Get valuable real-life experience of the unique holdings at Essex Collection of Art from Latin America’s (ESCALA). As well as discussing and analysing artworks from the collection, take on the exciting challenge of proposing a new acquisition for ESCALA. Whilst the task is hypothetical, if the committee decides to pursue the acquisition, you could be credited for your contribution.

Want to do more than hang pretty pictures on a pleasantly coloured wall? Then take this module to learn how curators and designers from the 1920s onward have turned exhibition spaces into site of social and political critique -- a practice now often subsumed under the concept of ‘critical curating’. Organised chronologically, the module gives you the chance to hone your understanding of the complex relationship between critique and curating, generally by situating major exhibitions and paradigmatic curatorial concept in relation to key texts of critical theory.

This module will explore how conflicts over 'heritage' rights are, today more than ever, influencing critical debates over the definition of world, national, and local heritage, as well as universal, community, and individual rights. It will also examine the impact that tensions between communities and universal versus local values have on the management of heritage, and how these tensions might be resolved to allow sustainable growth. We will ask: What is heritage? Who defines it? Who should control its management and preservation? How is the notion of 'heritage' used to unite or otherwise divide communities? What are some of the consequences of the ways different groups appropriate and utilise heritage? Is there a universal right to free access, expression, and preservation of heritage, and if so, how is it expressed? What are the impacts of globalisation on heritage issues?

Access to water is one of the most urgent global challenges facing us today. Vital for health and well-being, as well as integral to indigenous cultures and industrial processes, water is a threatened commons and contested commodity. In this module, we will explore global and local case studies that highlight challenges of scarcity, contamination, privatization, and climate change, and the cultural importance of bodies of water for diverse communities. We will examine water-related problems, such as economic and urban development, grassroots activism, political conflict, community relations, heritage and public health.

You’ll examine the ways in which gender divisions were constructed, experienced, affirmed and challenged, and the ways in which gender relations were played out and regulated in Europe c.1450-c.1750. You’ll look at key phenomena of the early modern period, such as the Reformation and religious change, and the hunting of witches, and analyse how they affected gender and gender relations and the extent to which men and women experienced them differently.

Who controls the raw materials of History? Historians depend on archives: for manuscripts, printed and digitised documents, photographs and images, textiles, oral histories, film and many other types of source. It's only relatively recently, however, that we've started to look 'behind the catalogues' to examine critically the systems and structures of actual archives as specific sites of practice and to question the power relationships they preserve and/or hide. This module asks questions about what's been collected and how it's been organised, what's got 'lost', destroyed or withheld, and how and why records have been used, neglected and 'discovered'. It's also about whose voices and stories get included and excluded and why. This module flips our perspective as historians. We'll start from the other side of the enquiry desk, working towards a critical understanding of what archivists do, how archives are made and operate and how power is built into their structures. Records are always political and their use and abuse can have serious, sometimes catastrophic, human consequences (as we've seen in the recent Windrush scandal) – but they can also empower people, aid the pursuit of justice and foster a sense of community. So we'll also look at case studies, including one chosen by the class, to give us new insights into archives as sites of power.

In the Atlantic World, war and slavery were intimately entwined. In Africa, warfare created slaves, while slavery spawned warfare. In the Americas, armies consisting of slaves and free blacks fought alternately for and against slaveholders through the eighteenth century, while in the nineteenth century, war figured prominently in the destruction of slavery. This M.A. module examines the complex relationship between war and slavery in the Atlantic World between ca. 1450 and 1850. It will begin with an examination of the role of warfare in the process of enslavement before exploring the many ways in which enslaved and freed people participated in warfare in the Americas. Topics will include: European and West African ideologies of warfare and enslavement; the 'predatory state' thesis; gender, warfare, and enslavement in Africa; the "gun-slave cycle"; free black militias in the Iberian colonies; the employment of black soldiers, free and enslaved, in the wars of the long eighteenth century; ex-soldiers and slave rebellion in the Americas; and the role of warfare in ending slavery. Students will be required to complete a historiographic essay on a topic of their choosing. This will be a reading-intensive module. Students are expected to read an entire book every second week, along with substantial reading in between. Each student is expected to contribute to seminar discussions on a regular basis and to run the seminar (as part of a group) at least once.

Gain an interdisciplinary introduction the relationship between human rights and the arts. The module consists of separate sessions which focus upon the specific contributions which a carefully selected range of artistic forms and genres have engaged with and contributed to the global defence of human rights. The module is team taught by and will draw upon the expertise of colleagues in the areas of contemporary art, cultural studies, dance, literature, mass media and photography.

How significant is the gender of a filmmaker? Do women make films differently? What are the barriers and constraints that women face, and how do they differ from place to place? Which critical perspectives and scholarly strategies enhance our understanding and analysis of women`s filmmaking? This module explores the different types of films that women filmmakers make, from the avant-garde and experimental to the mainstream. We will look at the roles of women in the film industry internationally, past and present, and how women filmmakers have attempted to reinvent cinematic form or worked within existing conventions and industry structures. On the one hand, our concerns will be theoretical: we will investigate the intersections between feminist film theory and women's filmmaking practice, raising questions of the cinematic gaze, voice and touch, the articulation of female subjectivity and resistance against conventional ways of making films. On the other hand, we will be considering the practical conditions and implications for women in the industry, including sources of support, circuits and forums in which films by women are shown and debated, and the institutional means through which women's creative achievements are acknowledged and remembered.

Literature has been a site of conflict in the cultural history of the First World War. In The Social Mission of English Criticism: 1848-1932 (1983), Chris Baldick demonstrated that when the relatively new university subject of literature (under the generic term "English") was developing during the First World War, academics proclaimed that it was poetry which would save the nation. In 1919 the newly formed British Drama League aimed to bring about a lasting peace by promoting amateur dramatics nationwide. The idea of poetry as a repository of the authentic experiences of the "trench" poets as lost warriors has contributed to an anglocentric perspective on the war and a reinforcement of poetry as the ultimate aesthetic form. Such a perspective, distilled in Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), was challenged by Claire Tylee, The Great War and Women's Consciousness (1990) as well as Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995). This module draws on a wide and rich field of literature and literary criticism. It locates the literary engagements with the First World War in the global context of wartime responses and the wider reflection on the impact of war which reverberated through genres and literary and cultural movements. This module includes material on such topics as war, trauma, and bereavement.

Beginning with the influential case of the Wilde trial in the final years of the Victorian period, the module traces some of the main strands of queer culture throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As well as reading a selection of classic works of gay and lesbian fiction, you will also engage with journalism, letters, essays, memoir, visual art, documentary, film drama, and queer theory. Drawing on these varied sources, we will explore the modern cultural history of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender-diverse people. Topics addressed include: the shifting status of same-sex desire in western culture; homosexuality in the nineteenth century; gay rights in the twentieth century; gay and lesbian fiction and memoir; constructions of gender and sexuality within medical and psychiatric discourse; intersectionality; black lesbian feminism; discourse, knowledge, and power; the Stonewall uprising and its precursors; the AIDS epidemic; the New Queer Cinema; transgender identity and activism; queer theory; LGBTQ Hollywood and world cinema; and contemporary queer culture. The module takes a comparative, interdisciplinary approach in order to show how the topics addressed have been taken up in different mediums and in varying cultural and historical contexts. While much of our focus will be on historical examples, consideration will be given throughout to how the texts on the syllabus illuminate present-day issues and debates.

What is ‘critical theory’? At one level, it is a tradition that can be traced back to ‘Frankfurt School’ thinkers such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. But the term has also come to be used more broadly, to encompass independent traditions of thought such as (certain strands within) feminism, anti-racism, post-colonialism and queer theory. This course aims to give a ‘critical’ introduction to critical theory, looking beyond the canon in order to come to a deeper understanding of critical theory and its limits.

This seminar is an introduction to major theoretical approaches and substantive issues in the current sociological thinking on citizenship, with a view on the postwar reconfigurations of the nation-state and citizenship via globalization and the expansion of transnational framework of human rights. Substantively, the seminar explores the contemporary processes that underline the inclusions and exclusions in the body of citizenry: territorial and cultural closure of the nation, expansion of individual (human) rights and privileges, immigration and incorporation of diversity, European citizenship, globalization of economy and markets, and the transnationalization of normativity, actors, and claims for citizenship.

How do we challenge our conventional understanding of crime? And what can we do about this? Examine the history of criminology and learn about the contemporary debates. Study topics like criminalisation, social deviance, and surveillance and punishment. Look ahead with analysis of new work by leading authors in the field.

What is the significance of 'the de-centring of the subject'? What problems does the materiality of the body pose for sociology? Do claims for objectivity now make any sense at all? Gain an understanding of the significant debates in contemporary social theory, while learning to think analytically about theoretical questions.

How has colonialism created human rights problems, now and in the past? And what part did mandates for free markets, industrialism and state sovereignty play? Study thinkers like Cesaire, Fanon, Arendt, Agamben and Taussig. Discuss specific international situations like Palestine, forced removal of Aboriginal children and the war on terror.

Throughout the module, we will discuss international theories of migration and social integration, examine migration and refugee policies in a comparative perspective, the difference between statistical and taste-based discrimination, and the perpetuation of bias, how we gain an understanding of labour market integration; and the debates surrounding migration, prostitution and sex work.