Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity (MA / Postgraduate Diploma / Postgraduate Certificate) - 2012/2013 entry

This programme explores debates on ‘race’ and ethnicity, multiculture and postcoloniality. It focuses on postcolonial political communities and social identities; contemporary urban cultures; cosmopolitanism and global popular multiculture; diaspora and globalisation and gender, intimacy sexuality and desire. You will explore how contemporary social formations in the UK and Europe are intricately connected to intersecting imperial histories across the globe and consider how local debates on 'race' and racism are shaped by the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century. You will also explore contemporary discussions on empire and ‘the war on terror’; nationalisms and human rights and 'race', class and criminalisation. The programme offers you the opportunity to study a wide range of different subjects in this broad multidisciplinary area.

The MA is convened by academic staff in the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, from the Department of Psychosocial Studies who are actively working on research on racialisation and postcoloniality and contemporary political communities and urban cultures in the UK. You can also choose from a range of option modules convened by other academics in other departments across the College.

This innovative, interdisciplinary postgraduate programme will be of interest to those who want to enhance or develop careers in the arts and cultural industries, education, health and social care, mental health, housing, conflict resolution and mediation, social research, urban planning, journalism, or in a range of other areas. It will also be of interest to those who wish to pursue an academic career in sociology, cultural studies or psychosocial studies, or in the social sciences or humanities more generally, and to those who just wish to develop an advanced understanding of ‘race’ and racism, multiculture and postcoloniality.

• Introduces you to different historical and political debates and theoretical perspectives in the broad area of 'race' and racism, multiculture and postcoloniality.
• Participate in a vibrant, stimulating and diverse intellectual environment. There is a ‘Race Forum' and several other research institutes at Birkbeck that focus on relevant subject areas.
• Flexibly designed for students from all backgrounds to pursue their own particular research and professional interests.
• Draws from sociology and cultural studies and history, anthropology, law, literary studies, psychosocial studies and urban studies.

The programme combines taught core and option modules and provides the opportunity for independent research supervised by an academic. The core modules introduce you to significant historical and political debates and theoretical perspectives. The option modules are specialist subject courses which focus on a specific area, such as human rights, psychoanalysis, migration and refugees, and African and South Asian film studies,which enable you to draw together and apply theories and concepts from the core modules to a specialist subject area of your choice.

Master's

Students complete 180 credits composed of two 30-credit core modules; two 30-credit special subject option modules and a 60-credit dissertation/independent research project.

Postgraduate Diploma

Students complete 120 credits or two 30-credit core modules and two 30-credit option modules.

Postgraduate Certificate

Students complete 60 credits or two core modules, or one core module and an option module. 

Full-time students

• ‘Race,’ Racism, Postcoloniality (core module one: 30 credits)
• Culture, Community, Identity (core module two: 30 credits)
• Two option modules (30 credits each – see list below)
• A Postcolonial Imagination: Research Methods
• Dissertation (60 credits).

Part-time students

Year 1

• ‘Race,’ Racism, Postcoloniality (core module one: 30 credits)
• Option module (30 credits – see list below)
• A Postcolonial Imagination: Research Methods.

Year 2

• Dissertation Workshop
• Culture, Community, Identity (core module two: 30 credits)
• Option module (see list below)
• 10,000–12,000-word dissertation.

Option modules vary from year to year. In 2011–2012, they included:

• Africa in the European Imagination
• African and South Asian Filmic Narratives
• Consumers in Modern and Contemporary History
• Cultures of Human Rights
• Cultures of Rights
• Education, Globalisation and Social Change
• Education, Power and Resistances
• European Visions of Amerindian Peoples 1462–1654
• Fantasmatic  Formations
• Futures: The Globalization of Human Rights
• Gandhi and Non-Violence in Comparative Perspective
• Gender and Development
• Gender and Politics
• Gender and Society
• Human Rights and Empire  
• International Rights of Minorities
• Jews and Antisemitism in Modern Europe: Histories and Approaches
• Latin American Cinemas
• Masculinities/ Femininities
• Men and Masculinities in East Asia
• Migration and Refugees 
• Museums, Memory and National Identity
• Of Japanese Descent: Japanese Communities and Identities outside Japan
• Politics and Islam
• Racial Science and Racial Medicine
• Refugee Law
• The Holocaust
• The International Political Economy of Childhood  
• Theorising Gender
• Voluntary and Community Sectors in the U.K
• War, Conflict and Development.

In Year 1, you will take the core module ‘Race’, Racism, Postcoloniality` in the autumn term. We recommend you take your option module in the spring term in order to balance your workload throughout the year. You will take ‘A Postcolonial Imagination: Research Methods’ in the summer term.

In Year 2, you will take the dissertation workshop in the autumn term and the core module ‘Culture, Community, Identity’ in the spring term. You can take an optional module in any of the three terms. You will submit your dissertation in September at the end of your second year. 

Dissertation

The dissertation is 10,000–12,000 words. Full-time students submit this at the end of the academic year in September. Part-time students submit it at the end of Year 2 in September. You will work closely with a dissertation supervisor. Below are some of the dissertation topics chosen by students in previous years:

• Camberwell New Church Street: 'race', faith and gentrification in South East London. A study of a campaign against a black majority church in Camberwell, London.
• Fear, crime and racial segregation in a local neighbourhood in a small town in contemporary Italy
• Multi-agency approaches to victims of race hate crime
• ‘Mixed-race’ identities in contemporary London
• Representations of blackness in contemporary R&B and hip-hop
• ‘Honour killings’ and anti-Muslim racism in contemporary Britain
• Zionism and Rastafarianism
• The (re)criminalisation of black youth in Britain
• Representations of multiculturalism in contemporary children’s literature
• Contemporary asylum legislation in the U.K and the criminalisation of refugees
• Discourses in government policy and media representations of forced marriage and South Asian Muslim communities in the U.K
• Hindu nationalisms in contemporary India.

You will join a flourishing and diverse postgraduate student community and a growing research culture. Birkbeck Library has an extensive teaching collection of books, journals and learning resources in sociology and cultural studies and related disciplines. You will also be able to use the rich research resources nearby including Senate House Library, the British Library of Political and Economic Science (the LSE Library), the SOAS Library and the British Library. There is a ‘Race Forum’ which hosts talks from visiting speakers and organises workshops, seminars and symposia. There are also research institutes which focus on relevant subject areas such as the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities; Birkbeck Law School Centre for Law and the Humanities; The Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice and reading groups such as the Postcolonial Studies Reading Group.

If you are interested in further research, we offer a PhD/MPhil in Psychosocial Studies.

Find out more about our postgraduate courses. 

Graduates include youth and community workers and workers for charities and organisations whose concerns range from ‘race relations’ and policing to domestic violence, refugees and asylum, human rights, imprisonment and rehabilitation. They also include barristers and solicitors, psychotherapists, lecturers and social researchers in the areas of sociology, cultural studies and social policy, teachers, film-makers, curators, architects, novelists, journalists and those working in the arts and cultural industries. There are currently several graduates undertaking doctoral research in this subject area.

There is no closing date, but we encourage you to apply as early as possible.