BA (Hons) Liberal Arts

What is Going on? Making Sense of the 21st Century

This module invites you to engage in an investigation of contemporary global events by using current news stories as primary catalysts for academic inquiry.

Rather than viewing headlines in isolation, you will learn to deconstruct media narratives and breaking events through a diverse range of academic frameworks and multidisciplinary perspectives.

By bridging the gap between immediate current affairs and theoretical study, the curriculum explores how interconnected themes—such as neoliberalism, the climate emergency, and the rapid evolution of technology—manifest as live, unfolding issues in today’s social and political landscape.

You will develop the analytical agility to look beneath surface-level information and recognise the deeper ideological and economic shifts that drive 21st-century discourse.

The curriculum creates a space to make sense of the “now,” where unfolding phenomena, including modern “culture wars,” globalization, and changing class dynamics, are interrogated through various scholarly lenses.

By contextualising real-world incidents within competing academic perspectives, you will explore the highly contested nature of citizenship, power, and belonging.

This approach will equip you with the critical reasoning skills necessary to synthesise complex information and evaluate the most pressing, often chaotic issues of the modern age.

Ultimately, the module empowers you to transform your bewilderment at the daily news into a sophisticated, academic appreciation of the systemic forces shaping the world around you.

Truth, Post-Truth and Ignorance

This module investigates if and how one can know the truth in a society where social media shapes the perspective of many people.

Is truth something that can be measured? Is there reality beyond the material world? Or a reality beyond the world we experience?

The module begins by reflecting on contemporary culture’s questioning of knowledge in social media, film/TV and politics.

You will investigate the implicit epistemologies at work in these areas in order to understand how popular views of knowledge support particular ethical and political views.

Political Ideology: How Ideas Shape Politics and Why They Matter?

This module aims to provide you with an introduction to the nature of political ideology. It will familiarise you with definitional discussions, including Marxist, Liberal, and ‘Truth Neutral’ approaches.

You will be introduced to the relationships between political ideology and political myth and explore a range of indicative political ideologies, including conservatism, socialism, fascism, and ecologism.

Being Human

This module invites you to engage in a profound inquiry into the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

By positioning humanity at the intersection of nature, culture, and individual agency, you will explore our unique place as a species and the intricate ways our inner emotional landscapes are forged within the broader social and historical world.

Drawing upon a rich synthesis of sociology, philosophy, psychology, and biosemiotics, students will navigate a diverse intellectual terrain. Moving from foundational explorations of humans as symbolic, meaning-making creatures to critical investigations into the complex dynamics of emotion as they manifest in contemporary life—including the structures of the workplace, the nuances of intimate relationships, the performance of gender roles, and the heat of political discourse.

You will be challenged to look beyond biological or social determinism to consider the “human condition” as a contested and evolving concept.

By engaging with these high-level abstract frameworks, you will cultivate a sophisticated, reflexive understanding of themselves and others.

This approach fosters a deep appreciation for diverse disciplinary perspectives, empowering you to synthesise competing ideas and apply them to the lived experience of being human in a complex, globalised society.

Subverting the Subject: Ideas in Literature from Barthes to Gaming

This module explores the idea of the subversion of the subject, our idea of the individual, across a range of ways of thinking about literature.

If fiction is already an exploration of the subject, and one that is potentially destabilising, then we need to consider how our selves might be considered as a kind of fiction and what results from this.

Ranging from the 1970s to the present, we will examine how ideas of the unconscious, of the body, of the libido, of power, of simulation, of performance, and of the machine and the animal undermine our sense of the boundaries of the human and even the human itself.

Torture to Terror: Progress and Repression in the European World, 1492-1792

This module offers a broad survey of the way in which European society developed in response to dramatic changes brought about by new inventions and discoveries.

Whig historians of the nineteenth century agreed with Jacob Burckhardt that the early modern era in Europe saw the rebirth and refinement of ‘civilisation’ starting in Italy and climaxing in England with the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, and subsequently evidenced by the American and French Revolutions.

This period did witness a series of revolutions in politics, religion, philosophy, science (printing, lens grinding, navigation, empiricism and Newtonianism), art, architecture, culture, commerce and warfare, but rather than an unstoppable march towards liberty, equality, universal justice and popular democracy, the epoch concluded with the rational and Enlightened French Revolution failing and degenerating into state-sponsored terror.     

 The module begins by looking at the discovery and brutal conquest of the Americas from 1492, which energised fierce debates that still rage today about colonisation, despotism, imperialism, nationalism, international relations, religious and cultural toleration, ethnicity, slavery and human rights.

Thinking the Environment

The module will familiarise you with key approaches to thinking about the environment. Covering topics that may include climate change, ecology, the controversies surrounding the term ‘the Anthropocene’ and cultural representations of these themes will enable you to discuss the intersecting political, ethical and social dimensions of environmental issues.

Analysing Social Problems

This module offers an interdisciplinary exploration into how we define and respond to the most pressing challenges of the modern world.

Moving beyond a single disciplinary lens, you will interrogate the “human condition” by examining how psychological, cultural, and political forces shape their own values and moral judgments.

By analysing the inherent tensions between personal ethics and societal expectations, the course fosters a deep understanding of social justice, human rights, and the philosophical foundations of empowerment and equity. 

This module bridges the gap between theoretical critique and active citizenship, allowing you to navigate contemporary social movements and global crises such as systemic poverty and civil unrest.

Through a synthesis of diverse intellectual perspectives, you will develop the analytical agility to apply critical reasoning to real-world problems.

Ultimately, the module empowers you to transform abstract inquiry into actionable insights, identifying ethical and policy-driven solutions for an increasingly complex global landscape. 

The Politics and Culture of Technology

This module investigates the technological transformations of society with an emphasis on the way that digital technologies are transforming local, national and international politics, ethics and culture.

You will learn how culture has shaped technologies and examine ways that technologies are changing the way we live.

You will consider the broader political, ethical and social implications of these changes, which may include topics such as the role of algorithms in our daily lives, the environmental impact of AI and/or predictions about the transformative power of emerging technologies.

Liberal Political Philosophy and Its Critics

The module investigates the historical development of the liberal political tradition in order to assess its ability to address contemporary political issues.

You will become familiar with central figures in the development of liberalism, key critiques of this approach and representative examples of alternative approaches to politics.

Engaging with arguments that may include feminist political philosophy, political philosophy of race and/or post-colonial theory allows you to explore the limits of the Western philosophical canon.

Bio-Ethics and Bio-Politics

The module explores different ethical and methodological approaches in current debates in bio-ethics and bio-politics.

You will develop your knowledge and understanding of the variety of approaches to bio-ethical questions and the way that these approaches are informed by different bio-political commitments.

You will become acquainted with the major issues in bio-ethics, which may include disability, enhancement, abortion and euthanasia.

You will explore the application of bio-ethics to both the human and the non-human and investigate the way that the field of bio-politics has challenged and recontextualised debates within bio-ethics.

Further Options

In addition to other optional modules, Liberal Arts students have the ability to select modules from across English, History, International Relations, Philosophy, Politics or Sociology, subject to availability.

Work Placement

A formal work placement that offers intensive, invaluable industry relevant experience is essential. Moreover, the work placement module provides an opportunity to put theory into practice and develop key transferable skills such as teamwork, communication, task-deadline accomplishment, working under pressure, and professional work ethic. The work placement also permits a network of professional contacts to be established that could greatly aid future employability.

Dissertation

The dissertation is an 8,000-word research project on a topic agreed with a supervisor and carried out with their support.

This project is the culmination of the degree and should reflect your particular interest in a question or issue related to politics, philosophy, ethics, sociology and/or the wider liberal arts tradition.

Topics may be things you have touched on in earlier modules and want to explore in greater depth, new applications of approaches you have learned over the course of your degree, aspects of your own lived experience or projects related to future career goals.  

Religion in a Secular Europe

This module investigates the history of the concept of religion, its role in politics and its depiction in culture.

You will reflect on the co-emergence of ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’ as key to understanding contemporary ideas about belief, belonging and identity.

During this module, you will assess the role of religion and the secular in constructing a concept of Europe and its others.

Drawing on philosophy, sociology, anthropology and political theory will allow you to develop a more holistic understanding of the role of religions in the contemporary world, with an emphasis on Europe but an openness to global events and issues.

Unconscious Desires: Psychoanalysis and Culture from Freud to Žižek

This module explores the notion of unconscious desire and the expression of these desires in literature and culture.

You will trace the emergence of the ideas of psychoanalysis in the work of Freud and how various psychoanalytic thinkers have transformed the notion of unconscious desire and used it to grasp literary and cultural forms.

Music, TV and Film in a Changing World

With a specific focus on the 21st century and the latter part of the 20th century, this module will take you on a journey through key social changes and movements as reflected and shaped by music, TV and film.

You will discuss a range of topics starting with the protest songs of the 1960s and explore how music has influenced and been shaped by key events and societal changes, and explore how film, TV and other media forms have highlighted society.

Futures: Hope, Risk and Anxiety

This module investigates different conceptions of the future, particularly those that worry about impending disasters and those that imagine radically new futures. What role does the future play in our conception of the world today? What might the future look like?

We will ask how the future has been conceptualised in philosophy, politics and sociology and some of the ways it has been depicted in literature, film and other media.

Topics covered may include theories of utopianism, apocalypticism, doomsday prepping, the ‘risk society’ and the ways these approaches to the future shape and are shaped by popular culture.

The Bloodlands: History and Politics in Contemporary Ukraine and East Central Europe

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 came to many political observers as a shock and created an urgency for understanding this country.

While the Russo-Ukrainian war began in 2014 with the Russian annexation of Crimea and direct involvement in Donbas, the origins of the war stem from imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contextualising the current war beyond the post-Cold War proxy conflicts and NATO expansion argument by turning to Ukraine’s history, this module will examine Ukraine and Russia’s ideas and cultures as well as domestic and international politics.

In today’s politics, defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, conflicts over natural resources and a resurgence of populist nationalism, Ukraine has become a vital battlefield between many domestic and external actors and the outcomes of the war will be felt far beyond its borders. 
 

Not only are there a few books about the political history of Ukraine, but these books mainly focus on the Ukrainian nation’s emergence as a through-line.

Borrowing the title from the eponymous monograph on Eastern Europe by Timothy Snyder, this module aims for a different approach.

While it will touch upon the importance of the medieval history of Ukraine and the early modern period, it will primarily focus on the history of Ukraine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and conclude with the current war.

Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, secondary works and the latest scholarship, the module seeks to contextualise Ukraine as a complex actor in European history and politics since 1991.  

Aggression, Violence and Abuse

This module provides a rigorous investigation into the phenomena of aggression, violence, and abuse, prioritising the analysis of real-life cases to understand how harm is identified and contested in the modern world.

By examining high-profile legal proceedings and contemporary incidents, you will explore the profound impact of social movements in moving these interpersonal and systemic harms from the private sphere into the public and legal spotlight.

You will scrutinise the “wilful blindness” that can permeate institutional responses to abuse, exploring the complex tension where the state must balance its roles as both a protector of the vulnerable and a potential perpetrator of structural violence.

Through this case-led approach, you will evaluate how individual life chances are dictated by the interplay of legislative frameworks and the sociological power dynamics that fuel aggressive behaviour. 

A central theme of the module is the critical intersection of legal justice and social justice as it pertains to diverse manifestations of harm.

Rather than viewing these issues in isolation, the syllabus examines how public perceptions of fairness often clash with statutory reality across a variety of social contexts and interpersonal relationships.

The module places a heavy emphasis on media representation, investigating how the framing of violence in news, digital platforms, and popular culture shapes public attitudes and drives policy shifts regarding abusive conduct.

By deconstructing the way the media narrates real-life cases, you will gain the analytical tools to debate whether the current legal system provides genuine accountability for aggression or if social justice remains an aspirational goal distinct from the rulings of the court.  

Britain and Europe: Brexit – Before, During and After

This module explores the history and contemporary politics of Britain’s relationship with continental Europe. You will chart in place the reasons for European integration and the expansion of the ‘European Union’ from the 1950s to the present day. The module also investigates the rise of populist politics and the idea of Euroscepticism. In doing so, it highlights the processes associated with the ongoing ‘Brexit’ arrangements, as well as internal contemporary shaping of the EU itself.

Further Options

In addition to other optional modules, Liberal Arts students have the ability to select modules from across English, History, International Relations, Philosophy, Politics or Sociology, subject to availability.