This unit reviews the variety of methodologies and approaches that comprise the discipline of archaeology today. It introduces students to the history of archaeological research, from the antiquarians of the eighteenth century to contemporary debates on the interpretation of the past. A range of essential archaeological concepts are introduced alongside key field and laboratory methods, including survey techniques, relative and absolute dating, DNA analysis and environmental archaeology. The ways in which archaeologists have employed the evidence from objects, bodies, buildings and landscapes to reconstruct past human societies are considered, with case studies exploring how particular archaeological cultures (for example the ancient Greeks) or issues (for example the origins of agriculture) can be addressed.

This unit will introduce students to some key ideas and debates around human kinship and relationality; in other words, how humans relate to one another and how relationships are formed, maintained, severed and conceptualised. In this way, the unit will explore what constitutes kin, friends, lovers and others. The study of relationality forms the foundation of anthropology, but also offers fascinating insights into what it means to be human in a range of historical and global contexts. Drawing on both classic and contemporary material from the study of kinship and beyond, the unit will traverse themes of marriage, reproduction, love, parenting, friendship, sexuality, reproductive technologies, and relations with non-humans. Students will learn the wider significance of the topics to the interpretation and analysis of human societies more broadly. Lectures will be delivered by staff from the department to offer a diverse range of approaches and expertise within the study of kinship and relationality.

Across the world, human societies display remarkable diversity - and remarkable similarities. In this unit students will be introduced to the major theoretical, methodological and empirical ideas in the discipline of social anthropology.

In recent decades there has been a renaissance in British art studies, turning an art-historical backwater into a hot-spot of academic debate. The unit draws on this wave of scholarship to examine the development of art in Britain, and its struggle to assert itself in the wider international art world. There is a vast amount of material that we could explore. Indeed, questions of narrative, coherence and canonicity – of what to include/exclude from the story of art, and how it might connect – are a major theme of the unit. We take as our starting point the careers of four artists who are central to the canon of British art, and whose work still sparks debate. These case-studies will vary from year to year. Previously, they have included William Hogarth, William Blake, J.M.W Turner, Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Bridget Riley, Steve McQueen and Lubaina Himid. With each, we go on to examine their reception and how they have shaped developments across the history of British art. Which other artists did they influence? Possible examples are Lucian Freud, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Pauline Boty and Olafur Eliasson. How have later generations adapted or subverted their work, and reinterpreted the themes and genres that they explored? e.g. Hogarth’s satirical theatre, Turner’s sublime landscapes; Bell’s experiments in figuration and abstraction; and Himid’s spotlighting of race, racism, and British colonialism. Building through the unit will be a larger discussion about the idea of a tradition of British art, and the value and stability of an artistic canon. Is there such a thing as tradition, and if so, what are its themes and preoccupations, and where might it be tending?

This unit aims to introduce a range of key concepts that provide important background knowledge for those wishing to study Biology/Zoology, but which are not covered elsewhere in our first-year course. The unit includes aspects such as study skills for an effective student, data collection and handling, plotting figures and tables, finding and interpreting scientific literature, getting the most out of lectures, risk analysis, as well as writing scientific reports and essays. Therefore, providing a common foundation in these areas on which all other Biology units can then build; this is important given the diversity of educational backgrounds amongst those studying Biology, Zoology or Plant Sciences. On completion of the unit, students will be familiar with the terminology used within Biology/Zoology/Plant Sciences disciplines, be able to handle, summarise and present biological data and have an appreciation of the relevant methods and concepts which are applied in biological analyses and which will underpin their studies through the degree programmes. Students will come away with an appreciation of the framework in which science is performed today.

Attendance at the practical sessions for this unit is required.

The unit will introduce the common processes which govern cell maintenance and how cells communicate and ‘relate’ to one another within a multicellular organism. It will include topics on basic molecular biology, cell biology, respiratory systems, physiology (animal and plant), neurobiology and neurophysiology.

The principles and techniques of molecular genetics are core to all other aspects of biology; for instance, next generation sequencing is now employed in areas as diverse as neurobiology, conservation biology and developmental biology; the unit will stress practical applications as well as the underpinning theoretical background. This 20 credit point unit will teach both the basic techniques of molecular genetics and their application. Topics covered will include extraction and handling of nucleic acids, DNA sequencing and the associated bioinformatics, as well as the introduction of foreign DNA into a variety of plant and animal species. In addition, the unit will introduce students to the use of molecular markers and their application. The course is specifically designed to foster an interest in molecular genetics in all level 2 students including those who previously might have regarded the subject area as not central to their wider interests in biology. While designed to complement all areas of biology, the unit will also provide a secure grounding for those students interested in studying more advanced subject areas such as biotechnology and genetic engineering.

In this unit, students learn the practical skills of fiction. They will write their own original fiction and explore various forms of narrative in a supportive group environment. Informed by previous reading of fiction and their understanding of critical issues, students will also use their close reading skills to help each other develop as fiction writers in the workshop. The workshop teaching method provides each student with continual feedback and formative assessment throughout the unit and develop the valuable ability to give and take criticism in a group environment and to rework writing in light of criticism received. This learning experience will enable students to begin a practice of writing prose and to develop valuable insights for the study of fiction in general.

This unit will introduce students to a range of literature across the 160 years covered: eighteenth-century fiction; romantic period writing; Victorian poetry; the mid- and late-Victorian novel and the writing of the Decadents and Aesthetes of 1880s and 1890s. In doing so the unit will enable students to engage with such ideas as Enlightenment, sensibility, radicalism and political revolution, Europe, urbanisation and industrialisation, class, personhood, gender identity and sexual inequality, outsider status, and emancipation. The unit will expose students to a range of literary forms, elite, popular and middlebrow. All the works included will be discussed in the context of the historical and modern critical discussions which have arisen around them; the philosophical, religious and aesthetic debates they contribute to will be brought forward. The unit raises major questions about: the evolution of new genres, including that of ‘the literary’; the role of the author and the social utility of art; poetry and poetics; the power of gender, sexual, national, class and racial identities; and the interplay between literature, widening literacy and national education.

This unit will ask students to read and analyse a small number of plays written by William Shakespeare; there will be a range of texts in terms of genre (at least one comedy, one history, and one tragedy), and at least one of the plays will be relatively uncanonical. Attention will be paid to the plays as literary texts in their own right, with significant time dedicated to close reading of individual scenes and passages; this will enable students to think of Shakespeare as a poet, as well as a playwright. In addition to close reading, students will develop oral communication skills through open discussion and by giving short formative presentations in seminars, and develop IT skills through contributing to blogs and other on-line course materials as appropriate.

Topics to be explored include:
1) the literary, cultural and historical contexts which shaped – and were shaped by – Shakespeare’s drama;
2) the histories and the specific designs of the playhouses in which the plays were performed, and the ways in which different performance spaces (and different media) influence and inform the plays’ meanings;
3) the critical reception of Shakespearean drama, and how individual plays have informed specific critical, theoretical, and philosophical developments in scholarship;
4) how Shakespeare is passed down to us in modern critical editions.

The aim of the unit is to develop key skills in Geochemistry. The main emphasis is in application of chemical equilibrium to natural scenarios to understand the distribution of elements and isotopes in the environment. The unit also provides a quantitative grounding in radiometric dating.

This unit is important because it teaches you core skills you will need to complete your degree and work in the field of Earth Sciences. You will gain confidence in handling data, using advances software and visualising and understanding the dynamic Earth in three dimensions. An understanding of tectonics, rock mechanics, geological mapping, GIS and remote sensing is also required for accreditation of your degree, making your degree more valuable to employers.

In this unit an understanding of the systematics of mineral structures and compositions will be used as the foundation to investigate the formation of igneous and metamorphic rocks. For each mineral group the fundamental aspects of the structure and composition of a simple end-member will be studied in detail, and the rest of each group will be understood in terms of compositional and structural modifications, particularly focussing on the concept of solid solutions. The physical and optical properties will be discussed within that framework, and a series of practical sessions will be used to exploit the optical properties as a tool for mineral identification using the polarising microscope.

Once mineral identification becomes routine, the unit will explore the origins of igneous and metamorphic rocks. The igneous section of the unit focuses on partial melting and crystallisation processes that produce the wide range of igneous rocks types. Major and trace element variations and phases diagrams will be used to quantitatively understand the evolution of igneous rocks. The practicals will demonstrate how mineralogical and textural evidence can be utilised to evaluate magmatic processes and the role that simple chemical equilibria and kinetics play in determining the textures.

The metamorphic section applies chemical equilibrium, and the phase rule to the evaluation of metamorphic rocks. The practicals will emphasise the use of textures to infer geological events from sequential mineral growth, deformation and reaction textures and how phase diagrams can be used to calculate stable mineral assemblages.

The unit builds and expands upon the Level I Dynamic Surface and Surface Materials sections in EASC10001 Geology 1, taking a process-based approach to sedimentology. The study and interpretation of sedimentary sequences is fundamental to many other branches of Earth Science, and to our understanding of the history of the Earth.

This unit will develop an understanding of the processes by which sedimentary particles are transported and deposited, how these deposits are stacked to form sedimentary sequences, and what transformations occur after deposition to form sedimentary rocks. We will investigate many of the processes occurring at the surface of the planet as a result of the interaction of rocks and loose sediment with water and air, and will examine the way in which relative sea-level, climate and tectonics control the accumulation of sedimentary sequences. The chemical and physical processes by which loose sediment is turned into rock and rock properties are altered during burial, collectively termed diagenesis, are explored. The subject areas covered will take you from eroding mountain belts, down rivers, via estuaries and deltas to the deep oceans, through arid deserts and tropical seas.

By building on your understanding of modern environments, you will be able to unfold the evolution of sedimentary sequences and hence the history of sedimentary basins. The difficulties and uncertainties involved in such interpretations will become apparent as the course proceeds.

Algebra encompasses a wide range of topics and areas of research. This course focuses on Linear Algebra, which mostly concerns itself with vector spaces and the (linear) maps between them.

The unit begins with some basic ideas revising and extending school-level calculus, and then goes on to a thorough treatment of the calculus from the point of view of scientific applications. The subject is developed as far as differential equations and Fourier series. The mathematics is treated with enough logical precision to enable correct calculations and correct deductions to be made.

This unit aims to develop the theory and practice of basic statistical inference, and statistical calculation.

This unit gives first year students a foundation for reading, listening and critically evaluating a wide range of musical practice based around the notion of Music and Place. Instead of giving a ‘chronological’ account dominated by the Western classical canon, this unit will address issues in terms of (for example) geography, cultural identity, migration and other social factors influencing the creation and practice of music. It also seeks to provide foundational skills for historiographical research into music, including an ability to evaluate existing published writings), effective use of bibliographical resources, planning and researching a short essay and (in a seminar context) presenting and defending an argument orally.

Religious traditions represent significant expressions of cultural values: understanding the past and present states of the world is not possible without some knowledge of these traditions. This unit introduces the history, ideas and practices of the three religious traditions whose history is connected and which together have informed the religious understanding of Europe and the West, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam. With reference to matters of ethics, thought, politics and law, the unit considers how the diverse ways these religions answer questions about the world and the place of human beings within it have shaped and continue to inform the way people, both individually and collectively, live their lives and seek to find meaning and purpose.

This unit introduces students to some key theoretical perspectives and conceptualizations of gender, for example the influence of postmodernism on feminist theory. It also examines contemporary sex and gender relations through the investigation of a number of different empirical topics illustrative of processes of gendering in contemporary Britain. Central to the unit are notions of equality, change, identity and power. A key issue is to understand the diverse ways in which gender is socially constructed: students are invited to conceptualize gender less as a characteristic of individuals and more as a structural division in society, a system of meanings, or a social process. It considers gendered relations of power and the articulation of gender with other kinds of social difference such as 'race', class and sexuality. The unit also emphasises the importance of historical change, alongside the need to appreciate the complexities and diversities of gender relations.

Crime and harms are significant issues in society. This unit introduces students to various forms of crime and harm which are prevalent in contemporary society through a range of topics including for example: youth crime, violence, illicit markets and crimes that impact on the environment. We examine the concept of crime and why critical criminologists and zemiologists argue that we should also study harm. In this unit we examine different factors which impact on crime, and why some crimes are more visible than others in the public and political imagination.