the regional / international context of the 1947-49 and 1967 wars. In the second half we shift to the contemporary period to critically analyse the Oslo Accords, 2nd Intifada and international activism. We will also engage music, novels, poetry, and film related to the subject for a more nuanced understanding of concepts like nationalism, settler-colonialism, militarism, and collective memory.

This course examines the international politics of sub-Saharan Africa since Independence organised around four main themes. The first concentrates on the emergence of African states, the nature and analysis of that statehood and the degrees of conflict and cooperation between African states. The second theme looks at the insertion of African states into the international order, including the economic order and their participation in international politics. The third theme assesses the period after the end of the Cold War and concentrates on three main sub themes: firstly the nature of conflict within Africa and the emergence of a greater degree of outside intervention in that conflict; secondly the attempt, also largely by outside agencies, to effect long-term fundamental change within African societies; thirdly the ways in which African states have changed regional organisations to meet a new international environment. The last theme raises the question whether new developments in global politics (e.g. the growth of China) are fundamentally changing the international position of African states.

This course is about the economic structures, institutions and policy challenges in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The course starts with a broad economic history of the region and goes on to address the emergence of the economic structures, resource endowments, and political economy institutions of the modern Middle East. The course highlights the specificities of the political economy of the region in a global cotext and covers selected aspects of economic policy in the contemporary period in these countries. The contemporary nature of the problems facing the MENA countries are addressed throughout the course.

The aim of this course is to give a broad analytical and chronological outline of the macro political economic development of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from Independence to the current period. The course contains a broad mix of macro economic theory, and empirical and historical analysis.

The module provides a historical overview of economic development in Southeast Asia during the 20th and early 21st centuries, and assesses the major economic challenges facing the region today. Building on an analysis of the influence of colonialism on the economic and social development across the region, the module analyses the various economic strategies and policies adopted by Southeast Asian governments, and the outcomes.

This course, which brings into undergraduate Year 3 an MSc course, is the only such course on this side of the Atlantic and the only other such course outside Columbia. It brings a properly political scientific appreciation of postwar, independence and post-independence thought in Africa as enunciated by leading political figures and public intellectuals.

This module is about cultural and social change in Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the entire continent, north and south of the Sahara, as well as considering the cultures of the African diaspora.

This module is about cultural and social change in Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the entire continent, north and south of the Sahara, as well as considering the cultures of the African diaspora.

This module introduces students to the history and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa from Senegambia down to Angola from ca. 1500 to the present. It gives a political and economic understanding of key developments and of social and cultural change and continuity.

This module introduces students to the history and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa from Senegambia down to Angola from ca. 1500 to the present. It gives a political and economic understanding of key developments and of social and cultural change and continuity.

This module's aim is to get rid of the ideological barrier linked to the notion of democracy as a political system of government that originated in ‘the West' by looking at how the modern concept of ‘democracy’ was introduced into China, and by exploring actual practices of decision-making and political participation.

This course examines the histories of nationalist and imperial politics that are held to account for the partition of British India. It examines the ‘experience’ of partition beyond its politics along with with the historiography of colonialism, nationalism and gain an understanding of cultural, political issues involved in the politics of governing diverse groups.

The course focuses on Mughal rule in north India within the context of the Muslim World. Using the political developments in India from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as guiding lines for the discussion, the course will examine some of the main political, social, and religious institutions and processes in the Mughal Empire and their role in shaping state and society in South Asia.

This course is concerned with South Africa's tumultuous twentieth-century history. It is especially concerned with the ways in which ordinary Africans negotiated daily life within the strictures of these forms state repression.

The course is designed to equip students with a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to the study of museums. It examines the strategies and practices by which museums interpret, organise and display objects – especially non-Western objects – within diverse cultural contexts.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module aims to introduce students to the many ways in which law and society interact in the subcontinent. We seek to do so by using, as far as possible, authors from the region, and focus on issues that continue to hold contemporary relevance.

The Music Business.

Presenting World Music On Radio

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

Hip Hop inspires strong opinions, whether in culture war debates or among urban youth born in the digital era. It is the music of grass-roots activists, but it is also big business. It is often described as a primarily lyrics-driven genre, but its best songs are condensed histories of migration and labour trauma that play out at the level of melody. This module considers how it came to be that this genre, born of post-industrial urban decay but gestated through decades of Afrodiasporic conceptions of versioning, has come to dominate not only the Music industry, but academic discussions of youth culture. Through consideration of Hip Hop’s history, pre-history, and global reach, we draw broader conclusions about migration and diaspora, ethnicity and gender, nation and place, all of which hide in plain sight embedded in musical style.

The module is intended to complement modules such as ‘History and Culture of Korea to the Late 19th Century’ and ‘Culture and Society in 20th Century Korea’ (which focuses on South Korea) to provide BA Korean students with a more comprehensive overview and understanding of the Korean peninsula and how it has developed, especially since the Pacific War.

This module examines themes and notions of 'modernity' in the Korean cultural context, through a syllabus which considers issues surrounding representation, identity, landscape and memory in Korean literature and film. It aims to provide students with the skills to read, analyse and understand Korean literary works and films against past and present socio-historical contexts and critical discourses.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

This module is the second of two 15 credits modules to supersede the existing 30 credits module History and Culture of Korea to the late 19th Century. Whereas the first module (History of Korea to the late 19th Century) will be a general history of Korea, this module will focus on Choson (1388-1910), the last dynasty of traditional Korea, and will cover in depth aspects of society and culture that are of crucial importance for our understanding of developments on the Korean peninsula in the 20th and 21st centuries. It will be suitable for students who have taken the History of Korea to the late 19th Century module, students with other prior knowledge of Korean history, and students with a specific interest in Choson Korea.

This course offers a historical and contemporary exploration of the important roles played by film festivals in defining, validating, exhibiting, distributing, and (increasingly) producing global cinemas. While it introduces students to the inner workings of the oldest and largest international film festivals, it takes a critical postcolonial approach to the analysis of festivals worldwide and focuses in particular on the treatment of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American films and filmmakers on the circuit.

Focusing primarily on the Asia-Pacific War, this module critically explores the multiple ways in which memories have been created, circulated, and consumed in Japan, the Koreas, and the Sinophone area.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

This course presents the main issues in Israeli society through the unique case study of Jerusalem. By understanding the major issues, actors and processes at play in Jerusalem, although an extreme place with very particular features, one can learn a lot about Israel and Israeli society as a whole.

The overall aim of the course is to introduce students to Zoroastrianism - its doctrines, rituals and observances within a historical framework. The teachings of the religion will be discussed on the basis of the Zoroastrian sacred text, in particular the Avesta and Pahlavi literature, in the context of the Indo-Iranian religious system from which the religion emerged. The history of Zoroastrianism will be traced from its prehistoric roots in Indo-Iranian times through its development under the rule of three great Iranian empires, Achaemenian, Parthian and Sasanian, its gradual development into a minority religion after the Muslim conquest of Iran, the subsequent migration and re-settlement of a diaspora community in India, and from there up to the present day.

This course will discuss the various ways in which Jewish identity is expressed and represented in ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish cultures. Jewish identity formation needs to be explored within the context of the respective political, social, and economic circumstances in which Jews lived. For the respective time periods under discussion here the impact of surrounding cultures (Graeco-Roman, Byzantine Christian, Muslim, European and American) and the various forms of acculturation and assimilation that developed will be examined. We shall analyse the significance of religious, ethnic, national, and cultural markers of identity in the definitions of Judaism and trace developments in the expression of Jewish identity.

This module will offer a main narrative of Taoism as a recognisable tradition of religious ideas and practices throughout the history of China. The first part of the course will explore the historical development of Taoism in pre-modern China. We will analyse the early shaping of Taoist identity at the stage sometimes defined as ‘proto- Taoism’ (from antiquity to the second century CE), focusing on ancient texts like the Taodejing and the Zhuangzi. Then attention will be paid to the emergence and development of Taoism as an organised religion, with special emphasis on the Celestial Master (Tianshi) and its attitude towards popular cults, and also the emergence of the Shangqing, Lingbao and Quanzhen traditions. The second part of the course will focus on specific themes, such as the relationship of Taoism with Buddhism and Confucianism; ritual performances in Taoism; the formation of the Taoist canon; women as both goddesses and practitioners; outer and inner alchemy, also in relation to Chinese medicine. The course will end with a survey of modern developments, assessing the presence and new social role of Taoism in contemporary China and Taiwan, organisations such as the Taoist Association of China, and areas like the concern for the environment.

The course is designed to explore themes – around the emergence of the cultural industries, the commodification of art and culture and the potentialities of digital culture – that are relevant across Media, Music and Arts and Archaeology, and to bring together expertise from each department in a team-taught course. It will give students an overview of the history and scale of the global cultural industries and how they intersect with politics, the economy, and ideas of the self and of community. It will use case studies drawn from across SOAS regions to ground the course in specific examples that address transnational and localised framings.

This half-unit introduces students from across the School of Arts to key texts of post-colonial theory that deal with aesthetics and the senses. The team-taught module mixes different disciplinary approaches from Music, History of Art and Archaeology, and Media to engage key concepts in post-colonial studies.

This School of Arts unit combines curatorial training with an exploration of key debates in the theory, history and practice of curating art, music and media in a global context. The course includes a series of off-site visits in galleries and arts institutions during which students will meet curators and engage with current perspectives on curating in London. Students will study the histories and debates of curating through a close reading of seminal exhibitions, manifestos and texts, and will cover themes including collecting and display, postcolonial exhibition practice, representation and the ‘other’, curatorial initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, curating sound and music, and the use of archives and digital technologies in curating. Throughout the course, students will work on group projects to develop practical and conceptual skills for curatorial research, and will end the course by producing an exhibition proposal. The course will appeal especially to students interested in pursuing a career in the arts sector.

The dissertation is the capstone of the BA Global Liberal Arts that draws on and brings together the different strands of the programme. It is an exercise in critical thinking, problem solving, and project design that can take various forms, depending on the student’s individual intellectual journey and academic and professional interests. It is an opportunity to work independently, but with guidance from an academic supervisor. The planning of the dissertation begins in the summer term of the preceding year with an indication of the research topic and a preliminary reading list.

This module introduces the basic concepts of corporate governance and theory of the firm. It is specially designed for the undergraduate study of such areas as management, finance, financial law, corporate law, economics and related subjects. The course is designed to increase the depth of your understanding of corporate governance issues. As corporate governance is a multi-disciplinary subject – covering such topics as law, politics, management, finance, and economics - the course outlines the key theoretical and practical issues underpinning the study of corporate governance, and how they affect the governance of the modern corporation. International comparisons and differences in corporate governance are emphasised throughout the course.

For international companies to achieve significant competitiveness in the marketplace, it is important that managers understand consumer behaviour. This module discusses the internal processes that occur within consumers´ minds as well as external processes that influence consumers’ experience, engagements and relationships with international companies/brands. Knowledge of how these processes can be useful for choosing marketing strategies is attained through the theoretical models and practical examples discussed during the lectures and seminars. The module is designed to develop students’ understanding of the specific models and concepts necessary when evaluating and analysing consumer behaviour.

This module is concerned with the ways the mind and mental illness are understood in different cultural contexts. We explore the cultural and historical shaping of Western psychiatry and its interaction with other diagnostic and healing traditions. Are psychiatric diagnostic categories like depression or PTSD universal or culturally and historically specific, bound to particular notions of mind, body or spirit? Is Western psychiatric knowledge imposed on other societies through Global Mental Health, or does the expansion of evidence-based treatments address a critical ‘treatment gap’? Is the globally rising diagnosis of mental disorders a consequence of new stressors, undiagnosed conditions or the medicalisation of ordinary sadness and coping responses? How might we understand the relationship between brain biology, adverse life experiences, and culturally experienced illness? How does social inequality, discrimination and abuse affect mental health? Is trauma a universally meaningful idea? The module uses ethnographic research, cultural psychiatry and anthropological theory to explore such questions. It will probe the universality of psychiatric knowledge, and examine how illness classifications are the result of political and epistemological struggles, both on local and global scales.

What is migration? Is this the “age of migration”? What is Diaspora and what challenges do diasporic communities bring to modern political constructions such as the nation-state, national “imagined” communities, citizenship and their associated metaphysics of sedentarism? This module explores these issues by critically engaging with the ways in which migration and diaspora have been understood historically and in modern and contemporary times.

This course explores the intersection and social construction of race" and gender through an anthropological lense. The course emphasises the lived realities of race and gender and how these have been shaped by cultural, historical and economic power relations. At the same time, we explore how the categories of race and gender have been the object of scientific discourses and technologies of control. A special focus is given to the ways in which anthropology has contributed to and been complicit in histories and experiences of oppression, empire and colonialism. By looking at whiteness as a system of power that undergirds gendered ideologies and privileges, the course critically analyses knowledge practices and the representation of race and gender in science and media."

This course introduces third year students in Politics degrees to diverse debates in gender and politics. Developed through a thematic, transnational approach, the module invites students to engage with majority world thinking on thematic questions and situate these intellectual debates within contemporary gender concerns

The course shall examine debates in the discipline of politics about the role of “culture” in politics – as practices of meaning-making in politics; as a series of everyday practices and rituals with implicit (or overt) political content; and as cultural products (art, films, etc.) both whose making and content reflects a specific politics. To do so, the course will require three activities outside class: A visit to the British Museum – as the basis of discussing Orientalism, but also Nationalism and empire in the politics of archaeology and artistic accumulation A visit to a diasporic enclave in London – as the basis of a discussion of questions of identity-making, immigration, and the political economy of “cultural” practices (restaurants, specific shops catering to specific communities, etc.)

. This course will chart the dominant features of this scholarly territory by familiarizing students with major issues and controversies in immigration research and by examining empirical cases in Africa, the GCC, and East Asia.

This course will explain 'how' and 'why' economic ideas changed in the way they did as well as identify and explain how economic ideas have interacted with other disciplines. It will bring the necessary elements of plurality and interdisciplinarity that economics students need in order to understand the 'wealth' of economic ideas and policy stances but also that there is no 'absolute economic truth' and that we need to contest existent and 'accepted' economic wisdom.

This course introduces students to economic perspectives on environmental and development issues. The course covers various macro and microeconomic issues as well as economics of climate change.

This module is a Year 3 optional module for Economics Undergraduates. It aims at providing students with a thorough understanding of core economic policy challenges in the contemporary global economy, and to equip them with the theoretical and applied skills necessary to evaluate policy debates and challenges and contemplate policy solutions to such challenges.

This module offers an advanced introduction to the politics of global environmental change. It focuses on problems of environmental transformation in the context of international power relations, the expansion of capitalism, and socio-political pressures for radical change.

The purpose of this module is to examine the effects of political factors on economic and social transformation (and vice versa) with reference to some of the most successful developing economies. It focuses on two main issues. First, how did political factors (i.e. types of regime and the conditions of their formation) facilitate the transformation of certain developing economies towards upper middle-income status during the GATT or pre-globalization era (c. 1950-90). Second, the module will examine how upper middle income economies are facing up to the challenges of the globalization era, notably mobile capital (financialization and the emergence of global value chains) and the complex of constraints that constitute the “middle income trap”.

This course will familiarise students with debates on republicanism and revolution in both early modern western thinking and 19th to 20th century anti-colonial thinking. The course will focus on the ‘republican revival’ in western political thought of the 1960s to 80s that occurred in the context of decolonization and postcolonial republican foundings. It will examine the language of political activism and anti-colonial revolution and consider how this language constitutes republican theory both in the western canon and anti-colonial backlash against imperial domination.

This course provides a critical overview of economic theories, methods and economic policy-debates from a gender perspective. The course is designed to cover major debates in gender economics relevant to developed and developing countries.

This course introduces International Relations students to a wide range of issues in the contemporary world centred on conflict and the liberal world order. We look historically at the decline of inter-state war and the rise (and now decline) of civil wars, and at the rise of global terrorism and its implications, focusing on efforts to combat both the occurrence and conduct of conflict through international law and norms with a particular focus on the politics of human rights, international justice and humanitarianism. We look more specifically at the protection of civilians, torture, civil liberties, cyber warfare and drones, and the Responsibility to Protect. We also ask whether the rise of populism might erode the willingness of Western democracies to support, in principle at least, international norms and at the implications of this both for the liberal world order as a whole and the globalisation of democracy in particular.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module aims to introduce students to a range of theoretical and legal approaches to the study of law, multiculturalism and rights and to equip them with the critical tools to apply a critique to the liberal conception of ‘rights’. In doing so it provides a critique of legal concepts, categories and reasoning in a variety of context while drawing upon debates on intersectionality and an interdisciplinary framework for the study of law, legal disputes and legal pluralism.

This course provides a critical introduction to the legal regulation of global commodities, with a focus on the colonial histories of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Taking some of the world’s most heavily exchanged primary commodities as examples, we will track the development of their production and consumption, from their domestic origins to their circulation in the global sphere today. The histories of the principle commodities – such as coffee, cocoa, rubber, oil – tell the story of today’s global economy in microcosm.

The module provides students with critical tools to understand of how state regimes have responded to 'terrorist' violence, and also how law itself can unleash regimes of terror. It engages with historical, anthropological and theoretical debates in order to understand the relationship between law, violence and state power.

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

This module is designed for students who are interested and would like to build an indepth knowledge of theories of race, crime and the criminal justice system in the UK. It is set out to give a deep understanding of the theories and rationales underlying race, crime and the criminal justice and to help students critically reflect the system. It engages with some of the most important issues in the UK, such as the discretionary police power, stop and search, police questioning, prosecution policies, the under-funded and variable quality of criminal defence, the value and limitations of human rights, miscarriages of justice and its impact on racialised communities in Britain.

Afrophone philosophies (i.e. philosophies in African languages) are the philosophical discourses in African languages: the (oral or written) texts that are the channels of philosophical thought in Africa.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

This course builds technically on the second-year module, Econometrics, which is a prerequisite for this module. It also builds conceptually on the two second-year core modules: Microeconomic Analysis and Macroeconomic Analysis. The course is designed to provide students with a hands-on" environment. It aims to help students deepen and broaden their knowledge and understanding of econometric techniques needed for empirical analyses of both cross-sectional household-level data for micromodelling research and time-series data for macro and also financial modelling research. In addition, the course also aims to develop students' abilities in critical evaluation of what is taught in econometrics textbooks."

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

Looking at the story of this transition, this course locates SOAS within both the history of imperial education and the history of struggles to free academic scholarship from colonial world views. During the course we will examine the ways in which British imperial practices influenced the formation of contemporary academic disciplines, particularly those that are taught at SOAS today (languages, anthropology, history, art and archeology) but also those that are not (science).

This course will explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of philosophy from ‘the margins’, primarily examining epistemological arguments about the nature and form of knowledge, truth, subjectivity, and power (and their intersections) from perspectives traditionally marginalised by mainstream philosophy.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

This module provides students with the relevant tools to undetake a critical study of Palestinian and Israeli politics in both a regional and international context. In the first part we focus on the emergence of Zionism, the impact of the British Mandate peirod, the Arab revolt of 1936-39 and the regional / international context of the 1947-49 and 1967 wars. In the second half we shift to the contemporary period to critically analyse the Oslo Accords, 2nd Intifada and international activism. We will also engage music, novels, poetry, and film related to the subject for a more nuanced understanding of concepts like nationalism, settler-colonialism, militarism, and collective memory.

This course is about the economic structures, institutions and policy challenges in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The course starts with a broad economic history of the region and goes on to address the emergence of the economic structures, resource endowments, and political economy institutions of the modern Middle East. The course highlights the specificities of the political economy of the region in a global cotext and covers selected aspects of economic policy in the contemporary period in these countries. The contemporary nature of the problems facing the MENA countries are addressed throughout the course.

The aim of this course is to give a broad analytical and chronological outline of the macro political economic development of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from Independence to the current period. The course contains a broad mix of macro economic theory, and empirical and historical analysis.

The module provides a historical overview of economic development in Southeast Asia during the 20th and early 21st centuries, and assesses the major economic challenges facing the region today. Building on an analysis of the influence of colonialism on the economic and social development across the region, the module analyses the various economic strategies and policies adopted by Southeast Asian governments, and the outcomes.

This module is about cultural and social change in Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the entire continent, north and south of the Sahara, as well as considering the cultures of the African diaspora.

This module is about cultural and social change in Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the entire continent, north and south of the Sahara, as well as considering the cultures of the African diaspora.

This module introduces students to the history and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa from Senegambia down to Angola from ca. 1500 to the present. It gives a political and economic understanding of key developments and of social and cultural change and continuity.

This module introduces students to the history and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa from Senegambia down to Angola from ca. 1500 to the present. It gives a political and economic understanding of key developments and of social and cultural change and continuity.

This module's aim is to get rid of the ideological barrier linked to the notion of democracy as a political system of government that originated in ‘the West' by looking at how the modern concept of ‘democracy’ was introduced into China, and by exploring actual practices of decision-making and political participation.

This course examines the histories of nationalist and imperial politics that are held to account for the partition of British India. It examines the ‘experience’ of partition beyond its politics along with with the historiography of colonialism, nationalism and gain an understanding of cultural, political issues involved in the politics of governing diverse groups.

The course focuses on Mughal rule in north India within the context of the Muslim World. Using the political developments in India from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries as guiding lines for the discussion, the course will examine some of the main political, social, and religious institutions and processes in the Mughal Empire and their role in shaping state and society in South Asia.

This course is concerned with South Africa's tumultuous twentieth-century history. It is especially concerned with the ways in which ordinary Africans negotiated daily life within the strictures of these forms state repression.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module aims to introduce students to the many ways in which law and society interact in the subcontinent. We seek to do so by using, as far as possible, authors from the region, and focus on issues that continue to hold contemporary relevance.

This course will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

The module is intended to complement modules such as ‘History and Culture of Korea to the Late 19th Century’ and ‘Culture and Society in 20th Century Korea’ (which focuses on South Korea) to provide BA Korean students with a more comprehensive overview and understanding of the Korean peninsula and how it has developed, especially since the Pacific War.

The module aims to provide students with a working awareness of the main texts and underlying aesthetic principles of premodern Japanese drama from the earliest times to the mid 19th century. The primary textual focus will be upon the dramatic genres of noh, joururi (bunraku) and kabuki, and a major theme of the course will be the ways in which these genres recast and recycle plots, structures and thematic elements from older prose and poetry canons.

This module is the second of two 15 credits modules to supersede the existing 30 credits module History and Culture of Korea to the late 19th Century. Whereas the first module (History of Korea to the late 19th Century) will be a general history of Korea, this module will focus on Choson (1388-1910), the last dynasty of traditional Korea, and will cover in depth aspects of society and culture that are of crucial importance for our understanding of developments on the Korean peninsula in the 20th and 21st centuries. It will be suitable for students who have taken the History of Korea to the late 19th Century module, students with other prior knowledge of Korean history, and students with a specific interest in Choson Korea.

Focusing primarily on the Asia-Pacific War, this module critically explores the multiple ways in which memories have been created, circulated, and consumed in Japan, the Koreas, and the Sinophone area.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

The course will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.

This course presents the main issues in Israeli society through the unique case study of Jerusalem. By understanding the major issues, actors and processes at play in Jerusalem, although an extreme place with very particular features, one can learn a lot about Israel and Israeli society as a whole.

This module will offer a main narrative of Taoism as a recognisable tradition of religious ideas and practices throughout the history of China. The first part of the course will explore the historical development of Taoism in pre-modern China. We will analyse the early shaping of Taoist identity at the stage sometimes defined as ‘proto- Taoism’ (from antiquity to the second century CE), focusing on ancient texts like the Taodejing and the Zhuangzi. Then attention will be paid to the emergence and development of Taoism as an organised religion, with special emphasis on the Celestial Master (Tianshi) and its attitude towards popular cults, and also the emergence of the Shangqing, Lingbao and Quanzhen traditions. The second part of the course will focus on specific themes, such as the relationship of Taoism with Buddhism and Confucianism; ritual performances in Taoism; the formation of the Taoist canon; women as both goddesses and practitioners; outer and inner alchemy, also in relation to Chinese medicine. The course will end with a survey of modern developments, assessing the presence and new social role of Taoism in contemporary China and Taiwan, organisations such as the Taoist Association of China, and areas like the concern for the environment.