CS201-_-__ : The World in Question: The Social, Cultural, Political & Environmental Legacies of the Enlightenment

MODULE OUTLINE

CS201 provides an interdisciplinary examination of recent and contemporary issues arising from the Enlightenment and its 19th century offspring, industrialism and capitalism. It explores social, political and existential issues that took new shapes in the 20th and 21st centuries. This module is co-taught by academic staff from Art History, EBS, History, ISC, Law, LiFTs, Psychoanalytic Studies and Sociology. The module covers three broad themes Empire, The Self, and Nature. We start by examining Empire and look at the connections between Enlightenment thought and European expansion, colonialism and cultural domination. In Part 2, The Self, we then move on to look at how new conceptions of the self were fashioned from sociological, psychoanalytic and economic ideas. Finally, we consider the changing conceptions of Nature that have arisen from the imposition of capitalist and industrial ways of life on most of the planet. The emphasis is on both on the forces that have caused so much destruction of nature and attempts to maintain and reclaim connections with it.

AIMS:

The aims of this module are:

    • To introduce students to the key ideas of the Enlightenment and its economic and political implications

    • To foster understanding about the links between historical processes and their contemporary legacies

    • To provide students with varied insights into the politics of empire, the formation of the modern notion of self, and the ecological impacts of how nature has historically been conceived

    • To encourage students to engage in interdisciplinary thinking, drawing on methods and theories from different academic fields



LEARNING OUTCOMES:
By the end of this module the student should have:

    • A broad understanding of the Enlightenment and the related phenomena of industrialism and capitalism

    • The capacity to summarise and engage critically with set texts

    • The ability to discuss and debate the module topics

    • The ability for reasoned argumentation applied to oral and text-based presentations