Explore History, Culture & Writing

The Late Bronze Age is a story of collapse, from New Kingdom Egyptian to Hittite Anatolia, from the Assyrian Empire to Babylonian turmoil. Mycenaean Greece is a part of this and the Coming of the Sea Peoples is a terror that echoes through the pages of history. Come learn about how the world as we knew it ended!



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This is a stand-alone companion course to the Autumn ’23 course on the Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. The first reactions to the Sight and Sound Poll 2022 were divisive, as completely expected, when certain 21st-century films made the list and other venerated classics were dropped (see topics below for the list). As interesting as the top 100 was to discuss, we wanted to look a bit deeper to see how the reception of certain films shifted over the last decade, with a rundown of the films that were added and those removed. Be assured, they are as enjoyable as the Top 100—perhaps even more so. In addition to viewing the films that were added or dropped, students will conduct their own poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. Enjoy either or both of these complementary courses.

The online course explores European settlement (British, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish) of North America. It examines the differences between English colonies; the American Revolution; the formation of the United States; and the War of 1812.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

The fourth in a new cycle of modern British history courses, this course examines the transformative social and cultural change in Britain during the Thatcher Decade; probing how far the Thatcher Governments were responsible for social and cultural change. Or was this largely the work of provincial cultural entrepreneurs like Tony Wilson (“Mr Manchester”)?



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This class introduces you to a range of themes and issues in European cinema, including art cinema, national cinema, movements, 'moments' and new waves, authorship, popular cinema and genre, along with key developments in European film history from the silent era to the present day, key films, directors and the canon of European cinema, and a range of critical accounts of European cinema.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2, where once a week, for 12 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.

This 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.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This is an advanced course intended to use film as a primary source in exploring the history and culture of the Soviet Union in greater detail.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Discuss a selection of novels written by women in contemporary British society. Focusing on the 21st century, we consider the concerns of fiction in grappling with representing the now. We will make links between literary texts and social context to consider how fiction might be influenced by and influencing the real world beyond its covers. Texts include Bernardine Evaristo's Mr. Loverman (2013), Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon (2013) and Ali Smith's Hotel World (2002).



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.