Component

MA Public Opinion and Political Behaviour
BA European Studies with Spanish options

Final Year, Component 02

Final year EU option: Discipline A (30 credits)
BE334-6-AU
Financial Markets and Monetary Policy
(15 CREDITS)

Explore the links between money, financial intermediaries, financial markets and the policies that affect them. In particular, you examine the effects of monetary policy on financial markets and on the economy as a whole. Gain an understanding of how interest rates, money supply and central bank actions affect the decisions of economic agents, financial markets and prices.

BE947-6-FY
Democracy in Action
(30 CREDITS)
CS300-6-SP
Community Engagement: Group Projects
(15 CREDITS)

This module offers final year students a unique opportunity to work together in an interdisciplinary team on a real-world project for a local partner organisation. It enables you to use the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired during your degree to address a real-world challenge, while sharing and developing your creative, organisational and practical abilities. By doing so, this module will prepare you for entering the graduate labour market or going on to post-graduate study.

CS301-6-AU
Dangerous Ideas: Essays as Social Criticism
(15 CREDITS)

Is Montaigne right to wonder whether Westerners are worse off morally than tribes who practice cannibalism? What kind of writing does George Orwell champion? What did Marx and Engels achieve with ‘The Communist Manifesto’? Examine the ‘dangerous ideas’ presented in a range of subversive essays and manifestos. Study how they challenge and satirise existing ideas and social arrangements. Experiment with writing, thus broadening the approach of your own essays.

CS301-6-SP
Dangerous Ideas: Manifestos as Social Criticism
(15 CREDITS)

Is Montaigne right to wonder whether Westerners are worse off morally than tribes who practice cannibalism? What kind of writing does George Orwell champion? What did Marx and Engels achieve with ‘The Communist Manifesto’? Examine the ‘dangerous ideas’ presented in a range of subversive essays and manifestos. Study how they challenge and satirise existing ideas and social arrangements. Experiment with writing, thus broadening the approach of your own essays.

CS831-6-FY
Final Year Dissertation
(30 CREDITS)

The CS831 Dissertation Seminar is compulsory for ISC students who have chosen to do a final year BA dissertation. This workshop module enables you to pace your research and writing and to present your work to the co-ordinator and your peers. By doing so it helps you to keep on track and receive valuable feedback and guidance while you write your dissertation.

EC201-6-FY
Macroeconomics (Intermediate)
(30 CREDITS)

What tools can you use for macroeconomic analysis? And how can these then be applied to macro-policy issues? Learn how to build alternative macroeconomic models and apply analytical reasoning. Examine real-life macroeconomic questions, on topics such as government budgets or wage-price flexibility, and critically evaluate macroeconomic policies.

EC367-6-SP
The Economic Geography of Employment, Innovation and Trade
(15 CREDITS)

Despite all the talk about the “death of distance”, geography matters more than ever. This course is a journey through the current economic landscape. We will try to understand the economic forces driving trends in wages, productivity and innovation across cities and regions. These are the forces that will define the geography of future jobs and will shape the economic destiny of local communities around the world.

EC368-6-AU
International Money and Finance
(15 CREDITS)

How do foreign exchange markets determine trade? Understand the economic role that international currency markets play. Study models to interpret exchange rate movements and how this links to key macroeconomic variables. Analyse real-life policies that respond to events in the international monetary system.

GV383-6-AU
German Politics I
(15 CREDITS)

Explore German politics against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history, investigating its institutions forming a ‘militant democracy’, an adaptive party system and active social movements as the main channels for participation, and the challenging societal, cultural and economic transformation after World War II and reunification into the current ‘Berlin Republic’

GV543-6-AU
Human Rights and Global Justice
(15 CREDITS)

This module explores the nature and foundations of international obligations. It asks what we owe to people in other countries, and what they can demand of us as a matter of right. Questions to be addressed include the following: Who owes what to the very poor? Are citizens of affluent countries complicit in the creation and maintenance of world poverty? Does justice demand the elimination of global inequality? Is the promotion of human rights a form of western cultural imperialism? When is international trade unfair? Do states have a right to close their borders to outsiders? Under what conditions (if any) is it permissible to wage war? We will address these questions by considering the answers that they have received in important recent works of normative political theory.

GV591-6-AU
Comparative Environmental Politics
(15 CREDITS)

Study one of the most important contemporary aspects of political action: the natural environment. You consider the state of the environment and possible paths along which it might change, before exploring environmental policies from the level of individual values to the environmental movement to political parties, and finally to the level of international affairs.

LT359-6-AU
Creative Writing: Oulipo and the Avant Garde
(15 CREDITS)

Are you an experienced writer or beginner? Interested in writing stories or poetry? Science fiction or detective fiction? We offer something for all! Explore the theory and practice of creative writing through the unique work of the Oulipo Workshop of Potential Literature, founded by Raymond Queneau in 1960.

LT372-6-SP
Shakespeare: The Tragedies
(15 CREDITS)

To what degree are Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and Othello tragedies? How useful is this term in understanding them? Undertake a close reading of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies. Critically discuss recent issues about each, in groups and in your own work. Gain an understanding of their enduring and/or present significance.

PA208-6-AU
Freud: Mind, Culture and Society
(15 CREDITS)

What do you know about depth psychology? How do psychoanalysis and analytical psychology provide new understanding of society, culture and politics? Build your knowledge about depth psychology - psychological thinking that introduces the concept of a deep unconscious. Understand Freud’s theories and their significance in social and cultural analysis.

PA209-6-SP
The Unconscious: Analytical Psychology, Culture and Society - Jung
(15 CREDITS)

What do you know about depth psychology? How do psychoanalysis and analytical psychology provide new understanding of society, culture and politics? Build your knowledge about depth psychology - psychological thinking that introduces the concept of a deep unconscious. Understand Jung’s theories and their significance in social and cultural analysis.

PY413-6-SP
Contemporary Political Philosophy
(15 CREDITS)

What is politics (is it about justice or power)? How does political philosophy relate to real politics? What are competing approaches in contemporary philosophy? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?

PY500-6-AU
Kant's Revolution in Philosophy
(15 CREDITS)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason initiates a new 'critical' method in philosophy which has been highly influential in both continental and analytic philosophy. His critical method establishes a new way of thinking about the relation in which we stand to the world, and the role played by knowledge and judgement within that world.

SC304-6-FY
Globalisation and Crime
(30 CREDITS)

What effect does globalisation have on crime and justice? How do we deal with global crime issues, like terrorism or illegal migration? Can we prevent large-scale crime, such as genocide? Study the changing nature of criminology, looking at contemporary developments, alongside the problem of balancing human rights with human security.

SC304-6-SP
Globalisation and Crime
(15 CREDITS)

What effect does globalisation have on crime and justice? How do we deal with global crime issues, like terrorism or illegal migration? Can we prevent large-scale crime, such as genocide? Study the changing nature of criminology, looking at contemporary developments, alongside the problem of balancing human rights with human security.

SC362-6-SP
Visual Cultures: the Social Meanings of Photography and Art
(15 CREDITS)

This module examines how photography and other forms of visual art provide meanings and interpretations of societies.

SC364-6-AU
Mass Media and Modern Life
(15 CREDITS)

What impact has the printed press had on our social and cultural life? What about radio, cinema, TV and recorded music? And how important is all this in the light of new technological advancements? Examine the development of our mass media culture, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

SC364-6-FY
Mass Media and Modern Life
(30 CREDITS)

What impact has the printed press had on our social and cultural life? What about radio, cinema, TV and recorded music? And how important is all this in the light of new technological advancements? Examine the development of our mass media culture, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

SC364-6-SP
Mass Media and Modern Life
(15 CREDITS)

What impact has the printed press had on our social and cultural life? What about radio, cinema, TV and recorded music? And how important is all this in the light of new technological advancements? Examine the development of our mass media culture, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

SC382-6-AU
Crime, Policy and Social Justice
(15 CREDITS)

Should criminal justice systems only manage offenders and victims? What wider role could they play in securing social justice? Explore the history of criminal justice and examine key theories within an international dimension. Find out how our current criminal justice policies are framed, funded and fought out.

At Essex we pride ourselves on being a welcoming and inclusive student community. We offer a wide range of support to individuals and groups of student members who may have specific requirements, interests or responsibilities.

Find out more

The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its programme specification is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can be necessary to make changes, for example to courses, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include, but are not limited to: strikes, other industrial action, staff illness, severe weather, fire, civil commotion, riot, invasion, terrorist attack or threat of terrorist attack (whether declared or not), natural disaster, restrictions imposed by government or public authorities, epidemic or pandemic disease, failure of public utilities or transport systems or the withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to courses may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications. The University would inform and engage with you if your course was to be discontinued, and would provide you with options, where appropriate, in line with our Compensation and Refund Policy.

The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.