Global Philosophies & Worldviews and Film & Visual Culture

GLOBAL PHILOSOPHIES & WORLDVIEWS

Liverpool is a gateway to the world. This city is home to the oldest Chinatown in Europe, its links with West Africa and the Americas were forged in the dark days of the transatlantic slave trade, and over one-and-a-half million Irish people passed through its port during the ‘Great Hunger’ of the 1845-52 Potato Famine. Each of the communities that have passed through this city brought with them their own ways of understanding the world their worldviews.

Liverpool, of course, is like nowhere else on the planet; it has its unique accent, a biting sense of humour, and an amazing cultural life. And each community that passes through the city leaves something of itself behind, adding to the cultural mix that makes Liverpool a truly global city. That makes Liverpool the perfect place to study how people today deal with all those different ideas and conflicting opinions that pop into the apps on our phones and computers. The roots of Liverpool Hope lie in the work pioneers such as Catholic Archbishop Worlock and Anglican Bishop Sheppard to bring about community reconciliation in the city. So, Liverpool Hope is the perfect place to ask how people today find their way through our media-saturated world. Here How do people coexist with others whose worldview is radically different to their own? What makes for a global citizen? What can we learn from people who are very different from ourselves? What can the story and the people of this city teach us?

This Major gives you a chance to delve into these questions. You will explore what can be learned from the ‘wisdom’ of different traditions in our pluralist contemporary world - chiefly by asking how other people have worked through questions like these. This will take you on a journey across the world. You will study in depth how the philosophical and religious traditions of Asia have tackled these questions. You will also look at the ways that Western philosophers and Jewish, Muslim and Christian theologians have explored them. Along the way you will look at how people form - and reform their worldview. You will ask such questions as does scientism lead to a reduction in human capacity for engaging with reality?  Is the Western secularisation model fundamentally colonialist?

The course gives its students the chance to step back from the noise of our digital world, and develop the professional skill of being able to engage closely with ideas and worldviews that are often misunderstood or underrepresented in society. So, people who take this course will be well-grounded for the kinds of careers that involve understanding, advocacy and working with different communities – for example journalism, the law, policing, politics, education, human resource management.

FILM & VISUAL CULTURE

If you want an exciting career in the creative industries, but also want to understand the role that Film and Visual Culture plays in wider society, studying at Liverpool Hope is the right choice for you. Film and Visual Culture is an intellectually stimulating degree that combines practice and theory, giving you the opportunity to both create and analyse a range of cultural texts - from fiction film and documentary to photography and animation.

This degree is underpinned by creative and critical practice. It is creative because it gives you the opportunity to develop practical skills in the fields of screenwriting, filmmaking (drama and documentary), photography and animation. It is critical because it involves the in-depth study of film history and theory, including the way in which cinema intersects with a range of social and political issues. You will graduate with a degree underpinned by academic rigour, but with the transferable skills needed to pursue a wide variety of careers in the creative industries.

The degree is taught by leading international scholars and practitioners and you will also benefit from access to outstanding library resources and an extensive range of practical equipment and studio space. Extracurricula activities support the curriculum by widening critical and creative horizons. Recent activities on the degree include field trips to the National Science and Media Museum, Tate Britain, and the Manchester Animation Festival. We also have regular group visits to local film screenings.

- Study in the most filmed-in city in the country outside London.

- Our local partners include FACT, one of the leading independent cinema venues in the North West.