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- Nineteenth Century American Literary ClassicsCourse start date: Fri 27 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThis class explores the wonderful world of 19th century American literature, reading classic texts to broaden knowledge of literary history through a range of influential novels, stories, and poems. Among the writers considered in their literary, political, and cultural contexts will be Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Chaucer's The Canterbury TalesCourse start date: Mon 30 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Rachel BuglassThe Canterbury Tales is Chaucer’s most popular work and one of the most famous examples of Medieval literature. This course selects some of Chaucer’s most carefully crafted representations of individuals and explores the society they come from. We will enjoy intricate plots, comedy and poignant moments with these loveable and unforgettable characters! Students will be carefully guided through the texts to a fuller appreciation of Middle English verse narrative and Chaucer’s witty and energetic composition.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Nineteenth century French fictionCourse start date: Mon 30 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Megan BeechGreed, ambition, social mobility, and complexity of family structures: these are the key issues at play in the three French novels we will discuss in this course. Focusing on Stendhal's The Red and the Black (1830), Balzac's La Cousine Bette (1846) and Flaubert's Sentimental Education (1869). We'll explore the evolution of French literary style and social mores over the course of the 19th Century, thinking about representations of gender, marriage, social class and wealth along the way.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - An introduction to the classic trio of British empiricists: John Locke, George Berkeley and David HumeCourse start date: Tue 1 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Cristina PaternoJoin this course and discover the work of John Locke, the founder of British Empiricism; George Berkeley and his famous view on perception; and David Hume’s fork of ‘relations of ideas' and 'matters of fact'.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Victorian networks: How trains and telegraphs shaped 19th century cultureCourse start date: Wed 2 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Harriet ThompsonEver wondered about the origins of our current networked culture and media-saturated society? Taking a deep delve into the weird and wonderful world of Victorian technologies, we will consider how advancements in media, transport, and communication produced new kinds of meaning and iterations of the human in the nineteenth century. Reading literary texts by Charles Dickens and Henry James, alongside theoretical work by Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Sadie Plant, and Donna Haraway, we will consider the influence of new technologies on literary form and style.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Ways into advanced fiction, poetry and drama: the dawning of modernityCourse start date: Wed 2 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Patricia SweeneyFor those who want to explore the rewards of in-depth literary study, focusing on fiction, poetry and drama. Read, analyse and debate works that reflect the cultural and historical changes as the world moves from the Victorian age to modernity, including 'The Awakening' (1899) by Kate Chopin, 'Three Sisters' (1901) by Anton Chekhov and poetry by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00 - Writing from the Margins: Great Expectations, Jude the Obscure and MakeshiftCourse start date: Wed 9 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis online course will introduce and discuss a selection of novels depicting British society from the Victorian period to the 1920s. This allows us to make links between literary texts and social context to consider how fiction might be influenced by and influencing the real world beyond its covers. As we explore each novel, we will consider the characters as outliers in relation to social pressures and stigmas, as perceived through these literary and social perspectives.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Fifties MusicalsCourse start date: Wed 16 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John Wischmeyer“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).Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - The seminars of Michel FoucaultCourse start date: Thu 17 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Daniel WeizmanWe explore Michel Foucault's public lectures at the Collège de France, introducing key concepts such as genealogy, governmentality, and biopolitics. Through Foucault's lens, we critically navigate debates on truth, social engineering, and politics in turbulent times.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Contemporary Global LiteratureCourse start date: Tue 29 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Are you curious about reading literature from across the world? Would you like to encounter some of the world’s finest literary works, reading across cultures and national borders? This in-college course will introduce you to the study of global literature. Over six weeks, we’ll explore what ‘global literature’ is, and we’ll read brilliant contemporary literary works from across the world.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Philosophy and authenticityCourse start date: Wed 30 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John HolroydIs 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.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Being ecological: environmental consciousness in cultures of climate crisisCourse start date: Mon 4 Nov 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Katie GossThis course will introduce students to exciting initiatives in twenty-first century cultural discourse that attempt to reconceptualise what an ecological consciousness might be or feel like. Drawing on theoretical and literary texts, films, performance art, and political activism, we will explore radical ways of rethinking and reinhabiting our relations with more-than-human worlds, and how they open new possibilities for living on a damaged planet.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - History of Ideas in Maths and EngineeringCourse start date: Wed 6 Nov 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Ketan VariaJoin this course to explore the intertwined evolution of mathematics and engineering, from the invention of the wheel to the foundational mathematical theories developed up to the 20th century.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Fifties film and television: Hollywood's last stand as TV beginsCourse start date: Thu 7 Nov 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: John WischmeyerThis is the decade when television really took off, when I Love Lucy premiered on a Monday night in October 1951, followed by Milton Berle as “Mr. Television” on Tuesdays. Everyone went out to buy a TV set. How could Hollywood compete with this free home entertainment? Biblical epics and Ben-Hur was one answer. On the Waterfront (1954) to Some Like It Hot (1959) was another. The fifties was the beginning of the end for the business model of the studio-era, a golden age in place since the 1920s. However,
Hollywood reacted by producing some of the finest and most enduring films in its history as it slowly began to find newer, younger audiences for James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Coming-of-age indeed! So was television, as it produced some of its finest programmes. It seemed like every week a new show or a new genre: Sgt. Bilco, Playhouse 90, Edward R. Murrow, Walt Disney Presents, Route 66—and all in prime time.
(Also see related courses on 50s Westerns, Musicals and Film Noir).
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Writing about foodCourse start date: Mon 15 Apr 2024 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Laura SilvermanLove food and want to write about it? Whether you’re keen to review dishes, interview chefs or write about sustainable eating, now is your chance. This course will cover writing for established publications as well as personal blogs.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £90.00
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