Module description
This module explores the ways in which space, power, and agency are mobilised as part of our political, social and cultural encounters. Building on interdisciplinary approaches to studying society and culture developed in the first year, you will be introduced to a range of topics around the intersections between citizenship, race, sexuality, gender, resistance, community, belonging and the politics of space. You will investigate how interdisciplinary concepts of space, power and agency have been explored and theorised by a variety of scholars, activists, artists and writers within a diverse range of global contexts. This approach emphasises the capacity for interdisciplinary perspectives to develop unique ways of understanding, articulating and transforming the modes of knowledge production that shape and constitute our world.
Core Module Questions
- How have concepts of space, power, and agency have been explored and theorised by a variety of scholars, activists, artists, and writers, and how we might extend and complicate these ideas in an interdisciplinary Liberal Arts context?
- What is power? Who wields it, and how?
- How do we shape our context, and how does our context shape us?
- Who has agency? How might agency be linked to systems of power and control?
- How is power and agency represented, embodied, and manipulated in different spaces, e.g. universities, prisons, museums, housing estates, the page, the stage, the streets?
Assessment details
- Book review - 800 words (30%)
- Essay - 2000 words (70%)
Educational aims & objectives
The aim of the module is to enable you to understand the ways in which the connections between space, power, and agency have been interrogated by various disciplines, to relate these ideas to daily life and your own experiences, and to integrate and form connections between theoretical and practical forms of knowledge.
Learning outcomes
We will gain experience and expertise in approaching forms of power and resistance from an interdisciplinary perspective, and we will be able to think critically and apply knowledge and approaches from particular cases studied to new subjects of study. We will also create an environment of mutual development and co-learning amongst peers, using the diversity of experiences and disciplinary focuses within the group as a resource.
Teaching pattern
- Weekly 1 hour lecture
- Weekly 1 hour seminar