Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

We explore the intersection of film and philosophy, engaging with the works of influential thinkers and film makers. Together, we discover how cinema opens new possibilities to examine enduring philosophical questions concerning the mind, reality, identity, and ideology.

This course will look, decade by decade, at the leading figures of the generation caught up in the turmoil of the Revolution whose lives and poetry together form a veritable seismograph of the unfolding tragedy. Their extraordinary interrelationships and the originality and power of their writing constitute one of the richest periods in the history of Russian Literature.

Join us to explore the changes in the figure of the refugee as events made people who become refugees a figure in global politics over the course of the 20th century as part of Refugee Week at City Lit.

The experience of living in Berlin in the early 1930s had a transformative effect on the life and work of Christopher Isherwood. In this course, we will discuss Isherwood’s masterpiece, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), and his autobiography Christopher and His Kind (1976), which reveals the real people behind the characters of Sally Bowles and Otto Nowak, and shines a light on the queer culture of Berlin Isherwood was unable to write about in the 1930s.

Share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session on Friday 29 September with suggestions (contemporary fiction in paperback) and having read 'Story of the Forest' by Linda Grant. Meetings take place on 19/9, 24/10, 28/11, 30/1, 27/2, 27/3, 1/5, 29/5, 26/6.

Literature provides a very effective springboard into the understanding of the developing notions of selfhood and human nature in the history of ideas and philosophy sharpens our understanding of literature within the broader context of this history.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Formally, European imperialism ended decades ago. Yet, the different legacies still affect the world and many societies today. Join us for a discussion on why we need to talk about empire and mental wealth.

What do The Apartment, The Great Escape, West Side Story, In the Heat of the Night, The Pink Panther, The Magnificent Seven, Fiddler on the Roof and Some Like it Hot have in common? They were all produced by one small production company, run by three brothers, as the studio system was replaced by the new independent producers. Most Hollywood history fetishizes the 1970s as the decade in which the movies finally came of age. But this course looks back to the late ‘50s and ‘60s and zooms in on a single independent production company, the Mirisch Company, to understand the seismic shift that transformed Hollywood – not only in how films were produced but also in terms of the subjects and styles of the films themselves.