Summer courses in humanities
Discover more this summer in history, politics, science, philosophy and art history.
- Art for social change: introducing the photography of Gordon ParksCourse start date: Tue 3 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sarah JaffrayAn introduction to the photography of Gordon Parks and its significant impact on social justice in the United States. We’ll develop Parks’s biography before looking at some of his famous photo-essays for Life and Ebony Magazines in the 1940s and 50s.
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £7.00 - Symbols and stories: saints in artCourse start date: Thu 5 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Elizabeth EyresSaints are represented in masterpieces of Christian art from 1200 to the present – learn how to recognise them, decode their meanings and iconography and enhance your understanding of this aspect of art history. This course includes a gallery visit. - London architecture: Renaissance, Baroque and PalladianCourse start date: Sat 7 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rachel SandersFrom the beginnings of Renaissance architecture in Britain, through the Baroque to Palladianism - study key architects including Jones, Wren, Hawksmoor, and Burlington, looking at religious and secular buildings. Includes site visits. - The purchase of paradise: ideas of purgatory in the mediaeval worldCourse start date: Sat 7 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Vanessa KingIn order to reach heaven a medieval Christian had to spend time in purgatory being cleansed of sin. Come and find out what purgatory consisted of and how you could fast-track you way through it.Full fee £49.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £32.00 - Conscience: a short historyCourse start date: Sat 7 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Andrew GreyJourney through the evolution of the fascinating idea of conscience over the past 2,000 years. Explore ancient and modern understandings of this universal phenomenon, drawing on insights from psychology, sociology, philosophy, theology and neuroscience.Full fee £29.00 Senior fee £23.00 Concession £19.00 - Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00
- A sense of place: Constable’s HampsteadCourse start date: Mon 9 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Marilyn GreeneExplore Georgian and Regency Hampstead walking in the footsteps of John Constable and seeing places he painted and quotes about his thoughts and feelings on Hampstead and his art. - London's smaller art collectionsCourse start date: Tue 10 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Julie BarlowExplore and discuss contemporary art on show in London. Each week we’ll visit 1-2 commercial galleries or a public gallery and examine specific exhibitions of contemporary art across a range of media including painting, works on paper, photography, new media and sculpture. - Vibes - Worldviews - IdeologiesCourse start date: Tue 10 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Are we living in an age of vibes? Have recent political events such as the re-election of Donald Trump or Brexit occurred because of a “vibeshift” in popular discourse? This course analyses the use of this popular term across a range of media and texts in a quest to grasp what it denotes, why it is being mobilised right now and where we can find its roots in the history of ideas.
Catherine Berger holds a PhD in the History of Art from University College London, where she also taught for many years. She has worked as a tutor at the University of Basel and as a researcher at the University of Zurich and taught in various other institutions, including adult education and a secondary school. She has worked as an editor, written for publications and regularly translates essays and book chapters in her areas of expertise. The analysis of the relationship of cultural production to its social conditions is at the core of her work. Her interests and methods reach across disciplinary boundaries, interweaving visual culture with philosophy, sociology, political and economic theory, linguistics, literature, musicology and psychology, often with a focus on feminism, gender and theories of the maternal. A passionate teacher, Catherine works hard to create inclusive, supportive, student-centred learning environments.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00 - Printmaking in Europe 1400-1920: from Dürer to MunchCourse start date: Tue 10 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Caroline RaeDuring the course we will learn about the materials and techniques of printmaking including woodcut, etching, engraving and aquatint, and engage with prints by some of the most innovative printmakers of the era (Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya and Munch). We will consider prints in relation to several key themes including religion, colonialism, nationhood, and artistic practice, authorship and expression.
Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £103.00 Concession £84.00 - Costume and fashion in artCourse start date: Tue 10 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Off Site
Tutors: Julie BarlowCostume from the past rarely survives, except in the depiction of it in paintings. Explore 500 years of costume in European art across a range of subject matter and decode the socio-political contexts and cultural identities contained within the choice of dress. This course takes place in London-area museums. - Eco-Ciné ClubCourse start date: Wed 11 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Katie GossCome and join us at the Eco Ciné-Club, where you will have the opportunity to view and discuss the work of innovative filmmakers whose work uses visual culture as a means of re-framing our relationships with changing landscapes, climates and more-than-human beings. A development from our existing Cultureplex Ciné-Club courses and taking its cue from the famous Parisian Ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, this incarnation of the film club will allow for the viewing of a different film each week, followed by detailed discussion and debate. The film will be introduced, and 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 the first class on Wednesday 11th June will be in Room 106 and will begin at the slightly earlier time of 14:45, finishing at 17:45. Subsequent weeks will take place in the Cultureplex at the normal time of 15:00 - 18:00.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £229.00 Concession £149.00 - Poets of the Silver Age, the Revolution and the TerrorCourse start date: Fri 13 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldThis course will look, decade by decade, at the leading figures of the generation caught up in the turmoil of the Revolution whose lives and poetry together form a veritable seismograph of the unfolding tragedy. Their extraordinary interrelationships and the originality and power of their writing constitute one of the richest periods in the history of Russian Literature.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00 - Masters of Cinema: Céline SciammaCourse start date: Sat 14 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Karine ChevalierThis one day course will consider Celine Sciamma’s importance as a filmmaker by exploring in some detail a number of her key films from her debut Water Lillies (2007), to films such as Tomboy (2011), her breakthrough Girlhood (2014), and her more recent popular successes Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and Petite Maman (2021).
Dr Karine Chevalier is a lecturer in Film studies. She is also a filmmaker. Her main research interests lie in the field of Transnational Cinema, French and Francophone Cinema, Visual Arts and Aesthetics, Postcolonial Studies, Intermediality, as well as Screenwriting and Filmmaking, with a specific focus on Violence and Resilience, Creative Voices, Digital Storytelling and Multiscreens, Alterities and Minorities, Moving (auto)Portraits and Masks.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00 - Edith Wharton, Henry James and the Decoration of HousesCourse start date: Sat 14 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Phyllis RichardsonEdith Wharton and Henry James had a keen eye for a well-designed and tastefully decorated house and both brought us depictions of splendid interiors in their novels set in ‘the Gilded Age’. We’ll discuss the changing tastes at the turn of the century, and how both authors used interior decoration to reflect the moral turn of their characters and the age.Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £55.00 Concession £45.00
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