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The Irish Gothic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
OpenLearn Ireland

The Irish Gothic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

...centring on a widowed teacher living in County Cork. Like many Irish writers before him, McPherson borrows from the past and exploits the uncanny in the everyday to play with the fears of his audience. But his brand of ghost storytelling also adds new elements that reflect a later twentieth-century Irish perspective. He deftly weaves the supernatural with humour, for...
Describing language Badge icon
Languages

Describing language

...children have an expert knowledge of how to use it, but a knowledge of precisely what constitutes the phenomenon of language is much more elusive. According to the linguist Edward Sapir, language can be defined as a purely human and non-distinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. These symbols can...
Level 1: Introductory 24 hrs
Engendering citizenship
Society, Politics & Law

Engendering citizenship

...children, but also increasingly important the care of older people. Mary As you have seen while you have been studying D218, Marshall has identified social policy as the critical mechanism for promoting equal rights; he calls it the social rights of citizenship. As Ruth Lister shows it’s often women whose rights are compromised as citizens. Ruth I think social policy...
Level 2: Intermediate 1 hr
Never trust a pirate: Christiaan Huygens’s Longitude Clocks
History & The Arts

Never trust a pirate: Christiaan Huygens’s Longitude Clocks

...research on longitude timekeepers in the 1660s. Given such a strong sense of a collaborative environment, it is no wonder that Hooke and his colleagues believed that their research and development had made a significant contribution to Huygens’s horological innovations, and felt cheated when he announced his ‘eureka’ moment, and the perfection of the balancespring...
Should the EU give up on 'ever closer' union?
Society, Politics & Law

Should the EU give up on 'ever closer' union?

...centre of policymaking from day one. This system of flexible differentiation might face fierce criticism due to its complexity. It can be argued that it is counter-intuitive because the union is too complex already. But it is not flexible enough. After Brexit and the economic and refugee crises, the EU has entered a phase in which integration ambitions are strikingly...
Question Time for Yanis Varoufakis
Society, Politics & Law

Question Time for Yanis Varoufakis

...centre” caused by popular discontent at a Great Depression due to a single currency that was never designed to sustain a global crisis, and by the denial of the powers-that-be that this was so. The much greater flexibility that the Bank of England afforded to Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s British governments prevented the type of socio-economic implosion that...
Introducing Homer's Iliad
History & The Arts

Introducing Homer's Iliad

...children whom they enslaved), and committed numerous atrocities, notorious among which was Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son, killing Priam at the altar of Athena. With these actions the Greeks incurred the wrath of the gods, and few returned safely to their homelands: many were lost at sea, others founded colonies in distant lands, and those that did make it back found...
Level 2: Intermediate 6 hrs
Studying mammals: The insect hunters
Nature & Environment

Studying mammals: The insect hunters

...Researchers buried insects up to 12 cm deep in soil, grass and moss in an enclosure, and within 15 minutes a shrew had captured and eaten one earthworm, a cranefly (daddy-longlegs) larva, a large caterpillar and a slug. When a shrew finds an insect, it grabs it with the front incisors, which are long and pointed; the pair of first upper incisors have an extra cusp...