Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

This online course offers an introduction to the concept of the 21st century British dramatist as a social observer, enabling a deeper understanding of how playwrights can illuminate and comment on social issues. Join us to find out how playwrights Polly Stenham, Jez Butterworth and Phillip Ralph have interrogated a variety of societal ills including a miscarriage of justice, dependency issues, class and the façade of contentment amongst the upwardly mobile.

Join our journey, examining modern day complexities. The critical deconstruction of race, ethnicity, inequalities, life chances and Institutionalised racism in contemporary Black British Life and society.

This ‘What is Social Anthropology?’ course, will introduce you to the 19thC birth of the discipline, an understanding of cross-cultural human behaviour and the similarities and differences between societies on a global and local level.

Phenomenology, one of the most influential approaches in contemporary philosophy, asks: how do we constitute experienced reality? Following Husserl and Heidegger, phenomenologists try to understand what it means, if anything, to be in the world.

Explore the growth and expansion of post-plague Europe that witnessed not only the splendour of Burgundy, the rise of printing, unification of Spain and the Renaissance, but also the Age of Exploration that led to colonialism and slavery.

Why did Offa build his dyke? Were the Vikings just ‘long-haired tourists who occasionally roughed up the natives’? Was Alfred really that great? These questions and more will be answered as we study the rise and fall of pre-Conquest England.

What does film studies involve? Learn how to enjoy, discuss and criticise films while being part of a real-time working example of a City Lit film studies class. We will view clips from a wide variety of films, exploring themes and technique in current City Lit courses 25/26.

Relatively 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 problem-based introduction to philosophy explores key themes of modern philosophy, including truth, knowledge, ultimate reality and the mind-body problem.

In his literary essay On Fairy Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien famously wrote that “in human art, fantasy is a thing best left to words”. Despite this claim, The Lord of the Rings is arguably one of the most profitable media franchises of the 21st century. It has inspired academy-award winning films and record-breaking TV series, and continues to generate material that resonates with new generations of fans to explore. This course will explore the history of adapting Tolkien to the cinema, considering not only what was altered or left behind in attempts to turn Tolkien’s vast mythology into the stuff of popular cinema, but what might also have been enhanced as a result.