Cambridge Previous Courses

Course Description: What is the city and how do we occupy its spaces. This course takes the city as a work of art within Western Europe and explores its development over the centuries into the metropolis of modern times. We will also discuss the city as both a symbol of order in peacetime and of chaos during war. From Renaissance Florence to New York in the 20th Century, we will analyse how artists have imaged the city and used it as a subject for experimentation in terms of technique and style. (Please note this is not a course about architecture but focuses entirely on the painted image.)

Course Description: Come and explore the development of music in film from the earliest silent movies to the present day. Join composer and writer Christopher Budd to look at the work of many great film composers, with clips from King Kong, Once Upon a Time in the West, Psycho, Jaws, The Third Man, The Day The Earth Stood Still, 2001:A Space Odyssey and more, and to discuss how the music works. How can we read it? How has it changed? How is it created? No prior knowledge is required, just a love of music and film.

Course Description: This day school which will be supplied on-line will provide a basic introduction to a number of the main areas of astronomy: Cosmology (including the origin and evolution of the universe) – Our solar system (the planets, moons and asteroids) – Stars, an overview of the life and death of stars – Human exploration of the universe and the technology being used - Amateur telescopes, practical considerations. This is not an advanced course, so might appeal to anyone who has ever looked at the night sky and wanted to know more about what they see up there and how they might find out more.

Course Description: What was the life of ordinary people like in the USSR during the Cold War? The course invites you to make comparisons with life in the UK and discuss to what extent some Western myths and stereotypes reflected the Soviet reality. The course is based on the Lecturer’s experience and illustrated with period artefacts, video and audio materials. You will also learn some basic Russian.

Course Description: London is a fictional place. That is, as one of the most written about places in fiction, much of what many people think about London has been created by the imagination of writers. We will discuss the ways writers have used real places and re-created them for their own ends, giving us all a much deeper and richer, multi-layered view of our capital city. This course will be thematic rather than chronological (although covering several centuries of writing), looking at the importance of pre-conceived ideas and 1st impressions, and how work, the legal profession, crime and punishment, and entertainment and pleasure in London have been all been portrayed, with the lines between fiction and reality often becoming seriously blurred. There will be a 10 minute break in each session.

Course Description: Come and explore 5 more weeks of music in film with composer and writer Christopher Budd. We’ll enjoy and study the work of some of the great British film composers, some sophisticated sounds from across Europe, a bit of Hammer horror and some very silly comedies. You don’t need to have attended Christopher’s earlier Film Music course, and no prior knowledge is required, just a love of music and film.

Course Description: Clothes might make the man, but the role of the cinematic costume designer can be crucial in making or breaking a whole film. Costumes can evoke bygone eras, tell us hidden truths about characters, make outlandish otherworldly futures believable, and so much more. Come and explore some great examples from more than a century of cinema history. No prior knowledge is needed, just a love of film.