This free course, The Ancient Olympics: bridging past and present, highlights the similarities and differences between our modern Games and the Ancient Olympics and explores why today, as we prepare for future Olympics, we still look back at the Classical world for meaning and inspiration.

This free course, The body in antiquity, will introduce you to the concept of the body in Greek and Roman civilisation. In recent years, the body has become a steadily growing field in historical scholarship, and Classical Studies is no exception. It is an aspect of the ancient world that can be explored through a whole host of different types ...

This free course, Art in Renaissance Venice, considers the art of Renaissance Venice and how such art was determined in many ways by the city's geographical location and ethnically diverse population. Studying Venice and its art offers a challenge to the conventional notion of Renaissance art as an entirely Italian phenomenon.

In this free course you will learn about the global anti-nuclear movement that has worked for decades to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, with the ultimate aim of abolishing them altogether. You will see how opposition to nuclear weapons has been an important cause on every continent. Beginning in 1945, this course will equip you with ...

This free course, Discovering music: the blues, will introduce you to a musical tradition with roots in the nineteenth century but which is still relevant to making music today. You will learn about how the lyrics of blues songs reflect the social environment in which they were created, and about the musical techniques that underpin the ...

The ancient Greeks did not have a term equivalent to the English word ‘religion’. However, their world was populated by numerous figures they both recognised and worshipped as divinities. Among these figures was Amphiaraos, an ancient Greek hero who was later worshipped as a god and popularly associated with healing through the medium of dreams....

This free course introduces Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, the Odyssey, which tells of Odysseus’ long journey home after fighting in the Trojan War, and his eventual reunion with his wife Penelope. Odysseus is famous for his cunning and his courage, and for the exploits he undertakes on his travels; meanwhile Penelope is renowned for her ...

This free course, Exploring Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, is designed to tell you something about Hardy's background, and to introduce you to the pleasures of reading a nineteenth-century novel. Why do we believe in fictional characters and care about what happens to them? You will discover some of the techniques that Hardy ...

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, ...

With the information explosion online, how can you tell fake news from the real thing, or be more sensitive to how information can be weaponised? In the fifth-century BCE, a Greek by the name of Herodotus faced a similar challenge when he set out to examine why his people, the Greeks, and the Persians went to war with each other. Chief among his...