2,335 search results

Maintaining social order with gruesome images of Hell
History & The Arts

Maintaining social order with gruesome images of Hell

...History at The Open University, explains the meaning of a fresco in the church of Kitiros in Crete...Long before Dan Brown's "Inferno" fresco painters on the island of Crete attempted to create their vision of Hell. New research sheds light on how these images helped to maintain social order. The frescoes pictured damnation and torture, but employed a touch of modern...
Finding women in Greek literature
History & The Arts

Finding women in Greek literature

...history of Thucydides and the anthropological and historical writings of Herodotus. These authors and their surviving texts provide invaluable evidence concerning the culture of ancient Greece. I want to look at a topic which is of great interest to students and scholars of the classical world – namely Greek women – and to consider some of difficulties involved in...
Irish Women’s Poetry: Sinéad Morrissey
OpenLearn Ireland

Irish Women’s Poetry: Sinéad Morrissey

...history, visual media (photography and early cinema) and politics (with a particular interest in Russia and the Soviet Experiment, 1917–1991). This historic focus often works to highlight the lives of women forgotten or excluded from the mainstream narrative. Critic Peter Finucane (2021) suggests that rather than using history to protect a political commentary, she uses...
‘Bread of Heaven’ – Singing from the same hymn sheet?
History & The Arts

‘Bread of Heaven’ – Singing from the same hymn sheet?

...history...Find out more about The Open University’s music courses_.  _ A small number of hymns are so familiar to many Welsh people that it might be tempting to say, for example, that ‘everyone knows ‘Bread of Heaven’’. However, examination of the textual and musical histories of many of the best-known Welsh hymns often reveals complicated stories that can be...
The social in social science
Society, Politics & Law

The social in social science

...family, education or culture, we are part of these things, for we live, think and communicate within them. Social science has to wrestle with the problem of human beings creating explanations about themselves and their society when they are part and parcel of that society. Even when social scientists think about and describe their theories and findings they use words,...
Level 3: Advanced 15 hrs
Carnival and the performance of heritage
History & The Arts

Carnival and the performance of heritage

...history of the area which some of its residents might prefer to forget. The album also contains academic perspectives from Susie West, Lecturer in Heritage Studies at The Open University; Hakim Adi, Reader in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at Middlesex University; and Ruth Tompsett, Visiting Lecturer in Carnival Studies at Middlesex University. This...
How the stove changed the kitchen
Society, Politics & Law

How the stove changed the kitchen

...families from around Britain looking back on the first half of the twentieth century suggests that the impact of the stove on room function occurred later in these households. The autobiographers revealed that it was not just the poorest families who lacked a gas stove at the turn of the century. Even better-off working class families described making this switch in the...
Starting with Maths
Science, Maths & Technology

Starting with Maths

...history behind numbers and how mathematics has evolved into something we use in everyday life. We hear the experiences of people who rely heavily on accurate calculations for the success of their jobs. In addition to this we look into the lives of 12 OU students as they explain how studying makes them feel ‘on top of the world’. This material forms part of the course:...