History and Politics BA Hons - 2020 Entry

Course Structure

Many of Lancaster's degree programmes are flexible, offering students the opportunity to cover a wide selection of subject areas to complement their main specialism. You will be able to study a range of modules, some examples of which are listed below.

Year 1

Core

• From Ancient to Modern: History and Historians

  An introduction to the discipline, Lancaster’s first-year History core course offers a fascinating survey of the last fifteen-hundred years. The course focuses on pivotal trends and events in European history, but it encompasses regions of wider world as distant as California, India, Japan and the South Pacific.

  You’ll become familiar with a wide range of primary sources used by historians in the writing of history. You’ll gain insights into how historians conduct research and interpret the past, and will therefore better understand the reasons for changing historical interpretations.

  In the process, by undertaking directed reading, by independent research, by attending lectures, by participating in seminar discussions, by working sometimes in a team, and by writing and receiving constructive feedback on what you have written, you will develop your study techniques and other transferable skills.

  The long chronological range and types of history covered by the course will extend your intellectual and historical interests and enable you subsequently to make informed choices from among the many historical options available to you in Part 2, either as a History Major student or as a Minor.

• Politics in the Modern World

  This module introduces students to some of the key areas of Politics and International Relations. It will provide a basic introduction and a foundation for future study, as well as expand and develop knowledge into new areas.

  The module tells a story about the 20th century that enables students to make sense of the 21st century world. Beginning with the consequences of the First World War, the module introduces students to the events and ideas that have transformed societies in complex ways: the evolution of the welfare state; the problems of democracy; increasingly global formations of governance; the transformation from Cold War geopolitics to the 21st century’s War on Terror; and the emergence of new issues such as global warming, amongst a wide range of other issues.

  Students are introduced to the research concerns of members of the department, as well as setting the scene for modules offered at advanced stages in the degree structure.

Year 2

Optional

• Comparative Politics of the Asia Pacific and the Middle East

  The aim of this module is to offer students from a wide range of backgrounds the opportunity to engage with the most important debates and issues in the study of the politics of the Middle East and Asia, and to locate and contextualise them within wider debates and scholarship of global politics. The module aims to develop enhance critical understanding of a series of key issues in the politics of the contemporary Middle East and Asia, as well as familiarising students with a wide range of case studies.

  The module will typically include the following topics:

  • Introducing the region: a theoretical framework
  • Nationalism and nation-building
  • Democratisation
  • Colonialism and its legacies
  • Gender and politics
  • State and citizenship
  • Social and political movements
  • Political culture
• Economics for the Real World

  This module explores the analysis of contemporary economic problems and issues. It will help you develop a knowledge of the analysis deployed by policy makers and by media commentators when presenting potential solutions to a range of contemporary economic challenges. At the end of the module you should better understand the character of economic debates, be able to account for a range of (political) positions on the market economy and have some experience of the interaction between political and economic analyses both in academic analysis and in more general policy debates. More generally, this module is intended to demystify the debates about economics in the media, in political debates, in specialised policy prescriptions and help you develop a nuanced appreciation of your own analyses of contemporary market society.

• Ethics: Theory and Practice

  This module aims to provide students with an understanding of some historical and contemporary approaches to the subject of ethics. It addresses central issues by engaging with classical texts in the history of the subject, such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism.

  The module will also explore selected topics in moral philosophy, such as the nature, strength and weakness of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory. In addition to this, students will study topics in meta-ethics, such as the ‘moral problem’, non-cognitivist realism, and quasi-realism.

  Other topics covered include topics in applied and practical ethics, such as issues of life and death in biomedical practice, the ethics of war, and the ethics of personal life; as well as the nature of moral motivation and moral psychology.

• Gandhi and the End of Empire in India, 1885-1948

  By what means was Indian independence seized from the British Empire in 1947? This module explores opposition to British rule in India from the end of the nineteenth century until 1947 when colonial India was divided to create the nation states of India and Pakistan. In particular, we will explore the modes of resistance that emerged from the Indian freedom struggle and in particular, the role of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress, an organization that had been founded in 1885 as a loyal and moderate organization. Gandhi created a mass movement that challenged the colonial state in extraordinary ways. British rule in India gradually lost credibility and struggled to find the means of maintaining control in the face of massive resistance to its right to govern India.

  You will explore Gandhi’s philosophies of personal restraint and political resistance to the injustices of the colonial state. You will also trace the emergence of religious politics in India during this period and the increasing pace of communal conflict, in particular Hindu-Muslim antagonism. What was the role of the colonial state in firing communal anxiety? Did Gandhi’s political ideas allay or encourage the conflation of political action and religious identity? The course ends with the partition of India, the largest migration in history and a process in which over one million people lost their lives, and the event that led, in 1948, to Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu fundamentalist.

• Indian Politics, Society and Religion

  This module aims to introduce and familiarise students to the interplay between politics, society and religion in the world's largest democracy, India. At a time when India is emerging as a global power and economic powerhouse despite persistent poverty and various socio-political fissures, a critical balance must be struck in the understanding between its potential and its problems. India offers powerful lessons on the challenges and achievements of democracy in a deeply pluralistic and unequal society.

  An examination of these issues opens up conceptual preconceptions about democracy, religion, secularism, discrimination, globalisation and political mobilisation, which tend to be structured by knowledge of Western polities. The particular issues concerning large populations of many different religions and huge social differences offer pathways of understanding to many pressing global issues.

  Some of the main themes covered include democracy, religion and social change, as well as an exploration of the religious minorities and caste politics and Dalits in India.

• International Relations and Security

  The principal objective of this module is to provide a relatively comprehensive and integrated foundation to the study of international relations by introducing students to its basic conceptual vocabulary and theoretical concerns and by applying this conceptual knowledge to an understanding of changes and developments in the international system.

  The module covers the historical development of the discipline in the 20th century into the 21st century, moving from the orthodoxy that has come to dominate mainstream Anglo-American international relations (Realism and Liberalism) through to the various challenges that have emerged from critical schools of thought. The module examines how different theories of international relations illuminate and interrogate some of the central ethico-political problems of the 'international' in modern history.

• Introduction to Peace Studies

  This module provides amongst a range of other issues: a study of war, its causes and consequences; violence at personal and structural levels within society (especially racism); positive definitions of peace; and misperceptions and enemy images through the media.

  The module investigates and examines theoretical and practical issues surrounding peace and violence within modern society. It also examines the conditions of peace and war, assessing the scope for conflict resolution, non-violence and reconciliation. The first term introduces the main approaches within Peace Studies, exploring the development of ideas in the field as they bear on the roots of violence and understandings of peace and peace-making. The second term applies this thinking to contemporary conflicts, focusing on policies of conflict prevention and conflict resolution.

  The module is taught in a non-dogmatic and interdisciplinary manner, encouraging students to develop their own perspectives and conclusions following discussions and debates throughout the year.

• Inventing Human Rights, 1776-2001

  Of all intellectual and ideological concepts in the modern world, few are as contested and powerful as human rights. At their most influential, concerns for the protection of human rights have been used to justify international conflict and widespread military intervention in order to save the lives of thousands of people. Yet human rights critics argue that they are a form of cultural imperialism that limits the sovereignty of local populations. How has an ethical and moral concern for individual lives come to be so divisive? Why after years of supporting the establishment of international human rights law do many governments now pledge to scrap their own human rights acts?

  This module will examine the history of human rights, putting their development into a broad historical context. It will chart the development of rights discourses from the pre-modern era through to the present, assessing the influence that the enlightenment, imperialism and war have had on their construction. It will offer students the opportunity to explore differing aspects of the history of human rights. Indicative topics include:

  • Codifying and Quantifying Rights: 1776, 1789, 1948
  • The Universality of Human Rights
  • Human Rights and Humanitarianism, 1807-2001
  • Decolonisation and Self-Determination, 1945-1991
  • Gendered rights
  • Capital punishment in the nineteenth and twentieth century
  • Responding to Genocide: The Holocaust, Bangladesh, Srebrenica
  • Amnesty International, 1961-2001
  • Helsinki Watch/Human Rights Watch, 1975-2001
• Nature and culture 1500-1700: Themes from the Renaissance

  This is a rare opportunity to study a revolution in ideas about the world we live in. It begins in the Renaissance (1500), when blood-letting was a common treatment for diseases, when no-one suspected that the earth moved around the sun, when witches were executed for performing diabolic magic, and when students thought that the best authors on their reading lists had to have died two thousand years ago.

  The module ends in the early modern period (1700), and with ‘modern’ thinkers like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. But these people believed, respectively, that new inventions would recreate Paradise on earth, that the laws of billiards proved the existence of God, that the ocean’s tides proved that the earth moved, and that Christianity was a corrupt religion.

  You will find out why Renaissance men and women believed what they did, discuss how modern the ‘moderns’ really were, and which historians have the best explanation of this exciting period in the history of ideas.

• Restless Nation: Germany in the 20th Century

  This module gives a broad thematic overview of the history of Germany in the twentieth century. Few country’s histories have been more tumultuous over the past two centuries than that of Germany. Rapid industrialisation, varied federal traditions, revolutions, the launching of and defeat in two world wars, responsibility for war crimes and genocide on an unparalleled scale, foreign occupation and re-education, and political division for four decades have made German history, and the ways in which Germans have remembered it, contentious and of broad public concern. In few countries have visions of the nation's history been so varied and contested, and few peoples have created and faced such challenges when confronting their 'transient' or 'shattered' past.

  In order to provide a thematic focus, this module will examine in particular the reasons for the rise of National Socialism, the character of National Socialism, and the difficulties of the Federal Republic of Germany to deal with its difficult and contentious past, that is the attempt at 'coming to terms with the past' (Vergangenheitsbewltigung).

• The Politics of Development

  This module introduces students to the main approaches to development. It provides students with an overview of the main theoretical approaches, especially modernisation theory, world systems analysis, feminist theories, and post-colonialism. It relates these theories to issues and case studies including the debt question, the impact of globalisation, global governance, corporate social responsibility, poverty and inequality, social movements and the activities of NGOs.

  The module comprises two interrelated parts. The first term deals with the main theoretical approaches to development. Topics here include global integration, disengagement, democracy-autocracy, aid-trade, the case of drugs, Islam, southern organisations, and theories of modernisation and dependency.

  The second term pursues links between the conceptual issues raised in term one and connects them to global- and national-focused perspectives on the politics of development. The instability of third world states will be examined in terms of competing legacies from the pre-colonial and colonial periods and high social expectations of development. Perspectives and examples will be drawn from Africa and Latin America.

• The Politics of the European Union

  This module examines the origins, workings and policies of the European Union. It begins by considering the treaties that led to the contemporary union and focuses on the key strains of thought that have given rise to contemporary debates about the form the European Union ought to take.

  At a time of unprecedented financial crisis and the prospect of a British exit from the EU itself, the module offers a comprehensive focus on all key issues from European politics, government, and economics, to public policy. It includes an analysis of the process and dynamics of European integration, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union; an account of the various European institutions which have developed (including the work of the Commission in Brussels), a discussion of key public policy areas (with an emphasis on the European Social Model) and finally a focus on European party politics, covering influential European ideologies such as Social Democracy, Christian Democracy and also Euro-scepticism.

• The United Kingdom: State, Politics and Policies

  This module aims to deepen students' understanding of the major ideas, arrangements, policies and controversies which have characterised post-war British politics.

  The module examines the evolution of the politics of the United Kingdom from an era broadly characterised by consensus and stability (1945-70) to one which has proved much more turbulent in a variety of ways (1970 onwards). This examination is set within the context of rival political traditions and of competing theories of representative government. Topics covered in the first term include changes in electoral behaviour and developments in the political parties, as well as consideration of the problems of governing the component parts of the United Kingdom (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). In the second term the focus is on the key institutions of central government (parliament and the executive) and on the UK's changing relationship with Europe. The last part of the course examines the development of public policy in the areas of welfare and the economy.

• The Victorians and Before: Britain, 1783-1901

  Who were the Victorians? Sometimes they are credited with inventing modern Britain, with the industrial revolution, urbanisation, democratisation, the transport network, and the law and order system listed among their achievements. Yet at the same time, they exhibited attitudes to gender, sexuality, race, politics, and poverty which would be considered shocking and disgraceful by modern standards.

  This module introduces you to a fascinating and contradictory period in British history. You will discover nineteenth-century Britain by exploring its most important and contentious spaces, such as the factory, the workhouse, the prison, the city, the railway carriage, and the home. You will find out what life was really like in the long nineteenth century by studying a range of primary sources, including novels, press reports, paintings, cartoons, and autobiographies.

Year 3

Optional

• 'The Shock of the New': Modernity and the Modernisms of American Culture, 1877-1919

  Many writers have described the years of unprecedented historical change that surrounded the turn of the twentieth century as a time of 'cultural crisis'. This interdisciplinary module in US cultural history explores that so-called crisis through the close reading and analysis of a variety of important written and visual texts, including fiction and non-fiction, architecture and urban design, painting, photography and cinema. Course themes include: technology and culture, labour and capital, imperialism and the 'myth of the west', immigration and urbanisation, celebrity and consumer culture, reform politics, the Great War, and cultural modernism.

• A Global History of the Cold War

  The traditional historiography of the Cold War focused predominantly on the United States and the Soviet Union, and the European theatre of the conflict. This module, in contrast, offers you a different, less Western-centric view of the Cold War. You will study the impact of the East-West struggle in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and how the course of the Cold War was affected by conflicts in the Global South. Thereby, you will learn that the Global Cold War was not only dominated by the two superpowers, but was also heavily influenced by Third World actors and lesser Cold War powers such as the People’s Republic of China.

  The study of the Global Cold War is currently the most dynamic field in Cold War History and, probably, even in International History more generally. As a result, you will be able to engage with a vast body of international literature, and have the opportunity to carry out primary sources-based research. This is rendered possible by the availability of specific Cold War History document collections, national collections of diplomatic documents, as well as digital archives and document collections.

• Advertising and Consumerism in Britain, 1853-1960

  This module explores the origins of modern ‘consumer society’ in Britain, introducing you to an exciting and innovative new field of historical research.

  In the hundred years from the abolition of advertising tax in 1853 to the birth of commercial television in the 1950s, advertising became a ubiquitous feature of modern capitalism. You will examine the causes and consequences of this process of commercialisation using a variety of primary sources, from press reports, novels, and cartoons, to business archives, social surveys, and, of course, the advertisements themselves.

  You will explore the changing relationship between people and their possessions, new retail environments, including the department store and the supermarket, how advertising has shaped modern gender identities, and how ethical consumerism was pioneered by the co-operative movement. Advertising is political, and you will also see how it helped Britain win two world wars and market the Empire to its own people. You will learn how advertisements work by designing your own advertising campaign in a particular historical context. You’ll never look at shops or advertisements in the same way again.

• Africa and Global Politics

  African states are among the poorest, most artificial in the world. This means their relations with the global system have a critical impact on African politics from the global to the local level.

  This module aims to:

  • Provide an overview of major issues facing Africa in the global system since independence
  • Introduce and assess alternative approaches to the study of Africa, through analysis of particular issues facing African states
  • Contribute one perspective to an overall understanding of the new structure of the global system in the twenty-first century.

  This module provides a historical and thematic introduction to the issues facing Africa in the international system today. The module is divided into four sections. The first focuses on the impact of colonialism on shaping the economy, the state and perceptions of race. The second section examines the first four decades of independence. The third and fourth look at key contemporary issues such as HIV/AIDS and actors such as China and South Africa.

• Britain in the World

  This module presents a detailed analysis of the major developments in British foreign policy since 1945. It explains these developments within a global context, offering rival interpretations of Britain's changing role and status. The major themes include: the consequences of Britain's participation in the Second World War; the retreat from Empire after 1945; the 'special relationship' with the United States; and the prolonged attempt to redefine Britain's global role in the context of perceived economic and geopolitical decline. Understand the major developments in Britain's role in the world since the Second World War.

  The syllabus will include the following topics:

  • Decline of a great power, 1870-1945
  • The audit of war, 1945-50
  • Britain: a nuclear state
  • From Empire to Commonwealth
  • The 'special relationship'
  • Foreign policy under Thatcher, 1979-90
  • An ethical foreign policy? Britain under New Labour
  • Conclusion: still seeking a role?
• China in the Modern World

  China's rise is commonly understood as a key factor that will shape future world order. In this seminar-based module students will become familiar with different approaches to understanding China's rise, and critically evaluate the opportunities and challenges this poses to both China and the surrounding world. In each seminar, students will consider a key issue in China's relation to the world from different perspectives.

  Issues that will be explored include: the possibility of an alternative modernity; sources of party-state legitimacy; Chinese nationalism; the limits of Chinese identity; new tools of China's soft power; the Chinese school of International Relations theory; questions of territorial integrity; and Chinese ideas of world order and the China model. This module will thus offer students an opportunity to discuss familiar concepts like nationalism, democracy and modernity in the context of post-Mao era China. Students enhance their understanding of the complexity of issues in contemporary China, and critically examine conceptual tools of political analysis in the Chinese context.

• Contemporary Issues in Human Rights

  This module introduces students to human rights as a political and legal concept. It provides a critical overview of contemporary debates in the field, without losing sight of key theoretical questions. What are human rights? What is their source? In what sense are they universal and inalienable? Following a discussion of philosophical and historical foundations the module will examine the post-World War II international legal regime for the protection of human rights. It will explore the political implications of enshrining human rights at the international level, and engage with questions of culture and diversity, development and globalization, poverty and health.

  Students will have the opportunity to research and discuss such issues as gender-based violence, torture in the ‘war on terror’, treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. These empirical case studies of recent human rights struggles and controversies will shed light on the complexity of global human rights politics in the early 21st century.

• Contemporary Issues in the Middle East

  This module introduces students to key issues in Middle East politics today. It explores the people, society and politics of the region and the role that religion, ethnicity, gender and class have played in shaping contemporary issues. It examines the major internal and external actors in the region; conflict and peace; the geo-strategic importance of the region; issues of political economy; political change and reform; the issue of identities in the Middle East and ideologies around this; the emergence of political Islam; rising anti-Americanism; 9/11 and the fall-out in the region from the 'war on terror', the 'Arab Spring' and the unfolding revolutions.

  Through class discussions, completion of coursework and the exam, students should be able to understand the complexities of society in the Middle East, and show an in-depth understanding of key themes and issues in the contemporary Middle East.

• Dissertation

  This module provides an opportunity for students to choose a topic related to some aspect of Politics and International Relations, Philosophy and Religious Studies which particularly interests them, and to pursue it in depth. The topic may be related to work that is being done on a formally taught course, or it may be less directly linked to course work. The intention is that students will develop their research skills and their ability to work at length under their own direction.

  Students are expected to start thinking seriously about the 9,000-10,000 word dissertation towards the end of the Lent term of their second year, and to submit a provisional topic by the end of that term. Work should be well advanced by Christmas in the third year. The completed dissertation must be submitted by the end of the Lent term in the third year.

• Dissertation with external collaboration

  This module aims to allow students to pursue independent in-depth studies of a topic of their choice, within the scope of their scheme of study. The topic may be related to work that is being done on a formally taught course, or it may be less directly linked to course work.

  Students will develop their employability and research skills, and their ability to work independently at length under their own direction with input from an academic supervisor.

  The external collaboration will enhance students’ ability to reflect on the impact of academic work. One option is to incorporate work done through the Richardson Institute Internship Programme, but students may also discuss other forms of collaboration with their supervisor.

• Dissertation with field studies

  This module aims to allow students to pursue independent in-depth studies of a topic of their choice, within the scope of their scheme of study. The topic may be related to work that is being done on a formally taught course, or it may be less directly linked to course work. Students will develop their employability and research skills, and their ability to work independently at length under their own direction with input from an academic supervisor.

  The field work element will enhance students’ ability to reflect on the impact of academic work. One option is to incorporate a study trip organised by the University, such as the LUSU Involve Overseas Programme, but students may also discuss other forms of field studies with their supervisor.

• Elections, Voters and Political Parties

  This module focuses on the most fundamental component of democratic political systems – elections. In particular, it analyses key political behaviour issues related to models of voting, electoral system design, and party organisation. It adopts a broadly comparative approach, with an emphasis on advanced industrial democracies in the west – especially the UK, but also other parts of the EU and the US.

  The module will examine the merits of different voting behaviour models; the politics of electoral system design and choice; the rise of anti-party / anti-politics sentiment; as well as the modern methods parties utilise as they attempt to market themselves to voters. There will also be classes on developments in party organisation; contemporary party ideologies; the nature of party system change and continuity; and finally the relevance of public opinion to modern government and public policy.

• Exploring the Persian Gulf

  The module aims to help students to gain an in-depth understanding of the main historical events, processes and actors that have shaped and continue to shape political dynamics in the Persian Gulf.

  Specific focus will be upon the key challenges to peace and security within the region, but the module will also cover a range of other topics including:

  • A theoretical overview/history of region
  • States and regimes
  • Politics and Islam
  • The resource curse?
  • Globalisation and soft power competition
  • Conflict resolution in the Persian Gulf
  • The Arab Spring in the Persian Gulf
  • Security, insecurity and stability: future trajectories

  Students on this module will form an academically informed, independent and critical knowledge of the Persian Gulf and the relations that states within the region have with ‘the West’.

• International Political Economy of Globalization

  Globalization remains a buzzword in academic and policy discourses. It is often related to the acceleration of global communication as well as internationalization of the economic, political and social processes. This module addresses some of these changes especially those related to trade, production and investment in the international political economy. There are many approaches in understanding these changes, this module introduces students to both liberal and critical ones (e.g., neo-Gramscianism). Drawing from their insights, it investigates and analyzes the roles of state and non-state actors (e.g., transnational corporations and NGOs) in rebuilding the governance of global production and finance. Finally, it examines the rise of transnational justice movements in offering alternatives to globalization and its uneven development, before and after the financial crisis of 2007.

• Islamic Politics

  The aim of this module is to introduce students to the inner dynamics of political Islam and the attendant challenges that comes with it, particularly in contemporary international society.

  The module will cover the working of Islam in the governing process; its position in contemporary international order; practical contemporary topics such as governance, violence, terrorism and such; and will deliver an understanding of key concepts and intellectual debates.

  The module is designed as much for students with little or no background in Islamic Politics, as it is for students who already have some grounding. It is built around an examination of the principal debates, features, and manifestations of Islamic politics in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

• Media, Religion and Politics

  This course takes a case study approach to contemporary issues in media, religion and politics from around the globe. Media will be broadly defined to include Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, tabloids, feature films, documentaries, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, evangelical literature, soap operas and more. Topics of study may include: the apocalypse; Boko Haram; Trump’s evangelical council; Brazil’s TV Record; Prophet TB Joshua; the Boston Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal; ISIS on Twitter; the “Thames torso boy”; Ugandan anti-homosexuality campaigns; Billy Graham; secularism debates; and/or other subjects selected by students. Using both primary and secondary sources, we will contextualise each case study and subject it to historical and critical analysis. We will focus on how religion is reported; media as a tool for recruitment and radicalisation; and how various kinds of media can influence, obscure, and subvert relationships between religion and politics.

• Politics Employability and Engagement through Outreach

  This skills-based, CV-enhancing module enables Politics/IR students to develop skills and knowledge that are highly valued in a range of professions, including, but not limited to, those associated with teaching and the public and charity sectors. The core activities, which all take place on campus, are grounded in, and contribute to, the Politics/IR Outreach and Widening Participation programme which engages with A Level pupils in Sixth Forms (see wp.lancs.ac.uk/politics-outreach). Using communication, analytical, mentoring, feedback and writing skills, students will:

  1) Work with Careers staff to identify and articulate the transferrable skills and knowledge acquired during the course of undergraduate studies and to communicate those skills to potential employers.

  2) Work with successful PPR alumni in positions in Politics, the Civil Service, the Media and NGOs on practical scenarios/case studies which require the application of skills acquired in the sessions in order to identify and enhance capabilities of importance to potential employers in CVs and personal statements.

  3) (Assessment 1) Develop a four minute individual presentation filmed in the LUTV studios explaining Politics in lay terms to Sixth Form pupils. This will take place in week 5 and constitute 20% of the overall mark. Selected presentations will, with student consent, appear in Outreach, Widening Participation and Recruitment materials and can be cited by students in CVs.

  4) (Assessment 2) Participate in a mentoring programme with Sixth Form pupils from Widening Participation backgrounds completing Extended Project Qualifications (EPQs) in a local school. Students will receive mentoring training from Lancaster University’s UK Student Recruitment and Outreach (UKSRO) service, work one-on-one with pupils in two mentoring sessions and then produce one 1,000 word feedback report to be submitted in week 8, constituting 40% of the overall mark, on outline plans for their respective pupil’s project.

  5) (Assessment 3) Develop a 2,500 word coursework role play/simulation outline to be submitted in week 10, constituting 40% of the overall mark. Role plays are practical means of students adopting and pursuing in an educational setting the roles, characteristics, motivations, aims and objectives of actors in political conflicts or processes. The role play outlines are intended for use by Sixth Form students as part of the Politics/IR outreach programme. Selected students will have their outlines added to an online bank of role play outlines for use by schools and will be offered the opportunity to run their role play in schools, interest from schools and logistical considerations permitting.

• Politics of Cultural Diversity

  This module will introduce students to a series of understandings of culture. Culture is first outlined with regard to its shape, scope and purpose, before being examined in relation to debates regarding homogeneity, change and conflict. This problematizes popular understandings of culture as fixed and unchanging, enabling students to grapple with two contrasting accounts of the source of conflict: Samuel Huntington’s The Clash between Civilizations and Dieter Senghaas’ The Clash within Civilizations.

  The module then examines normative approaches to culture, beginning with the debate between relativism and universalism, which leads into an approach – value pluralism – which appears, at first sight, to offer a middle ground between the positions. This involves introducing and examining the validity of a range of conceptions of wellbeing. The module then examines toleration and recognition as approaches to diversity, comparing and contrasting them and identifying internal contradictions through engagement with real world cases. The political implications of the module are then consolidated and drawn out in full.

• Politics of Global Danger

  What makes the world dangerous? Is global politics the extension of war by other means? Do security policies inscribe peace with the logic of war? How has the RMA, and the digital and molecular revolutions changed the ways in which we think about security and war? In what ways have these revolutions made the world more rather than less dangerous? What happens to security and war when these take the life of the human species rather than sovereign territoriality as their referent object? How and why does securing life pose a wholly different security problem from that of securing states? Why does securing life appear to increase rather than decrease global danger? In the process of exploring these and related questions this course will introduce students to the ways in which biopolitical dismodules of security and war differ from geostrategic dismodules of security and war. The world is said to be dangerous in many changing and conflicting ways. Dismodules of security and war teach us what to fear and prioritise danger differently. They challenge how we think. Part One introduces students to ways of thinking about the problematisation of security and war, including new approaches to understanding power. Part Two applies these new perspectives to interrogate changes in the practices of security and war; especially those introduced by the informationalisation of weapons and the weaponisation of information.

• PPR in Education

  This module is designed to allow students to gain experience of educational environments, to develop transferable skills, and to reflect on the role and communication of their own discipline. The module is organised and delivered collaboratively between Lancaster University Students’ Union LUSU Involve, the school/college where the placement is based, and the department.

  The module will give students experience of classroom observation and experience, teacher assistance, as well as teaching small groups (under supervision). In particular, the module will not only give students the opportunity to observe and experience teaching and learners for themselves, it will also require them to reflect on how their own subject area (Religion, Politics and International Relations, or Philosophy) is experienced by learners, delivered in other parts of the educational sector, and applied in a classroom setting. Students will also be asked to reflect on how teaching and learning at this earlier level combines with what is taught and promoted at the level of Higher education (as experienced in the University).

• Reading Political Theory

  Students will study the thought of two seminal thinkers in political theory. This module provides an opportunity to explore texts slowly, methodically and in depth, allowing students to link that thought to wider literature that has developed as a response to the thinkers' ideas, and see how those ideas link-up into a wider systematic and philosophic whole.

  Topics include among many others:

  • Plato: forms and the good-itself, the structure of the kallipolis, the lies of the rulers and censorship, women, children, and slaves, freedom and totalitarianism.
  • Aristotle: links between politics and ethics, community and the political animal, and natural law
  • Kant: freedom and autonomy, roles of the individual, the role of reason, cosmopolitanism, government by agreement, censorship and the state, enlightenment.
  • Nietzsche: early and later political philosophy, the role of state, the death of God, the slave revolt in morals, the Ubermensch, sovereign individuals, radical aristocracy.
  • Marx: the early Marx, Hegel, species-being, alienation, historical materialism, bourgeois philosophy, critique of the modern state, the communist alternative.
• Religion and politics

  This module focuses on key contexts and developments in the inter-relationship between religion and politics across the world.

  The major themes will be:

  • The thesis that the influence of religion has declined in the western world, and its applicability to Christianity in the U.S.A
  • The thesis that there has been a resurgence of religion in politics in the world, and its relevance to the interpretation of politics in selected Islamic states (with special reference to Judaism and the Middle-East)
  • Constitutional attempts to negotiate the role of religion in a multi-religious polity, with special reference to Hinduism and Indian secularism
  • The management of religion through the concept of a state religion, through a comparison of the monarchies of the United Kingdom, Thailand and Japan.
• Religion and Violence

  There are claims that religion is little more than a perverse and irrational scar on the modern world, one that invariably causes violence, while others claim that religion is good and that violence only occurs when religion has been hijacked by other forces. Others still claim that religious violence is a myth constructed for political purposes, and that one should not therefore speak of religion in such terms.

  In disentangling such claims, the relationship between religion and violence is examined, asking whether one can draw such associations between the two and whether one can develop broader theoretical understandings about their relationship that enhances our understanding of religion in the modern world. The module continually refers to empirical data and case studies in which religious movements and individuals have been involved in violent activities, as well as examining cases where acts of immense violence have occurred in what appear to be political contexts, but where religious rhetoric may have been used by the perpetrators of violence.

• Seminar in Contemporary Moral Philosophy

  The aim of this module is to develop the skills and virtues of a final-year undergraduate level philosopher and scholar of philosophy, by guided practice in close reading and reasoned discussion of selected works in contemporary moral philosophy. No attempt at broad survey will be made. The module will instead be run as a reading group on a small number of high-quality texts. Seminars will consist of moderated discussion of reading introduced by the tutor or by a student presentation. Assessment will be by 5,000 word essay on a topic chosen by the individual student and developed in consultation with the tutor.

  ‘Moral philosophy’ will be understood fairly broadly, as including metaethics, the philosophies of action, selfhood, and agency, and the more normative and/or theoretical parts of political philosophy. Possible topics, works, debates, and/or figures in contemporary moral philosophy include: wellbeing; value and valuing; personhood/selfhood; practical reason; moral psychology; metaethics; freedom and responsibility; utilitarianism and its critics; virtue ethics and its critics; deontology and its critics; the work of major recent and contemporary figures in moral philosophy, for example Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Railton, Christine Korsgaard, Philippa Foot, Allan Gibbard, Charles Taylor, Simon Blackburn, Peter Singer, or Derek Parfit.

• The Third Reich and Film

  In this module you will study the content, character and function of Nazi propaganda as it was presented in film. The films will be used to understand how National Socialism tried to sell its messages, ranging from the ideal of a harmonious national community, national strength and a militaristic attitude, to anti-Semitic hatred, the commitment to total war and relentless fanaticism. You will also study the retrospective presentation of the Third Reich in film ranging from the struggle to come to terms with a difficult past to the financially successful marketing of history. This will show both a wide variety of perspectives on National Socialism as well as the function such representations serve at the time they are articulated and visualised. The module thus enables you to explore the challenges and opportunities films provide as historical sources in trying to understand the past.

• Understanding External Intervention in Violent Conflicts

  This module will examine the politics of external intervention in violent political conflicts and the attempts made to manage, prevent and transform these wars into more peaceful situations.

  The module aims to develop student understanding of how international organisations have attempted to intervene within conflict zones to prevent an escalation in conflict, to enforce UN resolutions or to assist externally mediated peace 'settlements'.

  The module also aims to provide students with an in-depth knowledge of how violent conflict has changed since the end of the Cold War and how transnational organisations such as the EU, UN and NATO have attempted to deal with the new challenges and opportunities presented since the beginning of the 1990s until the present day.

  Conceptually, the course will examine the principles of the liberal peace; state failure; international conflict prevention; peace keeping; and global governance. Empirically, the course will focus on post-Cold War conflicts such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China.

• US Foreign Policy since 1945

  This module examines theories of US foreign policy, the structure of the policy making process in the US, and the major themes in the development of American foreign policy since 1945.

  The module starts with an overview of the main competing theoretical conceptions of US foreign policy, and an exploration of the foreign policy making process, looking in particular at the Presidency and Congress, and the way in which relationships between these two bodies have developed over the past fifty years. It then goes on to look at the conduct of foreign policy since 1945, focusing on: the origins and early development of the Cold War; US engagement in the Vietnam war; détente and the eventual ending of the Cold War; the first Gulf war and 'the new world order'; 9/11 and the war on terror; and, finally, new directions in US foreign policy being pursued by the current administration.

Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and others which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme. We divide academic study into two sections - Part 1 (Year 1) and Part 2 (Year 2, 3 and sometimes 4). For most programmes Part 1 requires you to study 120 credits spread over at least three modules which, depending upon your programme, will be drawn from one, two or three different academic subjects. A higher degree of specialisation then develops in subsequent years. For more information about our teaching methods at Lancaster visit our Teaching and Learning section.

Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, but changes may be necessary, for example as a result of student feedback, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes, and new research.