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Culture, history & humanities

Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

Explore our extraordinary range of History, Culture and Writing courses and lectures. We offer both introductory and specialist in-depth courses to suit all levels of interest and experience, from ‘How to read a film’ and World literature, to Creative non-fiction writing courses and American history and Politics courses.

Our tutors are experts in their fields and experienced educators; many have published, teach in universities or share their expertise in the media. Tutors share their knowledge and passion through presentations, readings, interactive discussion and exercises, analysis, and other activities.

Many students return to take more courses, telling us they enjoy being part of our City Lit Learning community.

Our popular courses often sell out quickly, so we invite you to browse and book your place now.

Courses available both in-person and online

Join us in the heart of London for in-person classes. Our modern campus in Covent Garden is easy to reach and buzzing with creativity. With modern purpose-built facilities and state-of-the-art equipment, it’s the perfect space to support your learning journey. Explore our facilities >

Prefer learning online? Our live online courses bring expert teaching to you, wherever you are.

Whether you choose to study in-person or online, all our courses are live, interactive, and taught by expert tutors. Wherever and however you want to learn, we’re here for you.

Courses available both in-person and online

We offer a range of long and short courses allowing you to choose between in-person and online learning.

Learn in the centre of London with our in-person courses. Our purpose-built facilities in Covent Garden mean we are ideally located and easy to get to. 

See our guide to online learning for more information about accessing our live online courses.

All our courses are live, interactive, and taught by expert tutors. No matter how you prefer to learn, we've got the class for you.

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  1. Cultureplex Ciné-Club: women directors and their wonderlands
    Evening
    Course start date:  Wed 24 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Katie Goss
    Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club: Women directors and their Wonderlands, where you will have the opportunity to view and discuss the work of innovative female filmmakers whose work generates dazzling visions of alternative modes of living and spectatorship. A development from our existing Cultureplex Ciné-Club courses and taking its cue from the famous Parisian Ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, this incarnation of the film club will allow for the viewing of a different film each week, followed by detailed discussion and debate. The film will be introduced, and placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.
    Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £155.00
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  2. Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £120.00
    Rating:
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  3. Global History Friday Late: From Feudal Isolation to a Modern Nation-State: an introduction to Japan’s Meiji Restoration period (1868 – 1889)
    Evening
    Course start date:  Fri 26 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Dale Mineshima-Lowe

    Join Dr. Dale Mineshima-Lowe for a brief introductory history of Japan’s Meiji Restoration period (1868-1889) - an important turning point that helped to shape modern Japan. 

    Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £12.00
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  4. Friday lates: the art of satire - Brueghel and Hogarth
    Evening
    Course start date:  Fri 26 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Sarah Jaffray
    Why laugh in a time turmoil? Explore how artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder and William Hogarth reflected on the hypocrisy of their times with scathing satire. Reflect on how studying historic comedy might shift our perspectives on the value of humour, past and present.
    Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £19.00
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  5. Film and Philosophy: Thinking through Cinema
    Evening
    Course start date:  Fri 26 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    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?
    Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00
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  6. Nineteenth century French fiction
    Evening
    Course start date:  Mon 29 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Megan Beech
    Passion, marriage, crime, class, and murder: these are just some of the key issues at play in the three exhilarating French novels we will discuss in this online course. Focusing on George Sand’s Indiana (1832), Balzac’s Père Goriot (1835) and Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1868), we’ll explore French literary style and the influence of serialisation on sensation fiction and these author’s depictions of social class, romance, and realism.
    Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00
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  7. Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £249.00 Concession £162.00
    Rating:
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  8. Solitude in fiction and memoir
    Evening
    Course start date:  Tue 30 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Kate Wilkinson
    This online literature course explores representations of solitude in recent fiction and memoir. Reading twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts, we’ll consider experiences of solitude across rural and urban settings, from remote islands to crowded cities. How is solitude shaped by places, culture, gender, age and technology?
    Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00
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  9. America in the 50s: culture and society
    Evening
    Course start date:  Tue 30 Sep 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Pauline Greene, Mark Malcomson, Dale Mineshima-Lowe, Paul Sutton, Patricia Sweeney, Ian Tucknott
    From America's domestic expansion and boom in the 1950s, this online intertextual course explores the political, social and cultural context of 1950s America through a study of literature, history, music, film and art of the period. With different tutors for each specialism, the course provides a 'taster' in each subject as a gateway to further study in understanding this fascinating period in American culture and society.
    Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00
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  10. Queens of Crime: Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers
    Evening
    Course start date:  Thu 2 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  William Brady
    Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers dominated the inter-war Golden Age of British detective fiction and continue to this day to beguile and enthral readers with their intricate plotting, fiendish twists and formidable detectives. This course critically explores how both authors shaped the detective genre, the publishing history of some of their most celebrated works, and how Christie and Sayers navigated themes of class, gender, morality and justice. Through selected readings, discussions and analysis, we will explore the literary significance and enduring appeal of these Queens of Crime.
    Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00
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  11. Poetry of the Troubles: Seamus Heaney and his Contemporaries
    Evening
    Course start date:  Fri 3 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Lewis Ward
    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.
    Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00
    Rating:
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  12. Reflecting the Nation: 21st Century British Drama & Society
    Evening
    Course start date:  Mon 6 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    This course explores how dramatists use their position as commentators to reflect the societal and political issues affecting the nation. Drawing on texts by Laura Wade, Jez Butterworth, Roy Williams and others, we’ll discuss how issues such as class, national identity, queer and black lives, and activism have been interrogated by Britain’s finest contemporary playwrights.
    Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00
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  13. Argonautica: reading group (in translation) module 1
    Evening
    Course start date:  Tue 7 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Nikoletta Manioti
    .
    Full fee £159.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £103.00
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  14. An introduction to art history
    Evening
    Course start date:  Wed 8 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Thomas Balfe
    Art history is much more than decoding secrets and symbols. It is about critical thinking and empathy, understanding how an artwork reflects an artist’s interpretation of their world, and what it says to you about our world now. This course is designed to build your confidence in understanding visual art of the Western tradition. It is designed for both the absolute beginner and those with some existing art historical knowledge.
    Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £259.00 Concession £168.00
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  15. Angela Carter: ‘A Different Kind of Human Being’ -
    Evening
    Course start date:  Wed 8 Oct 2025

    Location on this date:  Online

    Tutors:  Fiona McCulloch
    This course will introduce and discuss the fiction of renowned author, Angela Carter, specifically focusing upon one novel and one short story. Carter wanted her writing to ‘demythologise the fictions that regulate our lives’, to explore how society narrates us into being and holds us there. In doing so, she offers us a chance to read and, ultimately, release ourselves through her work, as we come to understand the relationship between fiction and reality. For Carter, both of these – fiction and reality – are two sides of the same coin.
    Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00
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