Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

In fiction, character and plot are inseparable elements of craft. Without characters there can be no action or plot. In this short course you will learn how to create characters that can drive a narrative forward and deepen its themes.

Explore Expressionism as it developed in different locations and within different movement, with a focus on Kandinsky as its key example, considering issues such as artistic influences and stylistic developments.

Learn how to turn real-life experiences into gripping fiction in this fun short course for fiction-writing beginners and experienced writers. Develop your writing skills and explore techniques for transforming personal stories into strong narratives.

Explore the Neo-classical movement, focusing on David as its key example, considering issues such as politics and social change, biography, artistic and theoretic influences, notably that of Winckelmann.

Explore Realism in the nineteenth century, focusing on Manet as its key example, considering such issues as social and political change, formal and subject developments, theoretic interests and artistic influences.

This study day will examine the question of the association of women with magic and witchcraft.

Film Noir was the term coined by French critics to describe a distinctive style in American cinema during the decade after the war. In the transitional 1950s, genres that had been Hollywood staples began to change, evolve, or fade away. Film Noir evolved because it was too vital, too useful, and just too enjoyable to fade away. Just as John Huston’s Maltese Falcon (1941) kick-started film noir in the forties, his Asphalt Jungle (1950) introduced a darker fifties’ noir. Or did noir begin and end with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958)? ((See related courses on Fifties Melodrama and Musicals and 50 Films From the ‘50s: Hollywood’s Last Stand).

200 years after one of history’s most famous puzzles was deciphered, tour around the British Museum’s new Decipherment exhibition and learn how the mystery of Hieroglyphs was unravelled with the Rosetta Stone, with other archaeological clues, and with a bit of genius.

A look through archaeology at the spectacular rise and fall of Londinium from c. AD 47 to its abandonment in c. AD 457. Includes an introductory lecture, and a guided city walk.

Explore how 19th century European artists from the Impressionists to Art Nouveau transformed their artistic language with the study of Japanese prints.

Discover the untold stories and hidden legacies of women in modern China in this illuminating one-day course. Traverse time, from the late Qing Dynasty to the present, to examine how women have shaped and been shaped by social, political, and cultural currents.

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of cinema, expressing as one critic describes it, the ‘poetry of fear’ and as one of the first feature length vampire films it’s influence, and legacy has been widely felt. Chris McKay’s Renfield (2023), comes just over one hundred years after Nosferatu and marks one of the most recent instalments in a genre that continues to renew itself for each generation of film viewers. Exploring a range of key vampire films from across this century of cinema, this course will explore why the vampire film remains such a popular sub-genre of the horror film and it will consider why it continues to exercise such power over its spectators.