Courses in London & Online

Explore art and culture in the late 19th century Europe, focussing on the major developments in modern art including the Pre-Raphaelites, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, and their relationship to wider cultural contexts.

Share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (contemporary literary fiction in paperback) and having read 'Absolutely and Forever' by Rose Tremain. Monthly meetings take place on 26/9, 31/10, 5/12, 23/1, 20/2, 20/3, 8/5, 5/6, 3/7.

Discover the 17th century: a time of upheaval in Europe, intercontinental trade, religious schisms and a wide range of artistic styles. See its art, architecture and design in London’s galleries and museums. #arthistory #explorelondon #walkingtour.

This class explores the wonderful world of 19th century American literature, reading classic texts to broaden knowledge of literary history through a range of influential novels, stories, and poems. Among the writers considered in their literary, political, and cultural contexts will be Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Kate Chopin.

Trace the importance of foreigners to the British art scene from the Tudor period to the Baroque. How did artists like Holbein, Dobson, van Somer and van Dyck influence the British School?

Is The Matrix a science-fiction movie starring Keanu Reeves, or the most influential work of philosophy of the last fifty years? Who is more nihilistic, Humphrey Bogart or Frederic Nietszche? In this course, we will examine the relationship between film and philosophy, engaging with current debates in film theory and in wider society. We will consider whether it is appropriate to label film as a form of philosophy, how film acts as philosophy, and the ways in which our experiences of watching film helps up to think through ideas about the human experience that have received attention amongst centuries of philosophical literature. Is film merely entertainment, or is it our most important form of philosophy?

What is chamber music, and how is it different from a Symphony or an opera? What sort of musicians would play chamber music and which periods of music history does it come?

On this in-college literature course we will read Seamus Heaney’s North (1975), his first collection to deal explicitly with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, alongside poems on the same theme by contemporaries including Michael Longley, Seamus Deane and Derek Mahon.