Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses
Explore our extraordinary range of History, Culture and Writing courses and lectures. We offer both introductory and specialist in-depth courses to suit all levels of interest and experience, from ‘How to read a film’ and World literature, to Creative non-fiction writing courses and American history and Politics courses.
Our tutors are experts in their fields and experienced educators; many have published, teach in universities or share their expertise in the media. Tutors share their knowledge and passion through presentations, readings, interactive discussion and exercises, analysis, and other activities.
Many students return to take more courses, telling us they enjoy being part of our City Lit Learning community.
Our popular courses often sell out quickly, so we invite you to browse and book your place now.
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- Ways into screenwriting
Course start date: Thu 1 May 2025 (and 3 other dates)Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Bob SchultzLearn to write for the screen on this practical, introductory course. Writing exercises, presentations and screenings will teach you key skills, and you’ll begin to produce work and an outline for a full-length project.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £120.00 - Ways into creative writing Course start date: Thu 23 Jan 2025 (and 10 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul LaffanWant to have a go at creative writing in a supportive environment? Join one of these introductory courses. Guided exercises will give you the tools to explore language creatively and find your own writing voice.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £120.00 - Cultureplex ciné-club 2Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonCome and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2, where once a week, for 10 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.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £249.00 Concession £162.00 - Literature Taster: Poetry Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamCurious about studying poetry? Join us for this taster session to boost your confidence and whet your appetite for further study!Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £7.00 - 17th England, Revolution and Restoration: these distracted times: the 1642–1651 civil wars Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Ellen CarpenterJoin us for a ten-week course to discover the history of the 1642–1651 Civil Wars. From divided families to the breakdown of censorship and rise of propaganda, to innovations in warfare and medicine and the growth of religious sects and witchhunting, for the people who lived through the era, the Civil Wars really did make the world seem ‘turned upside down.'.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £162.00 - Eastern Europe during the Cold War, 1945-1989 Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sebastien ArdouinWhat led to the establishment of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, how did they evolve, and why did they collapse? What was life like for citizens of the Eastern bloc?
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £259.00 Concession £168.00 - Get together and readCourse start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Claire AllenEnjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation. The group is led by a shared reading practitioner trained by The Reader Organisation.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £75.00 - Arts of the empire-builders: Timurids, Safavids and Mughals Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Anita ChowdryPatronage under the Timurids, Safavids and Mughals marked a definitive period in the development of the arts and culture of the Islamic world. This course looks at the visual ‘brands’ that characterised these important empires. - Ways into poetry Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025 (and 4 other dates)
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Claire CollisonRelatively new to writing poetry? This inspiring course offers an opportunity to experiment with language and a variety of poetic devices alongside fellow emerging poets. Discover the key elements of a poem in a friendly and interactive class.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £120.00 - World cinema 2: Diaspora Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Gillian McIverThis online film course follows on from Introduction to World Cinema. Like the first course, it will introduce you to filmmaking nations that are often less visible than Hollywood and the larger European film industries. The course will introduce the idea of ‘Diaspora Cinema’ (also known as Diasporic Cinema), that is, films made by filmmakers that are part of a cultural diaspora.
Diasporic cinema refers to the production of films by any community of exiles or immigrants who have left their native country and live and work in another. It encompasses a wide range of genres, sub-genres, and themes within film studies.
A 'diasporic' film is not the property of a single culture, but mediates in at least two ways. It explains the interaction between different loci of knowledge, exposing cinema's synthesis of expression and creating new types of information.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - An introduction to the art of seventeenth-century Europe: 1590–1690 Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresOften referred to as “the Baroque”, the seventeenth century embraces some of the most dramatic, dynamic and acclaimed artworks ever produced, yet also some of the most tranquil and gentle. We will explore a wide range of paintings and sculptures from this period, discover why they look as they do, and investigate the powerful religious and historical contexts that influenced its artists.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information. - Cultureplex ciné-club Course start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonCome and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 weeks (and throughout the rest of 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.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £162.00 - 20th Century German Literature: Czech, Swiss, Austrian, Romanian & German writersCourse start date: Thu 23 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldExplore a dazzling range of masterworks from across Central and Eastern Europe that includes many of the seminal figures of 20th century German Literature, from Modernism to the two world wars, the Holocaust and their aftermath, explored chronologically and including among others Rilke, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Celan, Bernhard and Herta Muller.
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 £159.00 Concession £129.00 - German art 1910-1960: art, politics & culture in the wake of war Course start date: Thu 23 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Irina ChkhaidzeExplore 20th century German art and history, and the artistic responses to the impact of two world wars.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £249.00 Concession £162.00 - Who were the ancient Greeks? Course start date: Thu 23 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sean GabbThe Greeks are perhaps the exceptional people of the Ancient World. They were not saints: they were at least as willing as anyone else to engage in aggressive wars, enslavement, and sometimes human sacrifice. At the same time, working without any strong outside inspiration, they provided at least the foundations for the science, mathematics, philosophy, art and secular literature of later peoples.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £209.00 Senior fee £209.00 Concession £136.00
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