Russian and Contemporary Chinese Studies BA

This is where it all begins. Designed for absolute beginners (those with GCSE Russian are also welcome!), this module will get you started on your exciting journey towards Russian fluency.

From the very first session, you'll be immersed in the Russian language. We believe it's important to use as much 'real life' material as possible, so we'll be looking at real Russian articles and websites right from the beginning. You'll work on all the key language skills: reading/listening comprehension, grammar, oral, and written.

We'll also explore the culture and society of the Russian-speaking world through a variety of contemporary texts such as newspapers/magazines, websites and video.

At the end of the module you'll have made significant progress and be able to understand Russian in a variety of everyday contexts and you'll feel confident to engage in social conversation.

This module provides you with a foundation in Chinese phonetics, grammar and vocabulary in order to develop your competence in Mandarin Chinese. The focus is on communicative competence in both spoken and written language, and you will begin thorough training in use of the Mandarin Chinese script. As well as equipping you with skills in the language, the module also informs you about Chinese culture and society.

This is an introductory module designed to provide you with an overview of contemporary China and help you establish a foundation of knowledge and skills to pursue more advanced studies of China in your later years of study.

The module examines the following topics since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, though particular attention is paid to the changes in China since 1978:

• The Chinese economy
• Chinese politics
• Social policy
• Security and foreign relations
• China's increasing activities and engagements with the world
• Chinese media and the Chinese internet
• Civil society and state society relations
• Taiwan and cross-Strait relations

This module introduces students to important areas and topics in Russian and Slavonic studies, examining important aspects of the histories and cultures of the region, as well as aspects of the languages, cultures and literary traditions. You will learn to analyse a wide range of cultural phenomena, including pictures, music, film, literary texts and other kinds of written sources.

In the early sixteenth century, Muscovy was a large but precarious state on the fringes of Europe, characterised by absolute monarchy, an official religion, crude economic and administrative systems, disgruntled ethnic minorities and an impoverished peasantry. Four hundred years later, following rapid expansion, enforced westernisation, industrialisation, a world war and a revolution, everything had changed for Russia … or had it?

This year-long module provides an introduction to the forces that have shaped modern Russia, starting with the first tsar, Ivan the Terrible, through the end of the New Economic Policy. In addition to political and social history, there is a significant focus on culture and the study of primary sources.

This module is an option for those who are studying Russian or East European Cultural Studies.

This module intends to provide the fundamental knowledge of China's economic transformation and business development. It assists you to establish an understanding of issues including economic strategies, industrial sector transformation, investment, trade and business management.

This year-long module is an introduction to Balkan history and Balkan cultural studies, covering the cultural history of the South Slavs and the legacy of empires in this region since antiquity – the Hellanistic Empire, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, Venice, France and Russia.

By focusing on the visual cultures of the three key religious traditions – Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Islam – the module explores the common features and differences in alphabet, architecture, sculpture and painting across the region. The topics covered include the imperial border, army structure, types of conquest, capital and peripheries, client states and demographic policies.

The module will develop your understanding of how living under empires informed the self-understanding of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and other South Slav nations. This module is an option for those studying Russian or East European Cultural Studies.

Studying this module you will gain an introduction to the origin, key elements and characteristics of the evolving Chinese legal system including the history of Chinese law, the organization of the People’s Republic of China as a state and its constitutional laws, the law making process in China, the legal institutions and the Chinese court system, the criminal process, and the civil process and legal profession in China. For this module you will have a one 2-hour lecture each week.

Building on the Russian skills developed in Year One, this module is going to improve your language proficiency skills and confidence so that by the end of the year you're ready to spend time living in a Russian-speaking country.

We'll develop your communicative skills, including oral fluency, through classroom discussions and interesting texts such as newspapers, websites and video. You'll improve your written Russian and get to grips with more sophisticated grammar topics.

We'll also help you build translating skills from Russian into English and English to Russian.

This module consolidates the skills you have acquired in the first year and further develops your oral and written communicative ability in Mandarin. It introduces use in more complex situations and broadens your vocabulary. A range of activities, including listening exercises, discussion, reading comprehension and producing short written texts, will improve your fluency and confidence.

Mandarin Chinese for the Intermediate Level 2B

In preparation for your year abroad this module further develops your use of and confidence with Mandarin in increasingly complex situations. Teaching continues to focus on the four key skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and takes place in Mandarin wherever possible. By the end of the module you will have firm knowledge of Mandarin at intermediate level.

This module emphasises sociological theories of family and society with reference to China. Topics include:

• social structure of China: the State, society, families and individuals
• trust, Guanxi (social network), and social capital
• rural-urban divide: dualism, 'urban bias' or 'State bias'
• social stratification: class, entitlement and citizenship
• evolution of China's social development: rural-urban migration
• evolution of China's labour market and industrial relations institutions

This module examines major public policy programs since the beginning of the reform and opening up in the 1978 in the areas of education, environment, media and communications, health, population, labour, ethnicity, along with social changes and their consequences for people's livelihoods.

In addition to exploring the content, evolution and effects of policy in these areas, the module will examine how policies are made and implemented. Lectures will introduce substantive issues and the appropriate theoretical frameworks for making sense of developments on the ground while seminars will help students to understand the impacts of these policies and the social changes accompnaying them.

 If you are studying Russian or East European Cultural Studies, this is an optional year-long module. It examines Russian society and culture as reflected in popular and influential films from 1900 to the present day, covering a variety of genres (including melodramas, biopics, youth films and musical comedies).

Lectures and seminars examine Russian and Soviet cinema’s historical contexts and reception, as well as how films are constructed technically. You develop skills in analysing cinema in its historical and social contexts, from the products of the burgeoning industry of late imperial Russia to post-Soviet arthouse films and blockbusters – via the extraordinary legacy of Soviet cinema. All the films covered are available with subtitles, and this module does not require any prior study of film.

The relationship between the state and the intellectual in Russia has traditionally been a problematic one, marked by repression, persecution, forced and voluntary exile and censorship. Political concern and resistance to an authoritarian state are central themes in the Russian cultural and literary tradition as well as a defining feature in the lives and works of numerous Russian writers and intellectuals.

We will explore the cultural tradition and identity of the literary intelligentsia in Russian and Soviet history. We'll also examine different responses to the experience of state persecution in the work of writers and artists.

Covering an extensive period of Russian history we will look at examples of writers and artists who have defied the state.

Wider questions which will be discussed include the role of the artist and the intellectual in Russian culture, the myth of the persecuted writer and the complex relationship between the intellectual and the masses.

You'll gain an understanding of the growth and development of the cult of saints in the Eastern Christian world in the context of the history and culture of late antiquity and the middle ages.

We focus on the interpretation of original written sources and icons, allowing you to master the basic tools for conducting research in the field.

This module examines major literary movements in Serbia and Croatia during the 20th century, from Modernism to the socially engaged literature of the 1930s, socialist realism, literary politics under the Communists in Yugoslavia and the emergence of critical literature in the 1980s and 1990s.

You will undertake a textual analysis of representative works from 20th century literature: for example, works by Miloš Crnjanski, Ivo Andrić, Miroslav Krleža, Danilo Kiš and Slobodan Selenić (all works may be studied in English translation).

This module examines political and social developments in the history of Yugoslavia after the Second World War.

Topics for study include:

• the Second World War in Yugoslavia between1941-1945
• the establishment of the Communist government
• the unique features of Yugoslav socialism
• the economic and political reforms of the 1960s and 1970s
• the collapse of the system in the 1980s
• the rise of nationalism
• the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s and foreign intervention in those wars
• an introduction to relations between the successor states up to the present day

The study of international political economy is essentially interdisciplinary, based on the premise that the political and economic domains are inextricably intertwined in the international system.

The module will introduce you to the main approaches to international political economy, provide a brief overview of the post-war international political economy, before the main focus is turned towards globalisation and the related structural changes in the global economy. This will include a theoretical engagement with the concepts of globalisation, regionalisation and regionalism as well as an analysis of empirical changes in the areas of international trade, finance, production and development with a particular emphasis on the current global economic crisis.

The module will further address the question of the relationship between globalisation and the individual instances of regional integration including the EU, NAFTA and APEC, before it looks at recent formations of resistance to globalisation expressed in demonstrations against G8 meetings (for example, Heligendamm 2007) as well as developments around the European and World Social Forums.

The module aims to provide an overview of the development of Chinese business law in the context of economic globalization and in particular of China's WTO membership. Topics covered business regulation in China and China's WTO membership; the Chinese legal system, contract law and company law and corporate governance in China, and the impact of China’s integration into economic globalisation. 

This advanced module will be your final step towards fluency. We'll continue to improve your five key language skills of reading/comprehension, listening, writing, speaking, and cultural awareness through translation and writing workshops, class discussions and the use of relevant texts such as authentic newspaper articles, radio and TV programmes and sophisticated fiction.

We'll give you the opportunity to develop translation skills (with emphasis on Russian-English) and gain creative writing experience, demonstrating your advanced Russian capabilities and helping you build a potential portfolio to assist you in either finding employment or postgraduate study.

Mandarin Chinese for the Advanced Level 3A

The final year Mandarin Chinese course will develop your communicative competence in Mandarin Chinese in both spoken and written language to a high level. The module follows on from your work during your time abroad, enabling you to further improve your ability to employ your language skills in both formal and informal situations.

This module will introduce you to different forms, modes, and models of interpreting as well as the issues that are often encountered by professional interpreters.  It offers opportunities to explore the different techniques/skills required for both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation. The main difficulties of interpreting will be examined, along with strategies to deal with them. The module is seminar-led in order to maximise practice in class.

In this module students learn to devise and develop projects and teaching methods appropriate to engage the age and ability group they are working with. The module enables students to gain confidence in communicating their subject, develop strong organisational and interpersonal skills, and to understand how to address the needs of individuals.

This module focuses on China from the founding of the People's Republic through the pre-reform era (1949-1978), examining how China was organized and governed as well as changes in rural and urban society, the family, the economy and the Chinese workplace under the socialist period (1949-1978). Major topics covered include:

• The CCP's rise to power;
• The transformation of rural and urban society post-1949;
• The Great Leap Forward and subsequent famine;
• In-depth analysis of all phases of the Cultural Revolution;
• Return to Power of the pragmatists and the Beginning of Reform;
• Changing views of Mao as a leader.

The module examines the close linkage between literature and cinema in China. It also explores trends in modern Chinese cinema and literature, with a primary focus on different genres and themes developed since 1978. By placing Chinese cinema and literature within their cultural, social and historical contexts, students will analyse, interpret and appreciate such phenomena.

It will include analyses of individual texts in translation and films with English subtitles. The module requires you to view films in English subtitles each week. It will increase your awareness of the major developments in literature and film as they are embedded in the wider changes in modern China.

Media systems are critically important in any modern political system, and this module leads you directly to the heart of understanding how the media relates to contemporary society and politics in the People's Republic of China.

It introduces you to the unprecedented transformation in contemporary Chinese media and communication in the context of economic reforms, development of new media technologies and globalisation.

Topics covered include:

• changing structure and function of the media and communications in China
• the impact of a socialist market economy on the media industry
• negotiation and accommodation between the Party and the media industry
• the advancement of new media technologies, especially that of the internet, and its implications
• the impact of internationalisation of media for China
• the rise of Chinese media and the global flow of information
• China's expansion of overseas communications for the promotion of its soft power

This module will introduce you to Chinese religion as a social phenomenon, and provide an overview of the officially-recognised belief systems comprising China's religious landscape.

It will examine the doctrines, practices and institutions of different religious groups, while also considering the unofficial traditions that play an important role in modern Chinese religiosity. Major topics covered include:

• Chinese Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism
• folk belief and new religious movements (NRMs)
• China's ongoing Confucian revival
• policies affecting the governance of religion, and their history
• the social dimensions of modern Chinese religion

This module covers popular music in Russia during the late tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet eras as an area of culture that affects ordinary people in many different ways – in Russia, songs have often brought people together, sometimes in celebration, sometimes to challenge authority, and they have also offered individuals fun or solace.

In the module you learn how to examine all this, applying concepts such as authorship, performance, technology and ideology, and learning how to evaluate the relationship Russian music has to popular music in the UK, USA and elsewhere. The examples studied include pre-revolutionary popular songs and gramophone culture, the assimilation of jazz, patriotic and propaganda songs, rock and pop-rock.

With guidance you will develop your own essay question focusing on a topic within Russian popular musical culture of their choice. No prior study of music is required for this module but you must also be taking Russian 3, or to be at an equivalent level in Russian, in order to choose this module.

This module offers advanced study of the history of the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Constantine I to the fall of Constantinople. The course is structured chronologically, focussing on particular themes for each period: religion and heresy in late antiquity; warfare and the arts in middle Byzantium; and politics and international relations in late Byzantium. In an average week you’ll spend around three hours in lectures and seminars on this module.

This module examines the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Russian literature. The main focus is on Nabokov’s works from his Russian-language period (1919-40), but examples of his later work written in English (1940-77) are also studied.

This module introduces the construction of national and collective memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Russian culture and society. The lectures and seminars focus on contemporary and subsequent artistic and social responses to the experience of war, but also examine individual acts of remembering (diaries, reports, letters) in the context of a wider cultural memory.

The module equips you with the skills to analyse, evaluate and discuss Russian and Soviet commemorations of the Second World War and the construction of a collective memory; to identify and contrast different strands of narratives of war experiences which unite individual and collective responses to the Second World War; to analyse and apply relevant theories of memory to Russian and Soviet strategies of commemorating the war; to discuss some of the central problems related to Russian and Soviet memories of the Second World War, including the relationship between memory and forgetting, narratives of suffering and sacrifice and the relationship between acts and rituals of commemoration and the construction of national identity/identities.

Working closely with a supervisor who teaches and researches in a relevant field, final year students carry out in-depth research into a topic of their choice, building on work they have done in a module studied in year two or the final year.

Areas of study include history, literature, cinema, music and religion.

Recent topics include:

• Mongol rule in medieval Russia
• the cultural remembrance of Porajmos (the genocide over Roma during World War II)
• the works of Mikhail Bulgakov
• reporting on the Pussy Riot trial in UK and Russian media
• adaptations of US television comedy series for the Russian market

This module examines the interaction between politics and economy in China during the economic reform period from 1978 onward. Particular attention will be given to the progress and periods of China’s reform, the political context of major economic policies, reform of major aspects of the economy, evolution of economic institutions, as well as an overview of economic development in China prior to 1978. The module will highlight the role of the political factors and state policies in China’s economy, which is important for a good understanding of the reform and economic development in China. For this module you will have one two-hour lecture each week.

In this module you’ll learn about the two countries that choose a different pathway from mainland China whilst still under the leadership of the communist party. You’ll address a number of questions in order to gain a good understanding of the processes of these unique countries and be able to critically reflect on their differences with mainland China. You’ll have two hours of lectures weekly studying this module.

East Asia is one of the world's most dynamic and diverse regions. It is also becoming an increasingly coherent region through the inter-play of various integrative economic, political, and socio-cultural processes, otherwise known as regionalism. Studying these regionalism processes may be understood in the broadly context of East Asia's regional political economy. Moreover, the integrative processes of regionalism are closely bound to East Asia's regional economic development. Japan played a particularly important initial role here from the 1950s onwards, and now China has become the locomotive of East Asia's economic growth.

This module explores the various aspects of East Asia's regional political economy with special reference to the influence of China. Key themes include regional organisations, international business, cities and infrastructure, environment, international migration, energy security, international development, trade, finance and geopolitics.