Humanities BA(Hons)

International equivalencies

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Why study with us?

• You will be located in the heart of Brighton’s vibrant cultural quarter joining a unique and intimate learning community.

• You will be encouraged to develop a critical and independent attitude through seminars, individual tutorials, lectures and project work.

• We are committed to small group teaching to develop excellent oral presentation, debating and listening skills. You’ll be able to raise issues, present arguments and voice your particular intellectual concerns while engaging with diverse opinions in productive debate.

• Your final-year project allows you to identify and explore a topic of particular interest to you. You will have regular one-to-one meetings with a supervisor with relevant expertise to discuss your independent research and give you guidance.

• You will gain vital transferable skills including independent research management, as well as communicative abilities, that you can use throughout your career.

• This degree encourages you to challenge received opinions and as such is good grounding for many different industries including publishing, journalism and political lobbying, but equally provides a solid foundation for further study or research.

• Opportunities for activity outside of the curriculum include international conferences with world leading experts; publication in the student blog and in student publications and participation in Humanities Society events.

Year 1

You take six core modules in year 1. Each module has two lectures and one seminar per week, as well as four personal tutorials for every course. You develop political, philosophical, historical and cultural knowledge and begin to explore the key themes of this degree.

Modules

• Historical Inquiry
• Philosophical Inquiry
• Studying Cultures
• Democracy: From Athens to Baghdad
• Understanding Society in a Global World
• Approaching Narratives

Year 2

In year 2 you select your main option for the rest of your degree from 12 possible options. You also take the Critical Traditions module, which deepens your knowledge of the historical, cultural and theoretical origins of the present.

Modules

• Critical Traditions
• Project Preparation Course
• Elective Studies

One of the following OPTIONS followed throughout the year:*

Politics, History and Ideology: The Age of European Dominance 1870-1945 • Cold War/Hot War

Race and Resistance: Race, Conflict and Identity • Racism and Anti-Racist Struggle: the Ethics and Politics of Resistance

Self and Society: Conceptualising Subjectivity/Self • Society: Subject, Subjectivity and Subjection

War, Terror and Democracy: War, Violence and Terror • Contemporary Warfare in the Middle East

Culture and Conflict: Culture and Conflict in the Contemporary World: Critical Approaches • Representation and the Cultural Politics of Conflict

Terror and Terrorism: War, Violence and Terror • Histories of Terror and Terrorism

Globalisation, History and Identity: Experiencing Contemporary Globalisation • Globalisation and History: The Middle East and the West

Global Politics: Movements, Power, Democracy • Justice and Conflict and Development in a Globalising World

Fictions in History: Victorian Gothic: Popular Fiction in Historical Content • Realism, Modernism and Postmodernism

Cultural Memory: Memory, Culture and Narrative • The British Case

Critical Theory and Radical Politics: The Politics of Critique • Structuralism, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Critique

Morality, Politics and the Good Life: Reading Plato’s Republic in a Global Polity • Body Politics

Philosophy and Literature: Reason, Romanticism, Revolution • From Existentialism to Marxism

Politics of the Past

Global Society: Globalisation and the Network Society • Media, Culture, Communication

*Option modules listed are indicative and may be subject to change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

In the final year you continue your option work and undertake a research project that typically results in the writing of a dissertation. Here all your skills, knowledge, and research come together. You challenge received opinions in a persuasive extended argument in both written and oral form.

Modules

• Final Project
• Continuation of your chosen option

One of the following SPECIAL STUDIES which develop your work from year 2*

Politics, History and Ideology: From Pax Americana to the Ends of History

Race and Resistance: The Politics and Ethics of Inclusion • Exclusion in Israel/Palestine and Systems of Control

Self and Society: Marxisms and Feminisms

War, Terror and Democracy: The Holocaust and Genocide

Culture and Conflict: Narrating the Contested Past: Northern Ireland and South Africa

Terror and Terrorism: War, Terror and Civilians

Globalisation, History and Identity

Global Politics: The Crisis of Global Governance: Global Environmental Politics, Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention

Fictions in History: Caribbean and African American Writing: 'Race', History, Fiction and Resistance

Cultural Memory

Global Society: The Challenges of Global Society: Global Security and Global Sustainability

Morality, Politics and the Good Life: The Ethics and Politics of Global Society

Philosophy and Literature: From Postsructuralism to Posthumanism

Politics of the Past

Critical Theory and Radical Politics: Bodies in Dispute

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Staff profile

Dr Clare Woodford Course leader

Clare’s research interests include theories of gender, ideology and pedagogy, Marxism and post-Marxism, queer theory, psychoanalysis, democratic struggle, activism and the arts, and performance studies.

Location

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Grand Parade campus map