Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

An introduction to modern Iranian history, tracing the rise and rule of the Pahlavi dynasty, the revolution, and the Islamic Republic, while exploring recurring themes of power, reform, resistance, and social change.

Discover who were the barbarians in the Ancient and Medieval World. How did the Chinese and the West interact with ‘the other’? Were the Vikings simply ‘long-haired tourists who occasionally roughed up the natives’ (Wallace-Hadrill 1975)? We will spend the morning at the City Lit and afternoon at the  British museum.    

In this online literature course we will explore how British authors of the 1980s approached (and influenced) the emerging world of identity politics, through readings of classic fiction by Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Hanif Kureishi.

Join us to analyze how social media, populist rhetoric, and economic precarity mirror historical patterns-most notably the shift toward "Strongman" politics seen in the 1930s to explore the structural "meat and bones" of power, media, and the rise of a new elite.

This short literature course brings together work by perceptive observers of London life in the 1960s, including Muriel Spark, Margaret Drabble and Doris Lessing. These writers explore a city in flux, a place of shifting gender roles and social ambitions, where dramas of everyday life unfold in flats and offices, in pubs and parties. Reading Muriel Spark’s The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone, and a selection of short stories by these and other writers, we’ll explore the social and psychological landscape of 1960s London.

Building on foundational concepts, this course moves into the investigative mechanics of criminal justice, examining how biology, psychology, and forensic evidence shape modern legal outcomes. Join this rigorous investigation into the intersection of forensic science, psychological profiling, and criminological theory.