New courses

Twenty-first century culture is becoming increasingly strange: from conspiracy theories and climate anxiety to compulsive doom-scrolling and the meme-ification of everyday life. This course will explore these and other phenomenon endemic to the present, analysing and exploring their significance through texts, films, artworks, cultural objects and psychoanalytic theory.

This course will examine a crucially important but often neglected area of film history, namely the responses to and against colonialist legacy made by many different strands of filmmaking around the Global South, from films like The Battle of Algiers, to Latin American Third Cinema, via Sub-Saharan African filmmakers such as Sembene or Mambety, in order to enrich the canon of world cinema.

This online course will look at the unique style of writers who emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. We’ll explore fin de siècle writers who were grappling with new questions of modernity. Using the exciting backdrop of the 1890s, this course explores the cultural innovations of the period alongside the works of Oscar Wilde and other writers of this period.



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

In this introductory course, we will read and discuss Irish poetry from across the twentieth century, examining how poets responded to cultural and political issues, such as Irish Independence, religion, and the Troubles. Poets will include: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Louis MacNeice, Patrick Kavanagh, Derek Mahon, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and many others.

Are you using your full potential to be innovative at work? Utilizing your creative skills can mean improvements in your products and services, solving problems quicker and making strides in developing your business.

In this introductory course on NumPy you will learn Python's most powerful library for numerical operations. Crafted for beginners, this course aims to build a robust foundation for mastering numerical computations using Python.



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

Have you ever wondered how works of art and cultural objects have been collected for public museums and galleries in Britain? Who collected these objects? What functions have public collections played in society? Why ‘collect for the nation’?



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

Akira Kurosawa is one of the leading figures of Japanese cinema with a career – from Shanshiro Sugata (1943) to Madadayo (1993) – as varied as it was influential. Most famous for directing a series of iconic samurai films, including Yojimbo (1961), Hidden Fortress (1958) and Seven Samurai (1954), his filmography also includes crime dramas and police thrillers (Stray Dog 1958), literary adaptations (Throne of Blood 1957) and profound meditations on life and death (Ikiru 1952). This six-week course, led by Professor Stacey Abbott, will examine the richness of Kurosawa’s work and his lasting global legacy through his dynamic visual style; innovative storytelling; revitalised approaches to genre and adaptation; and preoccupation with themes of family, society, and honour.

Develop a greater understanding of art history and how to analyse the cultural meaning of an artwork by going in-depth with the ideas of prominent art historians. This course looks at the history of art history – the history of interpretation.

In the twenty-first century, feminist theories of othering and oppression, identity and relation, sex and sexuality come into new life. From trans-medicine and Artificial Reproductive Technologies to climate crisis and internet activism, feminism remains at the forefront of struggles for a more just and inhabitable world. This course will explore how feminist thought is undergoing interesting transformations to meet these and other challenges of our times.

In this introductory course on Pandas you will learn Python's most powerful library for managing and manipulating data. Crafted for beginners, this course aims to build a robust foundation for those wish to step into the arena of data science or anyone interested in analysing data.



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

The short story has come to be seen as one of Irish Literature’s most celebrated forms of expression. From the early stories of George Moore and James Joyce, to modern classics by John McGahern, William Trevor and Claire Keegan, the short story has allowed Irish writers to pick apart the complexities of Irish society in powerful, precise and poetic terms. This course will explore some of the most iconic short stories of twentieth-century Irish literature.

Develop a greater understanding of art history and how to analyse the cultural meaning of an artwork by going in-depth with the ideas of prominent art historians. This course is meant to cultivate your personal practice of art history through small, guided research and writing projects.

Take a fresh look at Shakespeare, exploring selected plays in the company of an experienced theatre director. With performance in mind, we will examine the language of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night,



and discuss how Shakespeare’s use of verse evolves over the course of his career.