Explore History, Culture & Writing
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.
- City Lit reading group 2
Course start date: Fri 30 Sep 2022 (and 1 other date)Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Patricia SweeneyShare thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (contemporary fiction in paperback) and having read 'The Harlem Shuffle' by Colson Whitehead. Monthly meetings take place on 30 Sept, 4 Nov, 09 Dec; 27 Jan, 3 March, 31 March, 5 May, 2 June and 7 July.Full fee £189.00 - Textiles: an international history Course start date: Fri 29 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresAs well as expressing power, prestige and fulfilling symbolic functions, textiles have been intimately linked to the everyday lives of members all societies for millennia. On this course you will study the development of woven, printed and embroidered textiles of many kinds from around the globe and explore the significant roles they have played in the world’s material culture.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Modern French literatureCourse start date: Fri 29 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandExplore modern French literature, discussing literary style, themes, and contexts as a way of sharing and developing responses to celebrated French writers. From Cendrars and Céline to Modiano and Ernaux, come discover poetry, prose, fiction, and autobiography by essential French authors of the past one hundred years.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - 'A moment's monument': Capturing time, place and feeling in the sonnet formCourse start date: Fri 27 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensDante Gabriel Rossetti described the sonnet as a ‘moment’s monument’, so capturing the form’s unique mix of brevity and durability. This course charts how the sonnet has developed over more than five centuries by engaging with close reading of poetry from the Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian and modern periods. Focusing on both commonly anthologised and less familiar examples of the sonnet, it explores the form’s enduring power and adaptability.Full fee £179.00 - Borderlines of madness in 19th century fiction Course start date: Fri 19 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sarah WiseWe will explore various themes related to insanity and altered states of consciousness by examining a number of 19th-century works of fiction. Novelists and poets often had the greatest insights into the workings of the mind, and many Victorian psychiatrists cited works of fiction in their case studies. Among the authors we will analyse are Charlotte Bronte, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Gogol, Herman Melville and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Latin American literary classicsCourse start date: Fri 19 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandFrom Mexico to Patagonia, Latin America has produced some of the most spellbinding literature of the modern age. From dictatorship and death to national identity and the natural world, join us as we investigate the cultural heritage of the continent through some of its best writers.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - A day in the life of the everyday: the twentieth century circadian novel: Mrs. Dalloway, One Fine Day, The HoursCourse start date: Fri 26 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensNovels that fit all their action into just one day (‘circadian novels’) have been penned by some of literature’s most esteemed authors. This course focuses on three novels which use the one-day structure to tell their stories: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Mollie Pater-Downes’s One Fine Day (1947), and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1999). It explores how they portray the inner life of characters, at the same time as engaging with broader social issues of the time.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Post-war German history: 1961 to reunification and beyondCourse start date: Fri 5 May 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rudolf MuhsThis course offers a broad survey of German history from the sealing of the country’s division by the Berlin Wall to its unforeseen reunification in 1989-90 and its aftermath.Full fee £219.00 - Politics, society and culture in Weimar Germany (1918-1933) Course start date: Fri 3 May 2024 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rudolf MuhsThis course looks at the Weimar republic established in Germany in 1918, its achievements, the problems it faced and why these led to the rise of the Nazis and end of democracy in inter-war Germany.Full fee £229.00 - Introduction to Tate Britain
Course start date: Fri 5 May 2023 (and 1 other date)Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Chantal CondronEach week, we'll explore a different aspect of the permanent collection at Tate Britain, looking at artworks from the 16th to the 21st centuries. This course is gallery based.Full fee £169.00
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