Culture, Literature, Art, Film and More!

What better way to explore the vibrant city of London than to take a summer course highlighting its role in the arts, literature, media and film. Here is an overview of the culture modules offered by the King’s Undergraduate Summer School;

London & Film
This course is intended to introduce you to some significant debates within British film studies through a focus on London as a cinematic city, the divergent spaces of London, and capital’s relationship to film genres. Films that are screened across this module will explore both the tribulations of fictional Londoners, but also focus on its real-life inhabitants that have dually shaped and contributed to London’s own big-screen history.

Media, Gender & Culture   
Taught by the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, this module is intended to give you the opportunity to undertake specialist learning in media, gender and contemporary culture. Taking full advantage of our location in central London, the class will visit many of the capital’s foremost cultural institutes and you will have the opportunity to meet with insiders from the media and cultural industries.

Museum of London: Curating the City
This module looks at the social, economic, and political history of London in the twentieth century by closely examining the various collections held at and the varied types of work carried out by museum curators. It is taught onsite at the Department of English and at the Museum of London with supervised access to museum artefacts and resources.

Wonderland: 100 Years of Children’s Literature
This course is intended to give you the opportunity, as an undergraduate student studying English Literature and/or History, to explore 100 years of children’s literature. The module will be taught by the Department of English, and will include a strong creative component where you will be given the chance to devise, and perform, your own children’s stories.

Jane Austen’s England 
This module examines Jane Austen’s life and work within the context of her time and in relation to her contemporaries. It will also explore Austen’s place within literary history, as well as locating her work and her world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by comparing and contrasting the original texts with TV and film adaptations, sequels and textual transformations at the hands of modern directors and writers.

Literature in the City   
This module will examine the relationship between urban space and narrative representation in three European cities: London, Dublin, and Berlin.Students will be encouraged to use a combination of political, social, and literary theory to navigate literal and figurative cityscapes, through class discussion, short assignments, and exercises in urban rambling.

Theatrical London 
This module will be taught by the Department of English, and will examine London’s diverse and vibrant scene from its historic development to contemporary performance in the city and through this examination introduces theories and vocabulary used to analyse actors, audiences and architecture, the key components of theatre making.

Session one of the King’s Undergraduate Summer School runs from 2 – 20 July 2018 and session two runs from 23 July to 10 August 2018. All applications must be submitted online by 31 May 2018. More information about the academic content can be found on this webpage. All the best with your application and we hope to see you in London this summer.

King’s Summer Weekends

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New for this year is our King’s Summer Weekends. We are working with the prestigious Tate Britain and National Archives to give you two programmes, aimed at those who are intellectually curious.These stimulating and informative bite-size courses are designed to fit around your personal and professional commitments.

Our Summer Weekend with Tate Britain will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain as well as Tate Britain’s ground-breaking exhibition ‘Queer British Art, 1861-1967’.

Speakers from King’s College London and Tate Britain will be joined by independent artists to discuss a wide range of genres from painting, installations and film and dance and literature. A number of the university speakers are part of Queer@King’s, an interdisciplinary research unit comprising colleagues interested in gender and sexuality that launched in 2003. It was recognised as an Arts & Humanities research centre in 2006 and its portfolio of activities continues to grow and to flourish.

This weekend will run on Saturday 17 June and Sunday 18 June 2017 and will also extend to an optional field trip to Charleston on 15 July 2017. This excursion will include a private tour of, and talks, in Berwick Church and to visit the country home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant of the Bloomsbury Group, whose creative hub of artistic and intellectual activity welcomed guests including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and E.M. Forster.

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The second programme is our Summer Weekend with The National Archives.This course is for everyone who wants to expand their research into their family tree. It combines instruction on practical researching techniques with academic insight into how key historic events shape stories across generations.

It is designed to help participants better read the information they discover, expand their investigation beyond the internet to include historical archives and guide them in their interpretation of details such as professions and social status to make their own journeys into their family’s history as rewarding and revealing as possible.

You can apply for both these summer weekends now. The deadline to apply for the King’s Summer Weekend with Tate Britain is 31 May 2017 and the deadline for the King’s Summer Weekend with The National Archives is 30 June 2017. If you have any questions about the programme please email us. Alternatively follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for up to date information about the Summer Programmes Team.