Humanities & Culture

The eruption of Black Lives Matter protests across America in 2020 once more showed the inequalities in America society and its racial divisions. The return of the KKK in society, Charlottesville and the reactions to policing of the 2021 storming of the Capitol have continued the focus. For some in the country these divisions were supposed to have been addressed during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s but racial equality in America has always come in fits and starts. This course aims to look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the figures who helped shape it (such as Martin...

At a time when the integrity of the United Kingdom is being questioned for the first time in generations, it is surely timely to examine the process whereby the four nations of these islands were brought under one flag: the Union Flag. It will go far beyond the parliamentary legislation itself, to explore the wider historical contexts in which England achieved union with Wales (1535,1542), Scotland (1706-07), and Ireland (1800-01), and with what longer-term consequences for the Union.
This six-week course sets out to be both relaxed and lively, while seeking to encourage discussion...

This course will be delivered online.

This regular session will provide a forum for writers of some experience, who would like to share their work regularly in a constructive atmosphere.
Whether your project is a novel, a memoir, short stories or flash fiction, you will find this an invaluable and supportive space in which to progress your work.

This course aims to encourage and inform students who are interested in writing short stories, novels, poetry, plays, picture books and non-fiction for children and young adults.

This course will be delivered online.

This short course provides an introduction to the production of cultural identity through looking at a range of case studies in classical studies, the arts and history. You will think about the development of cultural identities over time and how in turn they are shaped and redefined and given expression in a range of cultural artefacts within an historical context. The key themes examined are identities around place, people, and visual culture.

This course explores the central themes and developments in Stuart Britain including the reign of James I, the political and social origins of the civil war, the civil war and the English Republic, the Restoration and the reign of Charles II, the Glorious revolution and the onset of Constitutional Monarchy and the reigns of the later Stuarts.

This is a popular yearlong course that consists of three distinct parts covering key films from Hollywood, Britain and Europe. Each term has a different theme

Journal Writing is one of the best things you can do to improve your memory, clarify your thinking, increase your creativity, and just become a more all-around awesome person.

This course is about finding our trust in our inner creativity and freeing it and our healing process. We will share tools that help us to dissolve blocks and transform and recover our well being through our creative power. Creativity is our through nature and through a simple scientific approach of experimentation and observation, we establish a connected flow with words on paper.

Our aim is to...

Norman England: Conquest, Revolution, Oppression (1066-1272)
By surveying the reigns of eight Norman rulers, this course will examine what was surely the most traumatic epoch in British history: a time when the English lost control of their own destiny. It will explore the context of the conquest, the futile revolts to overturn it, the terror tactics used to consolidate it, and it will detail the revolutionary changes the Normans imposed on their new realm.
Constantly distracted by dynastic in-fighting, forays into neighbouring polities (Wales, Scotland), and the financial...

Wordsworths Tintern Abbey, Keatss Ode to a Grecian Urn, TS Eliots
Prufrock, Wallace Stevens Snow Man are not only ground-breaking Literary
experiments they are also profound explorations of what we understand as
the Real? This course will explore these poets in relation to the Aesthetics of German
idealism, the rise of Modernism and the nature of selfhood.

(Women Only)

This course is essentially a foundation course for learners who are looking to progress to study an Access to Higher education Diploma . An Access Diploma, maths and English GCSE (or accepted equivalents) qualifications are standard entry requirements for many university degrees, Your Pre-Access course will help you develop the study skills you need to succeed on an Access Course,

George Santayana (1863-1952) was a leading American philosopher of the 20C. He wrote on a very wide range of subjects. For him, a general rational approach to all the main areas of human concern and activity was, in the modern world, both possible and necessary.
These areas clearly include science and religion, and he saw similarities as well as (obvious) differences between them, when seen from a rational standpoint. This 10 week course will give five weeks to each of the two above disciplines.