Buckden Previous Courses

Course Description: The course introduces some remarkable Russian women who made a considerable contribution to Russian and world History and Culture. A princess and a diplomat, a terrorist and a poet, an opera singer who sang for Benjamin Britten and a ballerina who made a revolution in ballet. Their lives were full of hardships and pleasures, excitement and bewildering twists. How were they affected by diverse historical and political contexts? What was extraordinary about Soviet women?

Course Description: Witches have one definite power – the ability to fascinate and inspire. Since at least classical times, writers have voiced their fears, ridicule, awe of, and sometimes admiration for this particular, generally female, outsider. They have built up conflicting, ambiguous, usually highly memorable portraits of figures who range from semi-goddesses to the poorest, most despised outcasts, through sorceresses, herbalists, heretics, beautiful young women and aged crones, from real figures of history to wild flights of imagination. What is their appeal? What do their presentations, and their fates, tell us about the society and writers who present them? Prepare to mount your broomsticks and discover the witches of literature!

Course Description: Oppressed and dispossessed yet still here! We will examine the life, culture and, history of the original inhabitants of what today is called the United States of America. The course will give a broad chronological and geographical introduction to Native American History. It will look at well-known and not so well known individuals and events which will allow us to get an understanding of the trials and tribulations that native people have undergone. We will explore issues such as conflict, diplomacy, governmental relations and the state of Native Americans in present-day America.

Course Description: The course is made up of 5 talks linked to Julian’s study of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima radiation disaster and will show how the events of that time tell us a lot about Japanese culture and politics, resilience, folklore and superstitions. The sessions will start with a general introduction to Japanese culture and the 2011 disaster (and discussion of stereotypes against reality), and move on in the second week to how physical geography and history forged the country’s culture. In the third session we will look at how language and literature have shaped (and been shaped) by that history and geography, including a deep dive into the world of haiku. In the final two talks Julian will discuss the visual arts such as painting, calligraphy, and then move on to examine religion in Japan, folklore (and the supernatural!) and how old beliefs have played a part in the tsunami recovery.

Course Description: Were it not for a fateful change of wind, one day in October 1066, William of Normandy would never have conquered England and Britain would have remained what it was at the time: part of the Scandinavian world. With that might-have-been in mind, over five weeks we shall look at the early history of our Scandinavian cousins, from before the Vikings to the sixteenth century, when what happened on those Northern shores helped to decide the destiny of all Europe.