Explore History, Culture & Writing

This class explores the work of Bob Dylan, examining his song writing, musical style, and persona in the context of American cultural, political, and musical history, exploring how Dylan engages with American culture through his absorption and reworking of multifarious aspects of both historical and modern Americana.

Enjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation. The group is led by a shared reading practitioner trained by The Reader Organisation.

We look at four poets who struggled to be heard or accepted because their work was so different from what their society expected. What were the barriers they had to overcome and how did they win through to become admired and highly regarded? What made one of the poets stop writing at the age of 21 and the other three continue for the rest of their lives? What makes the poetry of all of them so original, and what can we learn from their resilience?

What’s the unique appeal of historical fiction? Why do we read it, and what are we looking for? This course investigates historical fiction written in the twenty-first century and how it reimagines the past for us as contemporary readers. Reading novels and short stories set in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we’ll explore historical fiction’s strategies, challenges and pleasures: how it can bring unknown stories into view and rewrite what we think we know. Includes Francis Spufford's Golden Hill (2016), Emma Donoghue's The Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits (2002) and Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (2020).

Post-Reformation Europe saw endemic warfare and plague. It was also an age of absolutism where royal courts reached their apogee as centres of patronage and splendour.



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Study the design reform movements – Arts and Crafts, Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau and Art Deco – and analyse a wide range of products, including fashion and textiles, graphics, furniture and architecture within their social, historic and artistic context. Includes a museum visit.

Discover how memory shapes politics in East Asia. Explore pivotal case studies from China, South Korea, and Japan to understand the impact of collective memory on national identities and international relations.

Explore a variety of art movements, from Romanticism to American Social Realism through an introductory study of the writing of art theorists and commentators who have made a significant contribution to the Art History discipline.

Lindsay Anderson is widely recognised as one of the few authentic geniuses of British cinema, a visionary film director unafraid to challenge convention, who left an indelible mark on British cinema (e.g. on Ken Loach and Mike Leigh). He was a true maverick in every sense of the word. His uncompromising artistic vision challenged storytelling to provoke thought and change. He tackled social issues and explored the human condition through his unique directorial style. His key feature films are This Sporting Life (1963), If…(1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and his final film in 1993, Is That All There Is?



This course is running as part of City Lit's regular collaborations with the British Film Institute (BFI), who are screening a programme of films by Lindsay Anderson during May 2024. Please note that this course is taking place in the Cultureplex at City Lit, Keeley Street.