Halloween Courses

Write to unsettle, in this six-week trip through the techniques of horror fiction, learning from classic horror authors and contemporary masters of the genre.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Explore the horror film, past and present, through a range of key films, concepts and critical accounts of the genre. We will consider its history and development, and the ways in which different production contexts, for example, American, European and East Asian horror cinemas, have given rise to significant variation within the genre, with each producing films with distinctive styles, themes.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Once upon a time there was a City Lit workshop all about writing fairytales. The quest: to inspire writers to pen stories of love, fear, forests, revenge, dragons, witches, kings, queens, frogs and magic.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

The figure of Satan/devil has pervaded many centuries of the cultural imagination of the Western world. The course will examine the literary and iconographic sources for this enduring phenomena and will ask why ideas about the devil have continued to both frighten and fascinate and why its long-lasting association with sexuality and deceit continues to make it an attractive theme in contemporary culture.

From Wicca to the Satanic Panic, and from The Wizard of Oz to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this course looks at why the modern world now has so many competing ideas about what witchcraft is.

Surprisingly, not every film that features the occult is a horror film. Certainly, many of them are; we will consider classics such as Haxan from 1922, Rosemary’s Baby, The Craft, Angel Heart, The Witch and Hereditary. Other films, such as Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising and A Dark Song, attempt to treat the occult seriously as secret or hidden knowledge. We'll examine the cultural backdrop of occult films and questions of representation, gender relations, and spirituality.

The late 1960s witnessed the rise of the modern American horror film, its redefining of the limits of horror being both critically problematic and enormously successful with audiences. This course explores its development through films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and Halloween (1978), its status as a major genre, and a range of critical responses to the films.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Night of the Demon (1957), The Wicker Man (1973) and Frightmare (1974) form part of a less familiar, though equally striking, horror tradition than that of Hammer, and often in very different terms. Explore chillers from the 1930s and 40s, the proliferation of horror in 1950s, 60s and 70s along with more recent examples, while assessing a range of critical accounts of British horror beyond Hammer.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Want to write a murder mystery that will knock readers dead? On this course you'll learn how to plot a murder most horrid and develop your writing to create maximum suspense.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Explore a selection of European films that draw on cinematic traditions of fantasy, horror and surrealism, but which have also acquired significant critical reputations, with their striking visual styles, dreamlike narratives and dark themes lending them an enduring place in both film and popular culture in general. Strange tales and dark dreams to fascinate, horrify and astound you.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

An introduction to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. Study the art of the era and the architecture of the prominent Gothic cathedrals and medieval buildings of the continent and England.