Bachelor 2024/2025

Aesthetics of the Beautiful and the Monstrous in the European Visual Culture. Advanced English

Type: Elective course (HSE/NES Programme in Economics)

Area of studies: Economics

Delivered by: Undergraduate Programmes Curriculum Support

Where: Faculty of Economic Sciences

When: 1 year, 3, 4 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Language: English

ECTS credits: 6

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Nothing or no one is naturally, inherently and intrinsically normal. By the same token no one or nothing is a born monster. Paraphrasing a well-known proverb it would be fair to say that it takes a village to make a monster. The monstrous body is “pure culture” and in all epochs it has embodied culturally specific fears, traumas, anxieties and fantasies. The monstrous body is tattooed with the cultural text which tells a story of exclusion and marginalization, fear and hatred, curiosity, awe and desire. Rephrasing another adage, to understand how a culture treats its freaks means to get an insight into the origins of its “normalities”; it means to discover the sources of its collective psychic energy which a society expends on keeping anomalies in check. An essential facet of the course is an emphasis on building English language fluency in terms of both written and oral discourse. One of the main requirements is a high level of reading competency. The course methodology promotes class discussions, presentations and writing activities. The key transferrable skill that is at the centre of the course is the ability to understand, analyze and critique the ideas of others with the aim of constructing and presenting own argument in an academically rigorous and persuasive way.