Cultures of Citizenship

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (30%) and project involving a presentation and report (70%)

How do citizens and cultures produce ideas, feelings and the conditions of communal, national, transnational and global citizenship and belonging? To what extent are these ideas compatible or in conflict, and to what extent do they change across time periods, cultural forms and geographic contexts?

In this module we explore how the arts, language and cultures create and challenge ideas of communal, national, transnational and global citizenship and belonging, by including or resisting certain individuals, identities and social groups. By examining case studies drawn from a variety of fields, e.g. linguistics, literature, film, art, theatre and digital culture, across a range of contemporary and historical cultural contexts, you will learn to adapt, create and/or analyse how the arts and citizens participate in producing or contesting different forms of citizenship and belonging.

Indicative syllabus

• Theorising citizenship - becoming citizens
• Language and belonging
• The citizen artist
• Art and community
• Nationhood
• Cosmopolitanism
• Transnationalism
• Digital nomadism
• Exile
• Sanctuary
• Marginalised communities

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand the ways in which culture relates to various understandings of citizenship
• understand the complexities of working with cultural artefacts and expressions in relation to citizenship
• demonstrate skills of literary, visual and linguistic analyses
• reflect in depth on the significance of language for understanding cultures and citizenships.