Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

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 course introduces and critically examines the concept of a Black or African Latin America through the region’s history, philosophy, activism, politics, diaspora, memory and culture.

Realism dominates our screens – from soaps (East Enders) to prestige television (The Wire) to the movies.  But what is realism, exactly? Is it a genre, a stylistic choice, or an intrinsic way of looking at the world, humanistic and moral? And if realism is the dominant form in cinema, who are its masters? 

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.

On this 2-hour walk, we will stop off at several historic locations to consider about two very dark periods of London’s medical history. Separated by hundreds of years, but occupying the same sites, the deadly ‘BlackDeath’ and the London bodysnatching gangs gave the city two legendary terrors with which to contend.