Explore History, Culture & Writing

Come on a discovery of Patristics, where you'll read, analyse and discuss the texts written by the Church Fathers.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Two (or more!) heads are better than one! Collaborate with others to create short pieces of theatre, using everyone's skills and ideas to tell collective stories.

“The more beautiful everything is, the more it will hurt without you”—Gene Kelly as An American in Paris (1951) singing to Leslie Caron. Happy endings are hard won in fifties’ musicals and The End is where they were heading. MGM was the studio of musicals in the 1950s. During this decade other studios presented only occasional musicals. The musical was big business for Hollywood in the 1950s and so was the western, so bringing them together made sense. Annie Get Your Gun had been a big success for MGM so Warner Bros. decided to get a piece of the action with Calamity Jane (1953 David Butler with Doris Day). Judy Garland was sacked by MGM in 1951, then followed Joan Crawford to Warner Brothers where she staged a big comeback in, fittingly, A Star is Born (1954 George Cukor). Oklahoma (1955 Fred Zinnemann) and Carousel (1956 Henry King) from 20th Century Fox introduced Shirley Jones. And don’t forget Leonard Bernstein’s score for On the Waterfront (1954) that anticipated West Side Story (1961). (See related courses on Fifties Melodrama and Film Noir and 50 Films From the ‘50s: Hollywood’s Last Stand).

Explore the development of Cezanne revolutionary approach to painting, his techniques and motifs and some of the many artists whose work he influenced.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Is it possible to be true to oneself? And, is this a worthwhile pursuit or a delusion of modernity? This course will explore these questions with the help of five modern philosophers.

Follow Vincent van Gogh from London to Paris in the late 19th century and discover the artistic influences and friendships that informed his art.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This talk will explore the different commercial routes that crisscrossed the vast area between Central Asia, the Mediterranean basin and the Arabian Peninsula.

The course examines the history and nature of racism in British society. It asks: how racist is Britain and how is that racism expressed in different areas of life? Join us to engage these difficult but important questions.

This course is an introduction to African philosophy. We will analyse the various positions and contestations regarding the nature, and trends in African philosophy, debate on communitarianism and personhood, African ethics, ubuntu, and decolonisation of knowledge.

Join us to read and discuss a selection of novels from the 1950s and 1960, in English and in translation, some of which, like Stan Barstow’s powerful story of upward mobility A Kind of Loving and Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s poignant portrait of unrest in Kenya Weep Not, My Child, have rarely been out of print. Some are recent rediscoveries, such as Han Suyin’s story of forbidden romance in wartime London, Winter Love, and Chingiz Aitmatov’s delicate Kyrgyz fable, Jamilia. Fresh translations of Magda Szabo’s Iza’s Ballad and Tove Ditlevsen’s autobiographical coming of age story,Youth, are also included.



NB. This course will have a break week on Wednesday 29 May.

Over the past five hundred years in the West belief in God has declined. This course will examine why this has happened and consider the meaning and significance of what has taken place.



Please note: There will be no class on 20/05/24.