In your final year, you will undertake a dissertation on a topic of your choice in politics or American studies. You will be allocated a dedicated supervisor and will also take optional modules from a wide selection to make up your remaining credits.
Plus additional modules from the Department of American and Canadian Studies.
Airpower and Modern Conflict
The invention of the aircraft fundamentally changed the ways in which wars are fought and won. Over the course of only a century airpower developed into an indispensable instrument of warfare. Today, war without airpower is an unlikely prospect and major military operations, as a rule, are launched with overwhelming air attacks.
In recent years, however, the utility of 'strategic' airpower has increasingly come under question. Whilst technological innovation continues to strengthen airpower's capabilities, the relevance of these capabilities in contemporary conflicts cannot be taken for granted.
This module critically assesses the role of air power in modern conflict within the broader framework of strategic and security studies. It will assess the evolution of air power theory since the First World War and examine the limits of its practical application with reference to specific air campaigns.
Brexit: British Foreign Policy and the Withdrawal from Europe
This module interprets Brexit as the latest manifestation of a prolonged, vexed national debate about Britain's role in the world. It will build on and develop your understanding of material taught at year one and year two.
You will cover a wide variety of topics, all unified by analysis of the question that motivated policy-makers facing these dilemmas at the time: 'in or out of Europe?'
The module content unfolds around the debates that surrounded major foreign policy-related events such as the Cold War, Suez, the end of Empire and decolonisation, the turn to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1975 EEC membership referendum, the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, EU enlargement and the Eurozone crisis.
Gender and Development
This module examines major themes, debates and issues in the field of Gender and Development. We will focus on the relationship between ideas and concerns of gender (in)equality and processes, policies, and practices of economic, social and political development.
We will explore the key literature and major debates in the field of feminist political economy, linking academic, policy-related and practitioner/activist debates. We will cover theoretical and conceptual frameworks as well as key contemporary issues explored through thematic and sector/policy case studies. We will explore how political, economic and social processes of globalisation and development intersect, impact, and are in turn influenced by gender relations in the South.
Government and Politics in the USA
This module will offer an overview of the main political institutions and the behaviour of political actors in the United States, applying a variety of analytic concepts and empirical tools to the study of American politics.
It will in particular focus on rational choice theories of voters and politicians' behaviours addressing the incentives and constraints faced by politicians when choosing public policies. By employing theoretical and empirical tools to study public decision making at the federal and state level, the module will highlight the impact of different institutional arrangements on electoral accountability and policies in the United States.
Intervention in Africa
This module analyses political, economic, cultural and especially military intervention in Africa. It focuses on the role of external actors such as international organisations, regional organisations, and NGOs, with a special emphasis on the role of France, the UK and the European Union. We will examine theories, concepts and case studies to explain the nature of contemporary intervention.
Themes include:
- the types and evolution of intervention
- the growing connection betweensecurity and development
- ethics of intervention
- the new landscape of internal conflicts and insecurity
- the role of the International Criminal Court
- EU policies towards Africa
- the difficult relationship between European actors on African issues
Case studies include Rwanda, DRC, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Libya.
Nature, Ecology and Political Thought
This module considers the development of environmental and ecological political thought and how these relate to different forms of politics. It explores the relationship between deep ecology, environmental politics and different forms of anarchism, such as anarcho-primitivism and social ecology.
In addition it examines the 'ecological turn' as it has impacted upon feminism, Marxism, and right-wing thought. It also looks at the tensions between ecological politics and democracy, and at justifications for forms of environmental direct action. These strands of thought will be illustrated through application to specific policy areas such as climate change and species loss.
Politics and Drugs
This module studies the implications of the growing abuse of narcotics for the political system from both a national and international perspective. It will examine the production, consumption and trade in drugs as an international problem.
The development of and issues associated with contemporary British drug policy will be explored and the theoretical questions raised by drug control policy will be examined.
The Politics of Ethnic Conflict
Questions relating to nationalism and ethnic conflict have become more prominent in political debate since the end of the Cold War, and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated the continuing importance of constitutional crafting as a means to manage ethnic diversity within states.
This module evaluates differing definitions of the 'nation' and 'ethnic group', examines different state strategies to manage diversity such as multiculturalism, assimilation and integration, and considers different explanations of conflict between different ethnic groups.
It then examines in more detail strategies adopted by particular states to manage their diversity. The countries of India, America, France, Afghanistan, the UK, and Germany are focused upon, but students are encouraged to use material relating to other countries if they have particular knowledge of these cases.
Politics Placement
This module involves a part-time placement (one day a week) in an external organisation, and is aimed at developing hands-on work experience and employability skills in a workplace relevant to students of politics. Pre-placement training will be provided via three half-day workshops at the beginning of the module.
Each placement will be arranged by the work placement officer. Placements will be provided by organisations involved in private, public and third sector organisations, such as the civil service, charities and political parties.
Departmental mentoring will take the form of a weekly drop-in tutorial with the module convenor, in which experiences are shared and work is undertaken on the assessment tasks. Group presentations will occur during the final four hour workshop, at which time each group will critically reflect on their experiences of the ethos and goals of their host organisation.
The War in Iraq
This module will comprehensively deconstruct the causes, conduct and consequences of one of the most controversial wars of the modern era: the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It will assess how the road to war was paved at the United Nations and through the formulation of a 'coalition of the willing'. It will then critically evaluate how the swiftly concluded invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein gave way to a vicious insurgency.
The adaptation of the US military to the demands of counter-insurgency warfare will be analysed, as will British military performance in southern Iraq. The module will end by critically assessing the effectiveness of the 'surge' strategy under the implementation of Gen. David Petraeus, and evaluating the utility of 'analogical reasoning' through comparisons with the Vietnam War.
Engaging Asia: The United States, India and Pakistan, 1942-1992
This module examines American relations with India and Pakistan between the Second World War and the onset of market-based economic reforms in the early 1990s that transformed the socio-economic landscape of the Indian subcontinent.
Much of the focus will be on:
- American involvement in conflicts that shaped modern South Asia (Indo-Pakistani hostilities in 1947, 1965 and 1971
- 1962 Sino-Indian War; 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan)
- the influence exercised by external actors on American regional policy (principally Britain, the Soviet Union and Communist China)
- the impact of international trends on America’s relations with India and Pakistan, such as decolonisation, globalisation and nuclear proliferation
In addition, consideration will be given to the cultural dimension of America’s relationship with India and Pakistan. Cinematic and literary depictions of US-South Asian relations, encompassing issues of race, religion, gender and neo-colonialism, will be critically examined.
In the Midst of Wars: The US and Vietnam
This module looks at American attitudes, perceptions and policies toward Vietnam from the Second World War until the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Much of the focus will be on the course of the Vietnam Wars, the role that different players (beyond the US) played in the course of the conflict, the reasons that the US became involved in such a destructive and tragic war and why, ultimately, the world’s greatest power was unable to win against what appeared to be a far weaker opponent.
Although we will necessarily spend a considerable amount of time examining the course of events in Vietnam, we will also analyse other developments in South and East Asia more broadly in order to put the conflicts there into their wider conflict. Hence, you must develop a contextual awareness of the overall course of US policy in Asia during the period and the outlines of the wider Cold War, and also be able to demonstrate the way that these wider trends intersected with events in Indochina.
Popular Music Cultures and Countercultures
This module examines the role played by American popular music in countercultural movements. We focus on the ways in which marginalised, subordinate or dissenting social groups have used popular music as a vehicle for self-definition and for re-negotiating their relationship to the social, economic and cultural mainstream. We explore how the mainstream has responded to music countercultures in ways that range from repression to co-optation and analyse how the music and the movements have been represented and reflected on in fiction, film, poetry, journalism and theory. Among the key moments examined are the folk revival and the 1930s Popular Front, rock 'n' roll and desegregation in the 1950s, rock music and the 1960s counterculture, and postmodernism and identity politics in the music of the MTV age.
Prohibition America
Why did National Prohibition officially begin in the United States in 1920?
What were the goals and intentions of the powerful women's reform movements and religious pressure groups calling for dramatic restrictions on alcohol?
Why was there so much political support for state and national restrictions, particularly during the First World War? Why was prohibition so hard to police during the 1920s?
The restrictions on what and how you could drink reshaped American society, politics, and culture during the 1920s and 1930s. Prohibition transformed alcohol consumption, opened up new leisure activities, and increased bootlegging, smuggling, and other criminal activities. However, popular histories and media representations of the prohibition years are full of myths and stereotypes. On this module, you will challenge these to build a better understanding of an important period in the 20th century United States.
This module is worth 20 credits.