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.
- Hitchcock in the 50s: A golden run
Course start date: Sat 31 May 2025Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerAlfred Hitchcock (b.1899) is responsible for some of the most influential films in cinema history. He directed over 50 feature films throughout his career (11 in the 1950s) as well as hosting and directing the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-61). He peaked in the fifties, when he hit his own fifties. Instead of a mid-life crisis he had his most productive period ever and received the official title of the "Master of Suspense”. Just before this he had hit the buffers from 1947 to 1951 with one failure after another but turned things around when he went to Warner Brothers for Strangers on a Train (1951) and then, fortuitously, to Paramount for a golden run of hits from Rear Window (1954) to Psycho (1960). The French declared him an auteur—an artist. The fifties are his late, mature period and these are his most personal and revealing films. Vertigo (1958) was his autobiography.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Mews, monuments and museumsCourse start date: Sun 1 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Marilyn GreeneThis circular walk explores the alleys lanes, squares and delightful mews houses and passes a disused tube station in the mainly in the Knightsbridge conservation area and contrasts with the grand museums, institutions and monuments built in South Kensington (Albertopolis) developed with profits of the Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park in 1851. Meets outside the main entrance to the V&A ends outside the Natural History Museum. Meets outside the main entrance to the V&A ends outside the Natural History Museum.Full fee £29.00 Senior fee £23.00 Concession £19.00 - Fixity and Flux: poetry in motionCourse start date: Mon 2 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Suzannah V. EvansCome and revel in the sheer variety and possibility of poetic form, as we consider how form might shape what a writer has to say and how they say it. This course will allow you to explore the many shapes that a poem can take.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Thinking through philosophy: a guideCourse start date: Mon 2 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Christopher HornerWhat is morality and what is it based on? Is the mind a ghost in the machine? What can I really know? This is a beginner’s introduction to how philosophy tackles questions like these and many others.
- How to get an agent Course start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Neil ArkseyThis workshop, designed for authors who have finished their manuscript, offers practical advice on finding and approaching a literary agent.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £40.00 - Writing MotherhoodCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Rebecca JonesExplore the extraordinarily diverse world of writing about motherhood, looking at literary texts that have firmly rebuked any notions of motherhood as ‘merely’ domestic, and have instead made it the subject of serious literary writing, have explored major themes such as the body, trauma, gender, queerness, race and creativity, and have written diverse truths about the realities of motherhood. Writers include Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich and Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Ayò¿bámi Adébáyò¿.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00 - The philosophy of raceCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Ovett NwosimiriThis course session touches upon the philosophical foundations of race, engaging with historical and contemporary debates on racial identity, racism, and justic
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £8.00 Concession £7.00 - Struggles for Racial and Gender Justice in Latin AmericaCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Pilar Villanueva MartinezThis course explores key contemporary movements for racial and gender justice in Latin America, including the feminist and women's movement, Indigenous peoples' land defense, and the anti-racist struggles of Afro-descendant communities.
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £8.00 Concession £7.00 - Art for social change: introducing the photography of Gordon ParksCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sarah JaffrayAn introduction to the photography of Gordon Parks and its significant impact on social justice in the United States. We’ll develop Parks’s biography before looking at some of his famous photo-essays for Life and Ebony Magazines in the 1940s and 50s.
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £7.00 - Ethnicity, Racism, Crime and the Criminal Justice System in BritainCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Michele ScottJoin us to discuss ethnic inequalities within the British Criminal Justice System (CJS) and why these inequalities continue to persist in the 21st century. This session is part of the day on Racism and Racial Justice with Amnesty International UK..
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £8.00 Concession £7.00 - Art and society in the early modern NetherlandsCourse start date: Wed 4 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Thomas BalfeThis course focuses on Flemish and Dutch (Netherlandish) art of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The course will examine well-known artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as the role of artworks and visual images in the formation of religious, class, gender and national identities, in early science, and in cultures of collecting.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Art revolutions from 1905-1925Course start date: Wed 4 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Christopher CollierCubism, Futurism and Constructivism are pivotal movements in the history of modern art – encapsulating all the promise and peril of the 20th century’s devastating birth, and even helping rewrite perceptions of space and time.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Looking at contemporary artCourse start date: Wed 4 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Francesca CavalloExplore and discuss contemporary art on show in London. Each week we’ll visit 1-2 commercial galleries or a public gallery and examine specific exhibitions of contemporary art across a range of media including painting, works on paper, photography, new media and sculpture.
Full fee £159.00 Senior fee £127.00 Concession £103.00 - 'The future is now', an introduction to video art Course start date: Thu 5 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Irina ChkhaidzeExplore the early history of video art, its rise as a medium and its significance as a contemporary art practice. We focus on the influential video works from the 1960s-1980s.Full fee £49.00 Senior fee £49.00 Concession £32.00 - Symbols and stories: saints in art Course start date: Thu 5 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresSaints are represented in masterpieces of Christian art from 1200 to the present – learn how to recognise them, decode their meanings and iconography and enhance your understanding of this aspect of art history. This course includes a gallery visit.
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