Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

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.

Curious about art history? Join us for this taster session where we explore different ways into visual art and its histories from the ancient to the contemporary.



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

“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).

Indigenous Australian art has, in recent years, been increasingly exhibited and discussed in Britain. Yet little is known about the history and development of this art movement and the oeuvres of the artists responsible for its creation. This introductory course will provide a history of how Indigenous Australian artists have changed and challenged the course of national and international art fields in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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.

Not sure whether creative writing is for you? Give it a try on one of these fun and supportive short courses covering the basics of fiction and poetry. Increase your confidence and produce work through guided exercises and discussion.

Are you brand new to creative writing? Do you want to build your confidence in a supportive environment alongside other beginners? This gentle short-course guides students taking their first steps on the path to becoming a creative writer.

This course focuses on the Soviet experience of the Second World War, dating from the diplomacy of the late 1930s to the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945.

Have you wondered why a film might have moved you so powerfully or why it looked so stunningly beautiful? Have you wanted to know quite how a film was able to communicate its story to you so effectively? If so, then this advanced level film studies course is for you. It aims to explore in depth the language of cinema, the way in which film connects with its spectators at the level of film form, in other words, film aesthetics. Writers and critics have long asked similar questions, as have filmmakers themselves, and we will follow some of the most celebrated in their quest for answers. We will look briefly at how films are made and at the importance of cinematography, editing, mise en scène and sound, before exploring in depth film’s aesthetic qualities. We will think about the importance of history for the development of film form and we will analyse clips and sequences from individual films so as to better approach and understand film aesthetics.

This course is a historical reconstruction of Ethiopia’s guerrilla insurgency, its actors and their motivation, peculiarity, and/or commonness of tactics, as well as its impact and challenges during the 1935-1941 Italian invasion/occupation of Ethiopia. Tutor: Dr Sunday Oyewole.

(Re)discover the troubled but exciting political and socio-economic history of Latin America since the beginning of the Cold War, between dictatorship and democracy, boom and recession, and gain a deeper understanding of the current situation in the continent.

In this course we explore the origins of Celtic culture in Europe and the British Isles from antiquity to the High Middle Ages. We discuss Celtic peoples, and their lands, from Portugal to Galatia in Asiatic Türkiye, as well as their achievements in art, architecture, literature, and technology.

How have artists since 1960 engaged with the recent history and memory of political conflict? What role have artists had in remembering a difficult or traumatic past? What are the connections between memory and national identity in their work?