Class, Community, Nation (009GS)

30 credits, Level 6

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll explore how people experience class-based inequality, and how racism has shifted over time.

You’ll draw on different disciplines, critical analysis and practice to study the languages, practices and impacts of colonialism - from rural neighbourhoods to entire countries. Through this, you’ll inspect:

  • the questions ‘What does this place stand for?’ and ‘To whom does this place belong?’ (Doreen Massey)
  • ideas from feminist, anti- racist and anti-colonial scholars – such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mahmood Mamdani and Lisa Lowe
  • ‘community’ itself
  • the tensions within communities, including unequal land ownership and gender inequality
  • places of hope, solidarity, resistance and abolition
  • work by writers in the black radical tradition
  • political ideas across groups and generations, inside and outside of higher education
  • what drove the rise of right-wing nationalist movements in the late 2010s in India, the UK, the US, the Philippines, continental Europe and Brazil
  • why the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and then to ‘get Brexit done’ in 2019
  • the cause of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement
  • how these right-wing shifts affected human travel after the pandemic and during the climate crisis
  • whether using Gramscian methods, as developed by Stuart Hall and Gillian Hart, helps us study these issues.

Teaching

100%: Seminar

Assessment

30%: Coursework (Essay)
70%: Written assessment (Essay)

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 267 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2026/27. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses: