Explore History, Culture & Writing

Why were images to do with the afterlife so prevalent in the Middle Ages? Come, face your eternal destinies and look at images such as the Last Judgement, skeletons, filthy flesh, worms, ghosts and Hell mouths.

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.

Although inextricably linked to Britain, Ireland’s history, identity, and nationhood has equally been shaped by its relationship with Europe. This course traces Ireland’s the influence of European and American



politics.

Join us for a six-week course to explore politics, society, religion and culture during the Stuart Restoration era, with reference to the reign of the ‘Merry Monarch’ Charles II (1660 – 1685) and the succession crisis that followed his death in 1685.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the academic



year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, 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.







Please note that this course will screen a new and different set of films to HF211 Cultureplex Cine-Club, which will run with the same films screened last year. If you took the Cultureplex Cine-Club course last year (2023-4), please ensure that you take the Cultureplex Cine-Club 2 courses this year.

This course will explore how Britain and France reacted to the rise of Hitler and how the Nazi dictatorship led to strife between former allies, but eventual partnership and triumph.

This cinema course focuses on Italian cinema in the years between 1945 and 1980. It will provide you with an overview of the main historical, cultural and social aspects of Italian filmmaking in Italy by looking at the work of some of its most influential author/directors.