T2G: Arts and Social Sciences

Have you ever had an imaginary argument with your Nemesis in the shower or come up with the perfect response to a point after the debate has finished? This elective will teach you some of the ways in which we build up effective, powerful arguments. We’ll do this by looking at Classical and modern models of rhetoric, and then applying these models to various important texts through time.  

You’ll get the opportunity to learn about topics ranging from the American Declaration of Independence and the Indians of All Tribes Proclamation at Alcatraz in San Francisco to one of the most important books on gender/sex relations and how modern politicians frame arguments to win/lose points (think: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson). 

Argumentation is all around us and is an art form. This elective will allow you to learn from the best – and go on to debate and argue with the best!  

Elective tutor: Dr Andrew Struan  

Andrew is the Director of Academic Services at the University of Glasgow, and was formerly the Head of Student Learning Development (SLD). Andrew’s research is in political history; he looks at the ways in which language and political debate shape our conceptions of ideas/peoples/practices, and how this changes over time. Andrew has spoken and published widely on student learning, student writing and British politics. His PhD was in networks of political knowledge at the time of the American Revolution.  

Beginning with Marshall McLuhan’s pivotal proposition that ‘the medium is the message’ – that is, the medium (mode/platform/style of delivery) of any message is just as important (if not more so!) than the content of the message and requires just as much critical attention – this elective introduces the key tenets of media studies.  
 
In the current context, where we are constantly bombarded by information from various sources and with differing agendas, it perhaps more important than ever that we are sceptical about the content we consume and recognise the role the medium plays in how we consume it.  

Regardless of which subject you study, being able to critically analyse content across a range of sources is one of the primary intended learning outcomes of University education. 

Elective tutor: Dr Stuart Purcell

Stuart Purcell is the Transitions Manager within SLD. His PhD is in English Literature and Media Studies at the University, with his thesis addressing (very) contemporary literary practice and Twitter as ‘a future’ of the novel. He has published and presented internationally on literature, media studies, and experimental methods in the Humanities. 

How does the language we use hold the power to change the way we see the world? Does talking about cancer as a ‘battle’ impact our experience of the disease? How can a scientific article manifest as click-bait in the media? What has Ancient Greece got to do with how politicians give speeches? Why does it matter if a Jaffa Cake is a cake or a biscuit? These are just some of the important questions we will be tackling during this course. We will be considering the power of language across five key areas: Science, Health, Politics, News Media, and Law. Each week you will be introduced to a different aspect of English Language & Linguistics, which we will use as a lens to discuss the material. For example, during the ‘Health’ week we will be thinking about the impact of metaphors. Taking this course will make you think twice about the language you encounter daily, making you more aware of the influence that even a single word can have. Nobody can resist the pervasive influence of language, but this course will enable you to encounter language with a deeper understanding of how it’s being used, and why.

Course tutor: Amber Hinde

Amber is one of the Effective Learning Advisers for International Students within SLD, and a PhD researcher in English Language & Linguistics, exploring the rhetoric of health and wellness in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain. Amber spend lots of her time in archives getting excited about old bread advertisements and menus for vegetarian restaurants. When she's not busy researching and teaching, she's usually lost in a good book or on a long walk with her Japanese Shiba Inu puppy, who is aptly named Meeko after the cheeky raccoon in Pocahontas!

'What is critical theory, what is it for, and how do I use it?'

These are perhaps questions you have asked yourself when thinking about starting your new courses of study; if not, they are likely questions that you will soon be thinking about when you do start your new courses of study! Thinking about critical theory and how to use it in an academic context can be confusing, or possibly even terrifying(something that many academics recall from their student days!). However, this course is designed to alleviate this uncertainty and allay these fears.

When we talk about "critical theory", we mean a category of theories which examine and critique society and culture, typically with the ultimate aim of making improvements. They are theories that draw from an interdisciplinary base of knowledge and practice so, regardless of which subject you study, being able to understand and employ critical theory will likely be a key aspect of your courses. This course will provide the foundations for you to be able to do so, providing you with the opportunity to apply this knowledge and these skills to material relating your own subject areas.

The course will be taught via seminar-based classes, giving you the opportunity to learn, discuss, and engage with the critical theories covered in the course in a variety of ways and in relation to a range of materials.

Elective tutors: Dr Mona O'Brien and Dr Stuart Purcell

Stuart Purcell is the Transitions Manager within SLD. His PhD is in English Literature and Media Studies at the University, with his thesis addressing (very) contemporary literary practice and Twitter as ‘a future’ of the novel. He has published and presented internationally on literature, media studies, and experimental methods in the Humanities.

Mona O’Brien is one of the Effective Learning Advisers for International Students, working in SLD. She works with students in all four Colleges, supporting them in transitioning to study at the University of Glasgow, understanding the academic context and expectations, and building key skills for academic success. Mona has a PhD in History, and her research investigates the relationships between the medical, social, and legal responses to illness and disease in Germany from the late Middle Ages until the eve of the Enlightenment. 

What do our clothes - and style - convey about who we are? While fashion may be perceived as trivial, our clothing choices convey significant messages about our identity in various ways. Class, culture, gender, and even political perspectives can be expressed through our attire. This course explores the historical, cultural, social and environmental significance of fashion, employing it as a lens to develop academic skills across a diverse spectrum of subjects, theories, and methodologies.

Elective tutor: Dr Robyne Calvert

Robyne is the Effective Learning Adviser for the College of Arts & Humanities. Robyne has a PhD in the History of Art, and has researched and lectured in art, architecture and design history and theory at the University of Glasgow and The Glasgow School of Art for over a decade. She has supervised many UG and PGT dissertations, and has also been a primary PhD supervisor.

From meditation bells to prayer beads, incense to icons, religious traditions are full of objects to be heard, touched, smelled and seen. Seeing and Believing delves into this 'material culture' of religion, exploring how objects shape practice and belief, and asking what gives them the power to inspire people to destroy or sanctify them.

Elective tutor: Dr Clare Brown

Clare is a Transitions Adviser within Student Learning Development.

From Dune to live-action Disney; The Last of Us to Ghost in the Shell, 21st-century TV and film is bursting at the seams with adaptations and remakes. What is it about some stories that inspires creators to re-tell and re-imagine them across borders of time, language and place? How do these stories change and shift as they transform across books, Graphic Novels, TV shows, films and video games? And what does this have to tell us about ourselves as audiences and participants in our own time, place and culture?

Elective tutor: Lucy McCormick

Lucy is a Transitions Adviser within Student Learning Development.

This course looks at how writers from multiple backgrounds have used the short story to explore different ideas of identity, particularly nationality, gender, race and sexuality.

In this course, you will learn about and critically reflect on the relationship between literature and theories of identity while learning about how the short story works.

Elective tutor: Aleix Tura Vecino

Aleix is the Effective Learning Adviser for the College of Social Sciences. He works with students from all five Schools in the College in classes, workshops, individual appointments and creating online resources to develop academic literacies, including critical reading and writing, independent and active learning, and good academic practice, among others. He is also a member of the organising committee for Let's Talk About [X], the University of Glasgow's annual undergraduate research conference. 

Aleix has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Stirling (2020) and, prior to working in SLD, taught in the English Departments of the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow (2018-2022). Aleix's research looks at short fiction and discourses of identity, exploring the ways in which we construct who we and others are through stories. He has published book chapters and critical articles on this topic in various academic journals.

This course is spread over 4,000 years of human history, and challenges us to question our assumptions of the world, of each other, and of our popular culture. We investigate how maps are designed to dominate populations through the assumptions they imbue within us, but we also look at how maps have the power to cure diseases, win elections, and create fictional worlds. The course is open to students from all disciplines, and you’re invited to bring your own knowledge and experience with you.

Elective tutor: Rohit Rao

Rohit is a Graduate Teaching Assistant within Student Learning Development, and a PhD student in the College of Social Sciences.

This course asks a simple question: has colonialism truly ended? Drawing from global histories of colonialism and imperialism, we will investigate how colonial ideologies and practices continue to infiltrate cultures and reside in bodies and minds. Through key critical frameworks, we will explore the enduring violence of colonialism in the everyday lives of both colonizers and the colonized. However, the course will further examine the ways in which individuals and collectives are continuously engaged in dismantling and fracturing colonial power structures through the practice of decolonisation.

Our primary texts will range from poems and short stories to music and film clips.

Elective tutor: Shruti Shukla

Shruti is a Graduate Teaching Assistant within Student Learning Development.

This T2G course focuses on restorative practices in education. We will start the session with a brief outline and overview defining restorative practices and looking at the history and origins of the practice. We will then look to some examples of restorative practices before critically evaluating best practice. Finally, we will present the question: how effective is restorative education and to what extent does the success of it depend on external factors.

Elective tutor: Clara Wisenfeld Paine

Clara is a GTA in Student Learning Development, and a PhD student in the College of Arts & Humanities.

‘Creative [close-]reading is not a singular activity, but the term describes the reciprocal nature of reading and writing in essays, a dynamic’ (Wallack, 2022). What is an essay? What is its function or purpose? What is an ‘essayistic’ style? How do we approach it? How can we read the essay, or rather close-read it?

This course engages with close reading the essay. We will read essays ranging in form from the scholastic to the lyrical, covering writers from the 20th century to the present, exploring a myriad of literary and linguistic topics. Through close reading, we will consider means of approaching the essay critically and creatively as well as wider discussions of textual analysis.

The course will take the form of workshops. You will be expected to have read the set text for the workshop which we will then discuss and dissect. The workshops will therefore introduce you to approaching and engaging with the essay as a primary as well as secondary text.

The course is open to all undergraduates from the Arts and Social Sciences. Moreover, there is no prerequisite of having subject knowledge prior to commencing the course.

Elective tutor: Jeehan Ashercooke

Jeehan is a PhD Tutor with Student Learning Development (SLD) working with students in the Colleges of Arts as well as Social Sciences. Jeehan is a DFA researcher in Creative Writing, specialising in transnational poetry to explore how as a cultural repository it can contribute to an understanding of contemporary migrant and diasporic identity. Her creative work has been published in various literary magazines and has won several awards.

This course will focus on introducing a few various approaches to comparative education. Comparative education will be introduced along with frameworks of positionality, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Alexander’s study of pedagogy. You'll be asked to critically explore these frameworks and consider how their positionality, culture and classroom practice intersect across various contexts. You'll engage with case study readings, reflections, and discussion to examine implications for classroom practice and policy. The main assessment will be a reflective exercise in which you'll apply your understanding of comparative study and analyse your  own educational experiences from a wider perspective of a topic explored during the course. 

Elective tutor: Lindsay Nygren

Lindsay is a GTA with Student Learning Development, and a PhD student in the College of Social Sciences

“Yes, it is still an issue... People see one woman get a CEO role or voted in as Prime Minister and they think it's job done. It's not.” (Gill Whitty-Collins, British writer, speaker and consultant) 
 
This is an introductory course to gender equality and diversity in the workplace. In this course students will learn about existing gender inequalities, their causes and the challenges associated with combatting them. The course will encourage students to think critically about different theoretical views and approaches to gender inequality, and reflect on widely existing misconceptions about men and women.

Elective tutor: Lina Seidlitz 

Lina is a PhD student in Management (Organisational Behaviour) at the university, researching the effectiveness of gender diversity policies in Higher Education. With a multidisciplinary background, Lina holds degrees in Psychology, Global Health and Policy, and Human Resource Management. Lina is a dog mom and avid bread baker (her sourdough starter is older than both her pups). In her spare time, Lina enjoys wild hiking and fishing.  

In an era of global heating, biodiversity loss and pollution of the air, land and sea, few would dispute that nature is in crisis. But the question of what nature actually means is not as simple as it first seems – and the answer might help us to understand both how the crisis developed, and how humanity is responding to it.

This course invites you to think critically about nature by introducing some of the most important ways it has been understood in Western thought. We will uncover the “origin stories” of ideas about nature that are easily taken for granted, exploring how they have been shaped by historical movements in the arts, sciences, politics and economics, and examining their legacies in the present day. Rather than asking which is the “right” way to understand nature, we will instead consider 1) which aspects of nature are foregrounded or backgrounded, 2) how this is influenced by the social contexts in which the ideas emerged, and 3) how this continues to influence human behaviour.

Students of all disciplines will be able to draw on their previous experience in class, and apply what they learn in their future studies.

Elective tutor: Kirsten Somerville

Kirsten is a GTA in Student Learning Development, and a PhD student in the College of Social Sciences

This elective explores the themes of power, voice, and belonging in everyday life. Through interactive workshops and creative activities, students will examine how identity and inequality shape who gets heard in society — and why that matters. Drawing on real-world examples, media, and personal reflection, the course introduces ideas about representation, participation, and social change in accessible, engaging ways.

Students will take part in small group activities, visual storytelling, and collaborative discussion, with optional creative assessment.

Elective tutor: Haley Sneed

Haley is a GTA in Student Learning Development, and a PhD student in the College of Social Sciences

Science is often thought of as an objective search for the measurable truths of our world, but do we all agree on how those truths should (or could) be measured?

This course looks briefly at a variety of the beliefs that underpin the modern scientific method. We'll discover what rationalism and empiricism are, the difference between induction and deduction, and why scientists are so hung up on the core ideas of replication and falsification

Elective tutor: Dr Scott Ramsay 

Scott is Deputy Head of SLD, managing the team of Effective Learning Advisers and PhD Tutors who work with students in the Colleges of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, Science & Engineering, and who provide Maths and Stats support to all UG and PGT students at the University of Glasgow. Scott's PhD is in the molecular biology of heat tolerance, so he has broad experience working with various techniques in the modern lab. Scott has taught for many years in subjects across medical and biological sciences, and also worked on secondment as the University’s Good Practice Adviser for several years. 

Scott has co-authored two scientific textbooks: Writing for Science Students, and Writing a Science PhD (both with Dr Jennifer Boyle).