London Now Arcadia-Taught Courses
Courses Available in Spring 10
- LONS AREC 180 Environment, Communities and the Arts in Britain (description)
- LONS ARMO 312 London as Art Capital (description)
- LONS ARUK 110 Introduction to British Art and Architecture (description)
- LONS BUUK 190 Marketing in the UK Environment (description)
- LONS ENCW 210 Creative Writing - The Art of Fiction (description)
- LONS DTPC 181 Play Critique (description)
- LONS DTSH 180 Introduction to Shakespeare in Text and Performance (description)
- LONS HIRP 350 Developing Economies: Social, Political and Economic Change (description)
- LONS HIUK 130 History of Modern Britain since 1850 (description)
- LONS JPLN 110 Journalism: News and Feature Writing (description)
- LONS LIUK 120 Writers' London: Contemporary British Literature (description)
- LONS LISG 320 Sex, Gender and the City (description)
- LONS MSFC 310 Filming the City (description)
- LONS PSLC 350 London Global City: Society, Economy, and Culture (description)
- LONS PSUK 251 Political Change in 20th and 21st Century Britain (description)
- LONS SOIW 340 Islam and the West (description)
- LONS SOHR 260 Human Rights in an Era of Terrorism (description)
- LONS SOSP 220 London: Space, Place, and Culture in the 20th Century Metropolis (description)
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| LONS ARUK 110 |
Introduction to British Art and Architecture |
4 credits |
| LONS ARMO 312 |
London as Art Capital |
4 credits |
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| LONS AREC 180 |
Environment, Communities, and the Arts in Britain |
4 credits |
| LONS SOSP 220 |
London: Space, Place, and Culture in the 20th Century Metropolis |
4 credits |
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| LONS BUUK 190 |
Marketing in the UK Environment |
4 credits |
| LONS PSLC 350 |
London Global City: Society, Economy and Culture |
4 credits |
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| LONS ENCW 210 |
Creative Writing - The Art of Fiction |
4 credits |
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| LONS DTSH 180 |
Introduction to Shakespeare in Text and Performance |
4 credits |
| LONS DTPC 181 |
Play Critique |
4 credits |
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| LONS HIUK 130 |
History of Modern Britain since 1850 |
4 credits |
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| LONS JLPN 110 |
Journalism: News and Feature Writing |
4 credits |
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| LONS LIUK 120 |
Writers' London: Contemporary British Literature |
4 credits |
| LONS LISG 320 |
Sex, Gender, and the City |
4 credits |
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| LONS MSFC 310 |
Filming the City |
4 credits |
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| LONS HIRP 350 |
Developing Economies: Social, Political, and Economic Change |
4 credits |
| LONS PSUK 251 |
Political Change in 20th and 21st Century Britain |
4 credits |
| LONS SOHR 260 |
Human Rights in an Era of Terrorism |
4 credits |
| LONS SOIW 340 |
Islam and the West |
4 credits |
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| LONS ARAP 310 |
Architecture, Urban Planning, and Displacement in London |
4 credits |
Art History/ Art
LONS ARUK 110 Introduction to British Art and Architecture
(view complete syllabus)
This course is designed to provide opportunities for the student to learn of the development and significance of painting and architecture in Britain. It introduces the student to various genres such as portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. The course also involves an examination of how artists and architects were affected and influenced by industrialization and technological developments that transformed the social, political and economic conditions of 19th Century Britain.
Full advantage will be taken of the rich public art collections in London and will also include visits to key buildings studied in class. Our sessions will consists of lectures, seminars and students’ presentations in class or during gallery visits.
Topics will be chosen from the following:
- NeoClassicism
- Romanticism
- Gothic Revival
- The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
- The Arts and Crafts Movement
- The Aesthetic Movement
- Impressionism in Britain
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LONS ARMO 312 London as Art Capital
(view complete syllabus)
This course examines how the different styles in art reflect the political, the social and the cultural conditions of the society in which the art has been produced. The rich diversity of London’s museums, galleries and special exhibitions offer an excellent opportunity to learn about artists and movements.
While familiarizing students with the contemporary British and international Art it will also provide essential background in those movements that have shaped the present art scene – e.g. Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Non-Objective Art, American Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, New British Conceptualism, Installations.
The influences of the dealers and the financial speculative side of the art world will also be taken into consideration.
Our sessions will consist of lectures and visits to galleries, special exhibitions, artist’s studios and Salesrooms. Teaching is based on lectures and tutorials, requiring vivid participation of students.
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Arts/Sociology/Political Science
LONS AREC 180 Environment, Communities and the Arts in London
(view complete syllabus)
Intensive study of the way environmental and community arts in great Britain have responded to a growing awareness of the inevitable changes resulting from global warming and profligate energy-use which question current social, artistic, political and economic thinking. This movement will be set in its historical context and students will engage with a wide range of very different individual and group responses to these challenges. Classroom study will be supplemented by day trips and a wide variety of guest speakers. Students will be required to discuss and debate the meaning of such work in its wider social, political and environmental context.
LONS SOSP 220 London: Space, Place, and Culture in the 20th Century Metropolis
(view complete syllabus)
This course examines British social, cultural, political, and economic histories as materially manifested on the landscape of contemporary London – from shopping centers in Milton Keynes to public monuments in Westminster, recently converted East End factories to recently vacated Docklands skyscrapers, the Underground to the M25. In so doing, the course evaluates the extent to which our attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge(s) about the world are reflected in and affected by the built environment. What, in other words, do analyses of London’s contemporary landscape tell us about British culture, and, at the same time, what do analyses of British culture tell us about the landscape of contemporary London?
Informed by recent developments in architectural criticism, cultural studies, art history, political science, literature, and urban studies, the course approaches these questions from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, reflecting the varied ways in which cultural producers have engaged London over the course of the “long” twentieth century (i.e. 1890-2008).
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Business
LONS PSLC 350 London Global City: Society, Economy and Culture
(view complete syllabus)
Framed by a ‘historical-geographical’ approach, this course explores London’s evolving global reach, examining its role in key economic, social, political, cultural and spatial processes and identifying the effects that these have in turn had in its own urban life and landscape. The course briefly documents London’s establishment as an outpost of the Roman Empire in early history to its rise as the politico-administrative heart of the British Empire, to focus on London’s emergence as a global city and to elucidate its role in an increasingly globalised world. We will examine the unravelling of London’s global connections through concepts such as urban space and place, globalisation and localisation, spatial division of labour, networks, flows and circuits, migration, transnationalism and multiculturalism.
The course is based on a mix of lectures and student-led seminars, and also includes a guided walk through central London and a visit to the Museum in Docklands. Lectures address the key themes of the weekly program.
The course will also draw on a variety of material, such as audio-visual sources (film and documentary extracts, music) as well as classic and contemporary literature, aimed at providing an exciting intellectual environment that will stimulate active student participation. Students will be required to read designated texts for the session ahead and to discuss them in seminar sessions, linking these to their own personal experiences of London through the different learning activities, which are an integral part of the program.
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LONS BUUK 190 Marketing in the UK Environment
(view complete syllabus)
This course introduces students to the importance of marketing as a philosophy of business, and to the tools of marketing to provide solutions to business problems. Examples will be drawn from the United Kingdom and the Single European Market in particular.
The course starts with an overview of marketing as a concept and its development. It then deals with the marketing environment, the concept of a product and the product life cycle and pricing in the market mix.
Marketing research is related to consumer behavior, communications and promotional activities. Discussion of distribution issues leads to a consideration of the factors affecting choice of distribution channels. The importance of a structured approach to new product development is explored through consideration of sources of new product ideas, development and testing and market testing.
Texts include: Kotler et al, Principles of Marketing (European edition); current marketing journals and the opportunity to draw on London as a marketing center. Assessment: Two essays and a final examination.
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Creative Writing
LONS ENCW 210 Creative Writing - The Art of Fiction
(view complete syllabus)
Students will be encouraged to develop their own creative writing within the context of contemporary British fiction. We will analyze the approaches taken by various British novelists and short story writers. Our focus will be decidedly practical as we learn to read as writers, gleaning tips on the craft of constructing prose fiction. The course will invite students to consider the issues raised in the process of writing, aiming to uncover various methods of confronting potential problems. Our textual analysis will provide a springboard for our own writing. Students will develop their own imagination, self-criticism and craft through a combination of structured creative writing exercises and independent assignments.
By the end of the course, each class member will have collected a portfolio of work. The program will end with a literary event, at which each student will have the opportunity to read a selection of his/her work.
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Drama and Theatre
LONS DTSH 180 An Introduction to Shakespeare in Text and Performance
(view complete syllabus)
This course provides students with a means of approaching Shakespeare focusing on the themes and ideas which permeated his dramatic art. Shakespeare's artistic development is explored with special emphasis placed on the dynamic relationship of the plays to 20th century society and the individual.
Although this is an introductory course, it is not a survey course. It is a detailed study of six representative texts which are placed in both a modern and Elizabethan social and theatrical context. Wide use is made of available recordings, films and stage productions.
A combination of lectures, tutorials and seminars enables students to approach the material in a variety of ways. Lectures cover background and social and theatrical material as well as Shakespeare's biography. In general, the tutorials emphasize close textual study and the discussion of the relevance of these plays to the 20th century.
Students must be prepared to pay for the required trips and theatre tickets. Note: the additional cost to each student for tickets to mandatory theatre performances is about £35.
Lecture topics include: The role of the monarch in Elizabethan society and Shakespearean drama, the theme of appearance and reality, Elizabethan concepts of man and nature, cruelty and compassion in the Elizabethan age, the development of Shakespeare's theatre.
Assessment: In addition to various written assignments, there is a final examination.
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LONS DTPC 181 Play Critique
(view complete syllabus)
The Play Critique course is centered on going to the theatre, which makes it different from other academic courses you may have taken. Theatre is a live art form: to experience its richness and diversity, as provided by this course, is a once-in-a-lifetime luxury.
By the end of the course, you will know all about the artistic, financial and professional structures that shape the theatre in Britain, as well as have an understanding of British society and culture in general.
Throughout the semester, you will attend ten or eleven theatre productions covering as wide a range of the London theatres as possible. Complementing these visits will be a series of lectures that combine historical and cultural backgrounds with information about the practical aspects of theater, such as direction and stage design. Whenever possible, guest speakers are invited.
You will also participate in a weekly seminar discussion about each of the theater productions attended. This will teach you to consider your role as a member of the audience, to help you to develop a constructive critical approach and give you the opportunity to test out your ideas in debate.
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History
LONS HIUK 130 History of Modern Britain since 1850
(view complete syllabus)
History of Modern Britain since 1850 examines major historical changes that have transformed Britain from the Victorian era onwards. Its aim is to enable students to participate in a course that stimulates both intellect and imagination to provide context and background to the experience of Britain, at the same time as stirring (encouraging) an excitement in history.
The focus is on key issues: (1) industrial and imperial power – from dominance to second rank; (2) the impact of the world wars on British society (3) making a better society - the drive to relieve poverty and create a welfare state; (4) the changing position of women; (5) the Irish and Britain. While we will debate and analyse the issues in their historical and cultural context, many of them point the way to contemporary problems and the ways in which they are tackled.
A central role in the course is played by London's historical resources: its buildings, museums and libraries, ranging from the Guildhall – where the largest collection of London's primary documentary sources are held - to the Imperial War Museum with its impressive collections from the two world wars. Seminar discussions are built round artefacts, original written material and film, as well as books and articles. The wider areas of concern to historians are raised throughout our sessions, cause and effect, the short-run and the long-run, the role of the individual, continuity and discontinuity together with the question of turning points.
Students are helped to form a coherent general analysis of the period and to undertake assisted independent research in their chosen special study areas, drawn from topics that have included, for example, Victorian monarchy, the Suffragettes, the unemployed and new jobs in the 1930s, and the London Blitz of 1940.
Pre-course reading: we consider that some of the novels of the period give the best introduction. We recommend such works as Hard Times by Dickens; Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson; King Solomon's Mines, Rider Haggard; Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers; Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell; and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe. The set text is State and Society: British Political and Social History 1870-1997 by Martin Pugh (The Arnold History of Britain, 2000).
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Journalism
LONS JPLN 110 Journalism: News and Feature Writing
(view complete syllabus)
Workshops designed to simulate a newsroom environment will encourage students to explore newsgathering, news writing, feature writing and interviewing. The course will introduce students to a diverse range of UK publications, including broadsheets, tabloids and magazines. Students will critically assess the material and identify the different styles and approaches taken by different publications. Students will explore the fundamentals of practical journalism, including using English effectively and developing editing and proofreading skills. Skills taught will include: sourcing ideas, researching a story, using different methodologies, targeting the right audience/market, structuring news and features articles and writing effective introductions and endings.
Outcomes:
- Developing an understanding of the essential characteristics of news and features journalism
- Developing an understanding of different media styles and markets
- Being able to recognize, select and obtain important and relevant information from written and verbal sources
- Being able to write clear, vigorous and balanced articles for newspapers and magazines
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Literature
LONS LIUK 120 Writers’ London: Contemporary British Literature
(view complete syllabus)
An introduction to contemporary literature by writers (male and female, British and non-British) who have used London not only as location but as a controlling metaphor -- an Eldorado, a prison, a refuge, a vast market-place, a gigantic playground.
The course will be based on lectures, student-led seminars, and group discussion, as well as (wherever possible) a visit from the writer studied that week. We shall also watch film of interviews of writers and of dramatic versions of their work.
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LONS LISG 320 Sex, Gender, and the City
(view complete syllabus)
Contemporary London is a vibrant world city with a range of overlapping and divergent subcultures. Like all cities, it has its own erotics and its own sexual spatial politics. From the swinging 60s to the present, this course examines contemporary literary London through the lens of sexuality, teasing out how different representations of the city and its varied people and exploring a range of topics in contemporary gender and sexuality studies. Among the themes we’ll consider are: the impact of feminism and 1960s sexual liberation; the impact of AIDS and the politics of sexuality in the 1980s; the ways ethnic communities are challenged by shifting notions of sex and gender; the crisis of masculinity in the 1990s. Authors we study include Edna O’Brien, Neil Bartlett, Sarah Waters, Hanif Kureishi and Martin Amis. We’ll supplement our reading by viewing films (e.g. Antonioni’s Blow Up and Kureishi’s My Beautiful Launderette) and we’ll visit London’s Tate Modern, and consider gender and sexuality as it figures in contemporary urban British art (for instance, the work of Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry).
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Media Studies
LONS MSFC 310 Filming the City
(view complete syllabus)
Film studies has become increasingly attentive to the role of the city in film. New York, Paris, Berlin and London: archetypal cinematic cities each with complex and multifarious meanings. In this course we’ll explore key themes of contemporary urban British cinema, with an emphasis on filming the city. Urban cinema is an interdisciplinary subject linking film studies with sociology, cultural studies, geography and urban studies. The course explores films that look at urban housing, employment, race, class, gender and immigration; examining their responses to urban successes and failures. Many writers have drawn attention to the correlation between the mobility and visual and aural sensations of the city and the cinema; the striking ability of cinema to capture and express the spatial complexity, diversity, and social dynamism of the city through mise-en-scene, location filming, lighting, cinematography and editing (Mark Shiel). The course pays attention to a range of texts both as aesthetic objects but also as responses to economic, political and social pressures exerted on the film industry since the 1990s. The unit is broken into three blocks: the first looks at representations of London in the 1990s; the second takes a detour to explore urban spaces across England, thus emphasising the range of urban societies; finally we return ‘home’ to explore the London of the late 1990s up to the present day.
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Political Science
LONS HIRP 350 Developing Economies: Social, Political, and Economic Change
(view complete syllabus)
This courses investigates new developments in the global political economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century . In particular it examines the claim that four key new players – Brazil, Russia, China and India, the BRICs – have emerged and are transforming the shape and dynamics of the contemporary world economy. It will consider whether ‘BRICs’ – industrial, urban states – can be created from ‘straw’ – agricultural, rural societies – and what the political and human implications might be. It will consider the formation of power relations – both at the national and international levels – and the distribution of life chances, especially wealth and poverty amongst social classes, the rural/urban transition and environmental conditions, and gender and generational relations. It will investigate these issues from a perspective that draws upon the insights of comparative political economy and historical sociology and will use the political and economic growth of the USA as a point of introduction and comparison.
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LONS PSUK 251 Political Change in 20th and 21st Century Britain
(view complete syllabus)
This course examines processes of political change in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century through to the present. It assesses the challenges Britain faced as a result of the twin processes of welfare and warfare and the institutional and policy changes which these pressures produced.
The twin conjunctures of the 1930s/40s and 1970s/1980s will be given special attention as decisive moments in the re-ordering of British social and political life and the way the changes related to Britain’s sense of itself as a country coming to terms with the perception of decline and the existence of alternative and potentially disruptive models of modernity. Students on the course are expected to read The Guardian or The Telegraph daily.
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LONS SOHR 260 Human Rights in an Era of Terrorism
(view complete syllabus)
The aim of this course is to provide students with an insight to the nature of Human Rights and how they can be affected by political events. The course will look at the various rights in the Human Rights legislation and then examine the terrorism aspect in more detail. It will include aspects of government and international relations in light of current events. The learning outcomes of the course are to provide students with a good overall view of the nature and extent of Human Rights, and to look at specific aspects of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as to look at the legislation introduced as a result of terrorism and its compatibility with an individual’s Human Rights.
Topics will range from freedom from torture to personal liberty, the right to a fair trial, the right to privacy, terrorism police powers, counter-terrorism measures and the rights of suspects and the rule of law.
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LONS SOIW 340 Islam and the West
(view complete syllabus)
The aim of this course is to focus on the historical, political and religious relationships between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West.' Islam has for centuries been Europe’s neighbour and cultural contestant with a history of conflict and co-existence. Since September 11 there has been increasing talk of a ‘clash of civilisations’, but globalisation has also has created an interdependency of faiths which requires greater co-operation, understanding and dialogue. A recurrent theme of this course will be whether it is possible to separate the world into monolithic entities called ‘Islam’ and the ‘West.’ Why is one defined in terms of religion and the other a geographical designation? Further, we are increasingly witnessing ‘Islam in the West.' Muslims are not confined to the Middle East but have spread in large numbers to Europe and we will explore this theme by looking at issues surrounding Islam and multiculturalism which will include a site visit to the Islamic Centre of England in London. Another theme will be the relations between religion and state in Islam and Christianity. Is Islam inherently resistant to secularisation as some scholars and Islamic activists believe? The course is multi-disciplinary encompassing history, sociology of religion and international relations.
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