Module Directory

By examining the Enlightenment period, this module provides students with a crucial framework for understanding today`s dominant intellectual currents and social contexts.

This framework proves remarkably useful for students in their second and third year. Indeed, graduating students often rank it among the most useful modules they have taken.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to the Enlightenment period that was pivotal for the formation of our modern world.


• To provide students with a framework and background knowledge to navigate successfully their studies in future years.

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

1. To read, assess and summarise the arguments of challenging texts.


2. To learn the conventions of an academic writing including structure, quotation, reference, and bibliography.


3. To show the ability to work from particular questions on a specific text, and to write a coherent essay in response.


4. To assess and evaluate specific arguments and texts and write a critical analysis.


5. To compare and contrast two or more selected texts in one particular aspect, and express their similarities and differences.


6. To explicate a set passage from one of the texts on the programme, to relate it to rest of the text and to fit it in the contextual, conceptual and comparative framework, the Enlightenment itself, established during the module.


7. To test the ability to respond to general, thematic questions that demand a broad grasp of the intellectual and historical developments considered in the module.


8. To analyse types of language of a set passage and to relate that language to historical and discursive factors.

The Enlightenment (roughly 1650-1800) was a politically and intellectually revolutionary period of history that defined the ideas that continue to shape the way we see ourselves and the world we live in – ideas like democracy, free speech, individualism, scientific evidence, free markets, and human rights.

Built on a spine of lectures delivered by experts from across the Faculties of Humanities and the Social Sciences, this interdisciplinary module covers topics such as slavery and anti-slavery revolts, how colonialism and technological change is reflected in literature of the time, early feminism, the American Revolution, the roots of capitalism, the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution, the origins of modern law and medicine, Rousseau`s critique of social inequality, the French Revolution, and Dutch Still Life paintings as expressions of modern subjectivity. We will draw on artworks, novels, political pamphlets, and speeches, as well as philosophical texts.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 1-hour lecture per week.
• One 1-hour class per week.

There will be a Reading Week each term when no teaching will take place - exact weeks to be confirmed