Overview
Course start date: to be confirmed
Course end date: to be confirmed
Price: £150
Tutor: Dr Min Wild
Course Code: HIST050
Level: Non-accredited, non-credit bearing
Assessments/Exams: None. Throughout the course you will be given ideas and questions to respond to in the online discussion area. Participation in online discussion is encouraged, but not compulsory.
Duration: 10 weeks
Estimated Student Study Time: 2 – 3 hours per week are recommended, but time spent is flexible and at your discretion.
Fee: £150.00
Pre-Requisites: No academic qualifications nor experience are required – you will simply need an enthusiasm for this subject.
Delivery: Online Distance Learning
Late Entrants: If this course is not full by the start date then late entrants will be accepted for up to two weeks after the start of the course. As a late entrant you can choose to catch up on the material you have missed or you can skip the missed weeks and concentrate on the material at the point where you join the course, but unfortunately we cannot offer fee reductions or course extensions for late entrants.
Recommended Reading**:
Preparatory study is not expected. A recommended reading list is provided within the course.
Required Reading**: None
**Please note: All courses are subject to sufficient numbers of students registering before they are confirmed as running. Therefore, after booking your place you are advised not to purchase any texts until you have received confirmation that the course is running.
Summary
This course explores the shockwaves that Charles Darwin and like-minded nineteenth-century naturalists produced in the fields of:
- archaeology
- environmental science
- history
- literature
- theology
- and the visual arts
Together we will work with each discipline in turn, so as to get a good sense of its individual preoccupations, concerns and methods while gaining an understanding of the inter-relationships between these subjects and how they can affect and motivate each other, including, looking at the following ways of thinking that are commonly used in all the humanities:
- structuralism
- post-structuralism
- Marxism
- feminism
- other philosophical and ethical approaches to the study of the environment, culture and history of humankind
Syllabus Plan
Week 1 (Introduction)
Introductory Overview
Week 2 (Literature)
Writing to Persuade: Conviction and Doubt in Darwin and Tennyson
Charles Darwin and Thomas Hardy: The Struggle for Life in the Victorian Novel
Week 3 (Visual Arts)
Darwinism: The Visual Perspective
Week 4 (Theology)
Darwin and Theology at Loggerheads?
Darwin and the Problem of Evil
Week 5 (Environment)
The Impact of Geology
The Influence of Darwin on Archaeology
Week 6 (History)
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism in America
Week 7 (Gender and Race)
Gender and Race in Darwin: Culture, Nature and the Enlightened Subject
Week 8 (Culture and Political Thought)
Structuralist and Poststructuralist Darwin: Epistemology or ‘Finding Out How We Know What We Know’
Marxist Darwin: The Struggle for Existence and the Death of the Subject
Week 9 (Philosophy)
Philosophical Darwin: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Week 10 (Conclusions)
Conclusions