Moodle@Warwick

Module Outline

The module aims to equip students with advanced knowledge and understanding of a chosen area of study to undertake higher level independent research under guidance from a supervisor. It encourages students to develop their prior knowledge and understanding of art history at a higher level and undertake more focused and independent work. It encourages research skills, the critical application of methodology, and independent thinking. It enables students to make effective use of primary sources, both artistic and textual, in developing and completing a research project. It provides opportunities to develop research and writing.

Sample Syllabus

Module Format

This module is based around seminars and tutorials throughout the term with an emphasis on independent study.

Module Aims

Learn about significant scholarly debates among historians of art and/or architecture, analyse and evaluate their contributions

Identify and evaluate the most frequently used sources (visual and textual) to conduct and complete research on a select project

Engage in the analysis of a body of primary and secondary source material including relevant information technology

Communicate ideas and findings about the topic at hand both orally and in writing at a higher level

Present material effectively in a scholarly written format

Workload

14 contact hours (4 of which as tutorials)

You should carry out a minimum of 20 hours reading and preparation per week for this module.

Assessment

1 x 5,000 word research project due in week 1 of the following term (90%)

Engagement (10%)

The module will examine how history can advance our understanding of four areas of debate in Britain today: Brexit; the ‘Break-Up of Britain’; post-colonial challenges to national identity; and Protection of the NHS. Students will develop an appreciation of the deeper history of these issues and critically reflect on the role of history within public debate. They will work together to design and run a mini conference on the history of contemporary Britain and will each present a paper based on an element of original research that speaks to one of these issues.

You are being watched and measured. And you are not alone. For over a century, a global web of state, commercial, and individual surveillance has observed and measured an ever-widening variety of bodies, situations, and spaces. As our bodies have become legible to authorities and to ourselves, they have come to serve as identity documents, markers of kinship, and signs of entitlement or otherness. This module will explore the ways in which new ideas, knowledge and technologies have enabled states, societies and individuals to identify and assess their citizens, police their borders, and generate self-knowledge. From the invention of the ‘average man’ in the 19th century to the rise of home DNA testing kits and biometric passports, we will look at what it means to ‘measure up’ in modern society, and ask: how, when and where should our bodies be subjected to measurement, by whom, and for what purposes? Case studies will include fingerprinting, DNA profiling, and the all-too-familiar bathroom scale; others will be selected by students. 

100 years after the end of the First World War, one might be tempted to ask if there is anything left to say about this conflict. Yet, the contemporary relevance of an historical topic is unusually clear in the case of First World War studies. The conflict continues to intrude on the public sphere of former belligerent societies, and in many instances, historians have been called upon to engage in controversies that have produced more heat than light. Indeed, it seems that World War I has gained in importance since the 1990s. The growing interest in commemoration and the increased ‘social demand’ addressed to professional historians account, to a certain extent, for the dynamism of First World War studies. Indeed, as we conclude the centennial commemorations of the war, the history of what George F. Kennan called “the great seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century” remains a vibrant field of investigation. 

Overview

Gandhi printed his most famous work, Hind Swaraj (1909), in South Africa. Why? This course takes the history of printing technology as the starting point for rethinking the history of empire. Beginning with the East India Company and ending in Qing China, we follow an unlikely band of printers, publishers, authors and readers. We re-examine major themes in the global history of empire, from science and religion to slavery and nationalism. Throughout this course, books are treated as material objects, something which is easy to forget in the digital age. Books were written on, cut up, censored and burned. With this in mind, there is a strong focus on students developing practical skills. We will learn the techniques of the book historian, hunting for clues in the margins, examining bindings and illustrations. And with these skills in place, students will begin to read a selection of fascinating primary sources in a completely different light. From scientific journals and legal manuals, to abolitionist papers and anticolonial pamphlets, the history of empire starts to look very different from the perspective of the printing press.

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the discpline of Hispanic Studies and to foster a critical engagement with written and visual texts via the study of three key themes that each in different ways pose questions about studying other languages and cultures. Students will reflect on the nature and range of Hispanic Studies, and then engage with travel writing, images and stereotypes of the Hispanic world, and representations and interpretations of the Spanish Civil War. In each case, emphasis is placed on close textual analysis to foment (i) linguistic ability acquired in language modules; (ii) critical reading skills; (iii) management and understanding of source materials where relevant. 

The aim of this module is to further extend and refine competence in modern Spanish. Emphasis is placed on the four key skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing and on the deepening of both grammatical understanding and the appropriate use of advanced linguistic structures, vocabulary, and register in spoken and written discourse. The course aims to reinforce your mastery of the language in a wide range of authentic situations. At the end of the course you will be able to understand discourse about concrete and abstract topics, to give presentations about different topics, to report on the results of your independent reading and research, and to state your point of view and support it with solid arguments. You will make use of authentic resources from around the Hispanic world, including films, books, articles, newspapers, television and radio. You will complete a range of self-study activities through our multimedia VLE (Moodle) and take part in our virtual language exchange with students in Latin America and Spain.

The aim of this module is to further extend and refine competence in modern Spanish. Emphasis is placed on the four key skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing and on the deepening of both grammatical understanding and the appropriate use of advanced linguistic structures, vocabulary, and register in spoken and written discourse. The course aims to reinforce your mastery of the language in a wide range of authentic situations. At the end of the course you will be able to understand discourse about concrete and abstract topics, to give presentations about different topics, to report on the results of your independent reading and research, and to state your point of view and support it with solid arguments. You will make use of authentic resources from around the Hispanic world, including films, books, articles, newspapers, television and radio. You will complete a range of self-study activities through our multimedia VLE (Moodle) and take part in our virtual language exchange with students in Latin America and Spain.

This course explores the relationship between cinema, mobility and the city through the close analysis of contemporary films from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay. In encouraging students to think geographically about film, we will consider how cinematic locations – urban, rural and mobile – enable filmmakers to address broader social and cultural issues, such as migration, neo-colonialism, transnationalism and social inequality.

 How is this course taught?

The course is taught through a combination of weekly lectures and seminars. The lectures will serve to contextualise the individual films, while the seminars will include close textual analysis. Students will be required to watch each of the seven films before lectures/seminars, as well as carry out background readings on both the films and their geographical contexts. References to the background readings will be available for each week on Moodle.

Description

This module offers a completely different experience from other university courses. Whilst having the chance to investigate and reflect on your own aspirations and values, you will also complete 30 to 40 hours of volunteering in a local not-for-profit organisation or similar setting. During Autumn term 2016, you will be matched with a community-identified project, ready to start volunteering on your project when you begin the module at the beginning of 2017. This course will encourage you to reflect on and enhance your practical experience in a community-engaged setting. You will explore the links between academic study and community engagement within a framework of respect, reciprocity, relevance and reflection.

The module will combine theoretical understandings from your home discipline with new interdisciplinary perspectives and apply them to practical, real world problems in communities outside the university. We will investigate and reflect on what can be learned from engagement with communities and with community-identified problems, and you will test the relationship between theory and practice, reflecting collectively and individually on the emergent learning that results.

Structure

The module will consist of ten two-hour sessions, in addition to the community-based project. Some weeks, a guest lecturer will examine aspects of community engagement from the perspective of their particular discipline. With these perspectives in mind, you will work in the second half of each session with the module convenor to develop your learning in an interdisciplinary manner, including reflection on practical project experience. Other weeks will be workshop style throughout - in both cases consistent attendance is very important to the development of critically reflective responses to theory and practice for this module.

Cities have traditionally adapted to the raise of new technologies, like cars or telephones, for instance. Nowadays, digital technologies and data in particular are transforming the material, cultural, social and political spheres of the urban realm.

These transformations require new theories and research methods to understand the spaces, scales, and agents involved in the relationships between data and the urban. This module offers an insight into some of these current theories and methodologies, to question the notion of data itself, to challenge controversial notions like the smart city, and to expand the realms of inquiry of urban data.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im919-urban-data/

Cities have traditionally adapted to the raise of new technologies, like cars or telephones, for instance. Nowadays, digital technologies and data in particular are transforming the material, cultural, social and political spheres of the urban realm.

These transformations require new theories and research methods to understand the spaces, scales, and agents involved in the relationships between data and the urban. This module offers an insight into some of these current theories and methodologies, to question the notion of data itself, to challenge controversial notions like the smart city, and to expand the realms of inquiry of urban data.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im919-urban-data/