This lecture examines Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, and her political role and patronage of the arts.
Course Start Month: March
Introduction – Tradition and Modernism
This lecture will explore tradition and Modernism in the 1920s.
Patriots Versus Loyalists: America’s First Civil War and the Making of a Nation
This series explores America’s War of Independence from 1775-1815, really its first Civil War. It pitched Americans against Americans: Patriots vs Loyalists. This examines perspectives from the victors and the vanquished.
The Gold of the Americas: Sacred Brilliance in Renaissance and Baroque Art
What makes gold sacred? Discover how artists in the Americas used this radiant material to create dazzling works of art, blending Indigenous traditions and Christian imagery in the Renaissance and Baroque.
Art and Architecture of the 1920s
This lecture series will explore the art and architecture of the 1920s: the ‘Jazz Age’, which witnessed the earliest flowerings of Modernism. The ‘old’ was swept abruptly aside in favour of the ‘new’ – and the foundations were laid for the world of today.
Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey
This lecture will explore Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, examining its place among Victorian governess novels, its portrayal of women’s economic vulnerability, and the distinctive style that has led critics to reassess Anne Brontë’s literary reputation.
Charlotte Brontë – Shirley
This lecture will examine Shirley, exploring its contrasting heroines and heroes, Brontë’s treatment of gender roles, and the novel’s claim to be an early industrial novel.
Charlotte Brontë – Villette
This lecture will explore Villette, examining Lucy Snowe’s unusual character, Brontë’s use of defamiliarization and withholding, the spectral nun, and the novel’s ambiguous and unexpected ending.
Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre
This lecture will introduce the Brontë sisters and Jane Eyre, exploring its style, themes, key passages, and debates around Rochester, narration, the supernatural, and the novel’s controversial dedication to Thackeray.
R for Statistical Significance Tests
Learn how to perform several highly useful statistical significance and hypothesis tests in R at this online day school. This includes, but is not limited to, t-tests, A/B, permutation, ANOVA, chi-squared, Fisher’s Exact and Shapiro-Wilk tests.
Write Your Life: An Introduction to Short-Form Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction
Life writing – whether memoir, biography, literary non-fiction, eye-witness accounts, blogs (the list goes on) – can be very powerful when told with brevity. Short-form writing is an end in itself; it also helps us focus on our writerly craft.
Creative Writing: Story Development
A weekend exploring novel and short-story writing: genre, character development, research, plot development, scene-setting, metaphor, narrative voice, first-draft completion. A fun, interactive event for writers with some previous experience.