Summer courses in humanities

An introductory course providing an overview of the development of the visual language of Islamic cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Saints 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.

Explore 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.

It is generally accepted that medieval illuminated manuscripts are very beautiful things. Something to do with all that gold-leaf maybe. While we cannot hold them in class, close-up digital reproduction will allow us to see if they really are as beautiful as we are told. Indeed, are none of them ugly? Join this course to find out.

Costume 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.

Come 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.