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WEA courses
Displaying 1 - 10 of 14
Displaying search results for: "stephen smith"
Creative Writing: Writing from the Heart
This is a free taster course focusing on your personal experiences and
how these experiences may form the basis not only for autobiography and memoir, but for autobiographical fiction and poetry. The course will be composed sections, with a break; each designed to explore one or more areas of personal writing, through discussion, hands-on writing experiments and guidance on how to improve technical aspects of your prose or poetry.
By the conclusion of the course you will have completed an introduction to one or two pieces of writing. The course will be mutually supportive, stimulating and
a good introduction to further creative writing courses with the popular tutor Stephen Smith.
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Course Information
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Dates:Mon 08/07/2024 -
Mon 08/07/2024Times:10:00am - 1:00pmDuration:1 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00016649How you'll learn:OnlineStatus:Waiting listFee:Free
Creative Writing: Writing from the Heart, Exploring Personal Experiences
This course will focus on your personal experiences and how these experiences may form the basis not only for autobiography and memoir, but for autobiographical fiction and poetry.
The course will be composed of two workshops, each designed to explore one or more areas of personal writing, through discussion, hands-on writing
experiments and guidance on how to improve technical aspects of your prose or poetry. By the conclusion of the course you will have completed the first drafts of two pieces of writing. The course will be mutually supportive, stimulating and a good introduction to further creative writing courses with the popular tutor Stephen Smith.
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Course Information
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Dates:Mon 15/07/2024 -
Mon 22/07/2024Times:10:00am - 12:00pmDuration:2 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00016651How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:5 places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £20.00
Literature: British Colonial & Post Colonial Literature 10
This course will explore the following texts: Heart of Darkness -
Joseph Conrad; Short Stories by Kipling; The Siege of Krishnapur -
JG Farrell; The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott, and The English
Patient - Michael Ondaatje.
The course will track the decline of Empire and the concomitant
social and political uncertainty, the relationship between the colonial
and the colonised Other, and develop themes relating to identity and
the subjective nature of historical revision.
There will be ample scope for discussion of at times difficult and
controversial debates, and we will focus on the continuing
relationship that exists between contemporary writers and later
writers vis-a-vis issues of guilt and responsibility.
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Course Information
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Dates:Mon 09/09/2024 -
Mon 18/11/2024Times:2:00pm - 4:00pmDuration:11 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017456How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:10+ places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £74.00
British Literature 1980 - 2011 (Part 1)
On this course we will examine the following novels:
The Stranger’s Child - Alan Hollinghurst.
Last Orders - Graham Swift.
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
Innocence - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps - Michel Faber.
These texts will take us inside contemporary British fiction, and
earmark those authors who have contributed to the evolution of a
distinctive voice in British fiction in the last fifty years, from the
years of Thatcher, New Labour to the present. We will explore each
writers’ techniques and themes, and how they address the themes
of British identity.
Discussions will be lively with plenty of opportunities to voice
your opinions.
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Course Information
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Dates:Thu 12/09/2024 -
Fri 22/11/2024Times:2:15pm - 4:15pmDuration:10 sessionsLocation:Friends Meeting House (Sutton)
10 Cedar Road
Sutton
SM2 5DATutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017587How you'll learn:In venueAvailability:10+ places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £100.00
WEA Membership
For just £15 a year, you can:
- Join our popular, award-winning weekly lecture series,
- Access an archive of over 100 past lectures,
- Get priority online and phone booking for autumn courses (England only),
- Receive our Highway magazine and access back issues,
- Attend our members’ annual conference.
Just add us to your basket to sign up today!
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Membership Information
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Duration:12 monthsFee:WEA Membership
Literature: British Literature in the Belle Epoque.
This course will explore four novels: The Turn of the Screw by
Henry James; Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; Sons
and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence; The Good Soldier by Ford
Madox Ford, and the work of one poet, Thomas Hardy,
specifically Poems 1912-1913, a record of his reactions to the
death of his first wife.
We will discuss the end of Empire, the rise of Modernism and
Feminism and psychological study, and the political situation
leading up to 1914 and changing perceptions of individual and
national identity.
There will be ample opportunity for discussion and a chance
to reassess what may in some instances be familiar texts.
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Course Information
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Dates:Mon 16/09/2024 -
Mon 25/11/2024Times:7:00pm - 9:00pmDuration:11 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017457How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:7 places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £74.00
Literature: Strange Worlds in Twentieth Century Fiction
This course will discover five texts ranging across twentieth
century European and British literatures. The texts are: Stories
from the City of God by Pier Paolo Passolini; Baron Bagge by
Alexander Lernet-Holenia; Forbidden Notebook by Alba de
Cespedes; The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel
Faber and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
These texts include essays, novellas and novels are by turn
extravagant fantasies and profound social commentaries on
the last unlovely century.
There will be ample scope for discussion of issues such as
class identities, social and political identities and the desire to
create stories to explore the nature of the mutable worlds of
the twentieth century.
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Course Information
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Dates:Mon 16/09/2024 -
Mon 25/11/2024Times:10:00am - 12:00pmDuration:11 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017462How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:10+ places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £74.00
Art Appreciation: Royal Portraits (1395 - 1658)
During this five week course we will explore a number of
portraits of British Monarchs. We will discover the
anonymous Wilton Diptych, Holbein’s portrayal of Henry VIII,
the evolving portraits of Elizabeth I throughout her life; the
paintings of Charles I by Anthony Van Dyck, and several
portraits of the de-facto monarch Oliver Cromwell.
The course will introduce the lives of the artists, the historical
and socio-political contexts of the paintings, and discuss the
changing perceptions of the monarchy as shown in this 250
year long history.
Images of the portraits will be available for you online. Come
along and tap into your inner art-critic.
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Course Information
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Dates:Tue 17/09/2024 -
Tue 15/10/2024Times:2:00pm - 4:00pmDuration:5 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017463How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:8 places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £37.00
History: The English Renaissance
This course will introduce a fascinating period of English
history, during which poetry, prose and the arts produced
some of the touchstones of British culture.
We will explore a range of poetry including Thomas Wyatt’s,
love poetry, Ralegh’s verse, Edmund Spenser’s homage to
Elizabeth I, John Donne’s astonishing poems of love and
divinity, and Milton’s early poems; playwrights, Shakespeare
and Marlowe, and prose writers such as Tyndale and his
translations from the Bible, Cranmer’s Book of Common
Prayer and extracts from the King James’ Bible.
Additional context for the period will be provided from
paintings, contemporary documents and letters.
All texts will be provided on Canvas.
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Course Information
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Dates:Tue 17/09/2024 -
Tue 26/11/2024Times:7:00pm - 9:00pmDuration:11 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017453How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:9 places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £74.00
British Literature in the 1950s
In this course we will discuss and analyse the following
authors and their works. These are:
Look Back in Anger - John Osborne.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark.
The Vet's Daughter - Barbara Comyns.
A Voice Through A Cloud - Denton Welch.
A Kind of Loving - Stan Barstow.
These texts are an eclectic blend of plays, novels and the
autobiographical in the case of Denton Welch, an eccentric
and now largely forgotten.
There will be great scope for discussion and the voicing of
opinions, and you will be encouraged to develop your own
theories and interpretations in a supportive atmosphere.
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Course Information
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Dates:Wed 18/09/2024 -
Wed 27/11/2024Times:10:30am - 12:30pmDuration:10 sessionsLocation:Duke Street Church
Quadrant Road
Richmond
TW9 1DHTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017580How you'll learn:In venueAvailability:10+ places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £100.00
Literature: Nordic Noir
This course will examine the publishing phenomenon of
Nordic Noir, locating its roots in the early twentieth century,
before exploring four contemporary novels from the genre.
Our texts will be Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg; Smilla’s
Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg; The Bird Tribunal - Agnes
Ravatn; The Flatey Enigma - Viktor Arnor Ingolfson and
Missing - Karin Alvtegen.
These texts will take us inside the mind of Nordic Noir and we
will evaluate the common features of the genre and its
relationship with crime-fiction, horror and recent forms of
Gothic literature.
There will be ample scope for lively discussion in our sessions
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Course Information
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Dates:Thu 19/09/2024 -
Thu 28/11/2024Times:7:00pm - 9:00pmDuration:11 sessionsLocation:OnlineTutor:Stephen SmithCourse code:Q00017459How you'll learn:OnlineAvailability:10+ places remainingStatus:AvailableFee rangeFree to £74.00