Contemporary Culture Courses in London

In celebration of Windrush Day, join us for a lively celebration of Benjamin Zephaniah, one of Britain’s most dynamic poets! This short, interactive course explores his life, his fiery poetry and the themes which make his work resonant today. Through readings, discussion and performance, you’ll get a real sense of why Zephaniah’s words continue to inspire.

This course covers the thematic concerns, dramatic styles and contextual influences of three plays from the 20th and 21st centuries: Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944), David Hare’s The Judas Kiss (1998) and Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat (2015). Drawing on the plays’ production histories, it considers how dramatists and theatre practitioners have represented the social, cultural and political worlds of specific times and places.

This online literature course explores George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Sandra Newman’s acclaimed novel Julia (2023).

This course explores how filmmakers across the world have used cinema to confront, question, and reimagine the legacies of colonialism through memory and history. Focusing on specific films from Lebanon, Palestine, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile, Africa, and the diasporas, we will examine how cinema has become a crucial medium for addressing historical violence, displacement, silence, and resistance in postcolonial societies. These films span fiction, documentary, essay film, and experimental modes, and they engage with topics including gendered memory, forbidden histories, colonial amnesia, Indigenous erasure, exile, diaspora, and intergenerational trauma. Cinema emerges here as both a site of remembrance and a space of counter-history: a medium through which suppressed stories can be visualised, and emotionally reactivated in the present.

Please note that for those students who have taken previous versions of this course, the selection of films and the topics covered will be different from past iterations of the course.

This literature course focuses on the importance of science fiction writing as both a literary form and a mode of theorising the world we inhabit, which may radically transform our ways of interpreting it. We will read and discuss short stories and extracts from the work of eminent sci-fi writers from the 20th and 21st centuries - both well-known authors like Ursula Le Guin and Ted Chiang, as well as exciting new voices from more recent years. As well as the literary texts themselves, we’ll also consider literary theories of the fantastic and the kinds of contexts that sci-fi texts have been addressed to. Across six weeks we will explore how works of science fiction enrich psychic, social and cultural life and help us grapple with the complex politics of the present. For those who have taken the course before, the selection of texts will be different every time it runs - meaning that students can re-enrol and continue to expand their literary horizons.

In celebration of Black History Month, we’re exploring the life and works of Booker Prize-winner, novelist, poet, essayist and editor, Bernadine Evaristo. From her early literature to critically-acclaimed, ‘Girl, Woman, Other’, we’ll uncover her unique narrative voice, blend of poetry and prose and how she gives visibility to a cast of diverse characters.

This course will introduce and discuss a selection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Noting, ‘the mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind’, Mansfield’s approach to art is to embrace hidden depths, to seek untamed and unhindered aspects lurking in the shadows, writing with a wild surmise in an attempt to find new literary vistas. Similarly, describing herself as ‘an alien’, we will consider her self-asserted feeling of strangeness as an outsider, and how this might manifest itself in her fictional work.

Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth follows a young girl named Ofelia as she navigates a brutal military outpost and a series of eerie, mythological trials. The film is celebrated for its seamless blend of historical tragedy and grotesque "fairy tale" imagination, utilising incredible practical effects blended with CGI. Its legacy lies in proving that fantasy can be a sophisticated, adult medium for exploring complex themes like fascism, disobedience, and trauma.In this one-day workshop, we will watch Pan’s Labyrinth together, but with a crucial difference. Instead of viewing the film simply from start to finish, students will be given the power to pause the film at will, and discuss whatever they want. Guided by an expert on the film’s themes, ideas and production history, we will subject the film to extensive debate and analysis, discussing its visual language and hidden depths whilst reflecting on its universal themes.
By getting to “freeze” the film at key moments, we can look past the familiar story and investigate how the movie actually works. We will treat the film as a living document, pausing to unpack a specific camera angle, a lighting choice, or a piece of dialogue, allowing for a deep-dive analysis that is impossible during a standard screening.
This is an invitation to stop being a passive viewer and start being a cinematic detective.