Arts, Humanities and the Lifecycle 2 - Histories, Places, Practices

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: Dr Suzannah Biernoff
• Assessment: a 1000-word critical response to a cultural artefact (40%) and 2500-word essay (60%)

In this module we will focus on key points of change and challenge in the way the human lifecycle has been imagined at different points in history from the medieval period to the present day and beyond.

While the focus will be mainly on British history and arts, we will look sideways to different cultures to contextualise and de-centre the British experience of the lifecycle over time. We will explore how the arts and humanities can help us engage with the history of health, wellbeing and social care in imaginative ways, allowing us to rethink what it means to be human in the twenty-first century with reference to where we have come from, where we are now across the globe, and where we might be headed as humans of the future.

Indicative syllabus

• From medieval to Reformation regimes of life
• Sick cities in the eighteenth century
• Public health, private wealth: class and wellbeing in the nineteenth century
• Destruction, disease, death
• From cradle to grave
• How do we live now?
• Future bodies, future minds

By the end of this module, you will have:

• an understanding of the body, life and death as historically contingent concepts
• an understanding of how health and wellbeing have been conceptualised in distinct ways through history and across culture
• an understanding of how an engagement with the arts can impact our understanding of historical and social developments
• engaged effectively with different kinds of primary text
• encountered a range of approaches to the interpretation of the past and present.