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ASE Summer Schools in Bath
June 7 - July 13, 2025
Limited places are available on each course to preserve the small, interactive class experience, and places will be allocated to suitably qualified applicants on a first-come-first-served basis.
The deadline for initial applications is February 15, 2025.
Concepts of Democracy: the USA, the UK and Beyond
This course explores the life cycle of democratic systems through case studies of the two countries, examining in depth the birth and growth of democracy in each in order to understand contemporary political trends. From this foundation, we will look closely at debates about the state of democracy around the world, and consider current arguments about global democratic resilience and decline. Our aim will be to reach a better understanding of the term ‘democracy’, of democratic systems and the institutions - legislative, judicial, executive, and electoral - that make them up. Throughout, students will hone their analytical and communication skills through a mix of classroom discussion, varied reading tasks, experiential learning and written assignments.
London Calling: Transnational Narratives of Migration and Belonging
From a multigenerational novel in verse to a queer national romcom, dive into this exploration of British identities through a genre-bending study of some of the most exciting immigrant/ BIPOC/queer British novelists, filmmakers and poets writing today: Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Kamila Shamsie, Bernadine Evaristo, Marzanna Bogumiła Kielar, and Monica Ali.
From Hitchcock to Bridgerton: Britain in Film and TV
Starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s early masterpiece The 39 Steps (1935), this course will follow the UK’s transformation from a confident imperial superpower in the 1930s to the globalised, post-Brexit present and analyse how film and TV have represented the dramatic political, social, and personal changes that came with it.
Trans-Atlantic Nature: Literature and the Environment in England and the United States
In this course, we will first consider how numerous influential British authors turned to nature to express their thoughts on religion, imagination, and social order. We will then cross the Atlantic to see how nature writing was cultivated in the ‘New World’, analysing how race and gender inform our perceptions of nature, before returning to England to explore the impact of climate change and the burgeoning sub-genre of ‘cli-fi’.