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Women in the arts: a collection of free resources

Updated Friday, 8 December 2023

Explore our collection of free resources focusing on women’s participation in various areas of the world of the arts.

Find out more about The Open University's Arts and Humanities courses and qualifications.

Explore the resources

  • Agatha Christie and the golden age of detective fiction

    Agatha Christie and the golden age of detective fiction

    In this free course you’ll examine one of Agatha Christie’s most significant works, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and explore the evolution of British detective fiction in relation to Christie’s background, literary modernism and the development of middlebrow fiction.

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  • Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts

    Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts

    This free course introduces Virginia Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts (1941), with the aim of understanding how she writes about time, memory, and ideas about identity. It also considers why Woolf’s fiction is often considered difficult. Selected extracts from her essays on writing help to clarify some of these perceived difficulties, ...

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  • Janis Joplin and the Sexual Revolution

    Janis Joplin and the Sexual Revolution

    This free course, Janis Joplin and the Sexual Revolution, will introduce you to issues around the sexual revolution and how this, and other contemporary social revolutions of the 1960s, impacted upon American rock musician Janis Joplin (1943-1970). You will investigate the extent to which the contemporary sexual revolution brought about ...

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  • Simone de Beauvoir and the feminist revolution

    Simone de Beauvoir and the feminist revolution

    In this free course you will study the ideas of philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). In doing so you will also briefly study the philosophy of Beauvoir’s lifelong partner, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The type of philosophy that links them is called ‘existentialism’. Beauvoir and Sartre are the foremost philosophers of French ...

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  • Professor Sara Haslam on the Brontë sisters’ work

    Professor Sara Haslam on the Brontë sisters’ work

    Prof. Sara Haslam was The Open University's academic consultant on OU/BBC drama ‘To Walk Invisible’. Here she discusses what makes the Brontës’ work so fantastic.

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  • Quiz: Which Brontë sister wrote it?

    Quiz: Which Brontë sister wrote it?

    Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë had very different writing styles but can you tell their writing apart from the other?

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  • Mary Shelley: the expert view

    Mary Shelley: the expert view

    Stephanie Forward outlines the life and legacy of the author of 'Frankenstein', Mary Shelley.

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  • Sylvia Plath and the linguistics of depression

    Sylvia Plath and the linguistics of depression

    Could the type of language people use reveal something about their state of mind? A close reading of Sylvia Plath's journals suggest it might be possible.

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  • Why do Taylor Swift & Sylvia Plath have more in common than you might think?

    Why do Taylor Swift & Sylvia Plath have more in common than you might think?

    Eleanor Spencer-Regan explores the common thread between Look What You Made Me Do and Lady Lazarus

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  • The Unsung Women Who Shaped the Blues

    The Unsung Women Who Shaped the Blues

    Blues is a musical genre often associated with male pioneers. However, women were also a huge part of this development. This article shines a light on three women who helped shape the blues: Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.

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  • The People on the Notes: Jane Austen

    The People on the Notes: Jane Austen

    2017 marked the bicentenary of Jane Austen's death and to commemorate this she is now featured on the £10 note. Find out whether the note truly represent's Austen's life and work...

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  • Helen Cammock and the art of storytelling

    Helen Cammock and the art of storytelling

    The artist Helen Cammock discusses how her art has transformed from using herself as a conduit for conversations about race to ‘the collective’ in this film. In the article below Philip Seargeant explores how art can operate as a form of storytelling, different to political or media storytelling.

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