These are Lancaster University’s goofiest modules

It’s over halfway through the year and the uni is gearing up to lure the next batch of Sixth Formers to our lovely campus home. They’ve released a new prospectus, they’re amping up the open days and they’re presumably firing out emails with reckless abandon.

What might the students of tomorrow be coming here to learn? These are a selection of the weirdest, wackiest or most pointless-sounding modules on offer (and I tried not to just list all the FASS ones).

BIOL353: Cancer

Well that just sounds really really depressing.

CET5824: 5824 Module 1

There’s six of them. What are they? Nobody knows. They’re all 100 per cent coursework-based. Coursework on what? Nobody knows.

CET6023: Managing a case load

Imagine the rinsing you’d get if you missed a deadline for this from overwork.

CET6035: Dealing with Difficult People

This module is a prerequisite for working with LUSU.

CIR.224: Independent Research

I’m paying nine grand a year to get told to go and do my own thing. The cheek of it.

CRIM204: Measuring Crime

Quickly Robin, pass me the BatRuler!

CRIM314: Sex Crimes and Sexual Offending

Okay I think I spoke too soon about Cancer being the most depressing module ever.

CRIM340: Criminal Careers

Lancaster does like to tout it’s graduate employment rates – gotta keep your options open I guess.

CTCSC479: Data Mining

You spend four years learning about data mining and then Thatcher comes along and shuts them all down. Bloody typical.

DELC200: Preparation

Preparation for what? Oh you know, just generally being prepared. The module convener must be an ex-Scoutmaster.

DELC344: Contemporary Cities in Literature and Film

They’re all Vancouver anyway.

DELC365: Game of (Spanish) Thrones: Treachery, War and Exile in Spanish Poetry (13th-20th c.)

I like the Department of European Languages and Cultures – they clearly have fun naming their modules.

ED.S856: Writing and defending the thesis & ED.S846: Writing and Defending the Thesis

Thankfully for postgrads, the Educational Research department offer two alternative modules for their thesis’ – one for people who hate capital letters and one for people who love ’em.

ENGL361: The Literature of Sleep

Fall asleep in your lecture and get a First.

ENGL374: Reforming the Body in Elizabethan England

I mean, this could apply to most of the English Lit modules, but who on Earth gives a toss.

FASS631: Researching Visual Culture

Lemme save you some time: you look at it.

FASS632: Postmodernism/Post-Structuralism across the Disciplines

I wish you the best of luck in never ever leaving academia.

GHPPR.324 : The Politics of Global Danger

I might get my name changed by deed poll to ‘Global Danger’.

HIST104: From Great War to Total War?

Rome: Total War was so so sick.

HIST199: Lancaster: A Place in Space and Time

Can’t argue with that, it certainly is a place in both space AND time. gj Department of History.

LEC.171: The Earth’s Interior

Man, the field trips are INSANE.

LEC.278: Soil Science

Congratulations, you’re the world’s most boring human being. Now go have a shower you mucky bastard.

LICA290: Postmodern Dance

I’m sure Postmodern Dance will teach you how to be a really edgy barista

LICA372: Sound as Practice

PPR.361: The Ritual and Social Contexts of Spirit Possession

I mean, The Exorcist is pretty sick, but do you really need to do a whole module on it?

SOCL319: Clothes, cars, gizmos and other stuff

This is the laziest module name ever. You can almost picture the convener dictating it to his secretary (do academics get secretaries?) “Um so there’s clothes in it. And cars. Some of them, um, whatchamacallits, gizmos. And some other stuff I guess. C’mon Matilda, let’s go to The Herdwick.” Trebles all round!