Undergraduate Languages Cultures and Societies 2025-2026

Focusing on major cities in Europe and the Americas, this course unit uses a range of texts, including films, poetry and fiction, to investigate urban spaces as sites of promise, power and loss. Representations of global cities, and experiences of urban dwellers, highlight themes such as empire, identity, leisure, labour and love. Set amid glittering facades and gritty back streets, the texts studied in this course explore the many meanings of the urban experience across place and time. These urban encounters also provide a way of understanding key social, political and cultural moments in the past and present.

The course will span a century of protests across Europe, the Americas and North Africa, with causes including peace, democracy, human rights, anti-racism, labour rights, equality for women and LGBTI+ communities, climate change and decolonisation. Students will learn about the history, culture and politics of the countries where protests erupt, including of the social movements that lead protests. Approaches will include history, literary, film and media analysis, material and visual culture, music and social science methods.

This course will enable students to gain an insight into the theoretical framework of translation and will also enable students to grasp some of the main issues and concepts in translation theory and practice which go beyond linguistic concepts.

This course will consider art, film, literary texts, and music from the late 19th century and early 20th century in Vienna, Austria. We will examine what made turn-of-the century Vienna such a culturally dynamic place, giving rise to ideas that continue to shape our lives to this day.

This course will enable students to gain an insight into the theoretical framework of translation and will also enable students to grasp some of the main issues and concepts in translation theory and practice which go beyond linguistic concepts

This course will consider art, film, literary texts, and music from the late 19th century and early 20th century in Vienna, Austria. We will examine what made turn-of-the century Vienna such a culturally dynamic place, giving rise to ideas that continue to shape our lives to this day.