Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

To enable students to investigate culture and society from a critical perspective.
2. To give students the intellectual tools to analyse the means by which culture is interpreted, analysed and used in a variety of social and political settings.
3. To provide students with a critical platform to evaluate how power shapes culture, society, identity, subjectivity, media, place, and representation.

This module explores the practice, politics, and ethics of Social and Cultural Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study. The module examines ways that culture is understood, analysed and mobilised through analysis of a diverse range of texts and issues. Some of the main topics and issues talked about may relate to the study of media in connection to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, immigration, class, fashion, food, sport, subcultures, and the posthuman.

Outline Of Syllabus

1.This module is aimed at students who are new to the field of social and cultural studies and/or who have some initial knowledge of the field. The module will encourage students to critically engage with some of the key terms, concepts, ideas, and approaches from this field.
2. The module will deal with foundational material about associated theory, and will offer some answers to the questions: 'what is culture?'; “how does culture happen?”
3. In addition, the module will consider and discuss contemporary examples. The module places a strong emphasis on understanding how to link ideas and theories to living with and through everyday texts, practices, institutions, and identities.
4. Lectures and seminars will show students how to analyse cultural life: practices, texts, institutions, beliefs, values, power.
5.The module involves discussion of local, national and transnational perspectives.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Students successfully completing the module will possess:
1. An understanding and knowledge of the history, practices, politics and ethics of Social and Cultural Studies
2. A critical awareness of the ways in which culture is differentially constituted through lived experiences of, for example, race, gender, sexuality, age, disability, ethnicity, and class across a range of local, national, and transnational contexts.
3. An in-depth understanding of the different theoretical and conceptual frameworks that can be used to analyse links among culture, power, identity, subjectivity, bodies, and places.

Intended Skill Outcomes

Students successfully completing the module will be able to:
1. Employ a theoretical vocabulary with which to discuss social and cultural life and relations of power.
2. Critically engage with media, cultural life, political debates, and institutional arrangements.
3. Exercise their judgement through the most appropriate theoretical and conceptual frameworks when analysing social and cultural life.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Social and Cultural Studies introduce a different way of looking at the world. Given that the majority of the students come from a wide disciplinary background, close and sustained support is required. Thus the lecture materials will provide formal approaches to the areas that are being looked at whilst students in synchronous discussions groups consider some of the more challenging aspects of the programme in more depth.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

For PQL0 students:

Multimedia content (75%)
Critical analysis of multimedia content (1000 words) (25%)

A programme-level approach to assessment aims to make students’ assessment journey through the programme clearer, and strengthen students’ understanding and experience of the relationship between theory and practice. 75% of the marks will be taken from the MCH1031 multimedia content, which is based around a theme covered on MCH1026. Students will be assessed on their use and application of ideas and concepts from MCH1026, whereas MCH1031 will assess practical skills as per the module's learning outcomes. After creating the content, students are required to write a critical analysis of their multimedia content using theories, concepts and frameworks that are taught on this module.

General Notes

N/A