Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

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.

Discover the mysterious people who lived in Central Italy and ended up being enveloped by the Romans.

Explore how 19th century European artists from the Impressionists to Art Nouveau transformed their artistic language with the study of Japanese prints.

A look through archaeology at the spectacular rise and fall of Londinium from c. AD 47 to its abandonment in c. AD 457. Includes an introductory lecture, and a guided city walk.

This is a one-day course which will provide an overview of conservatism in American politics and how the ideology has evolved over time.

Discover the untold stories and hidden legacies of women in modern China in this illuminating one-day course. Traverse time, from the late Qing Dynasty to the present, to examine how women have shaped and been shaped by social, political, and cultural currents.

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of cinema, expressing as one critic describes it, the ‘poetry of fear’ and as one of the first feature length vampire films it’s influence, and legacy has been widely felt. Chris McKay’s Renfield (2023), comes just over one hundred years after Nosferatu and marks one of the most recent instalments in a genre that continues to renew itself for each generation of film viewers. Exploring a range of key vampire films from across this century of cinema, this course will explore why the vampire film remains such a popular sub-genre of the horror film and it will consider why it continues to exercise such power over its spectators.

Investigate the work of the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, including enigmatic paintings such as Las Meninas (1656), and learn about how his art relates to his political role as court painter to Philip IV. Includes visit to the National Gallery.

Still-life paintings usually represent ordinary things, often small and arranged on an indoor surface, without human presence. Long regarded in western art as the lowliest subject or “genre”, one that only required technical skill rather than imagination, still lifes are now considered some of the most charming and best loved paintings and can contain intriguing meanings that repay close study.