St Mary’s University is part of Strawberry Hill House, built by Horace Walpole and famed as the home of the Gothic. It was here that the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, was set. This makes St Mary’s Summer School the perfect location to explore the Gothic revival through the arts and humanities to its later reimagining in popular culture. Starting with its roots in Romantic aesthetics and culture, the course considers the Gothic novel, art and architecture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It then proceeds to a consideration of popular cultural Gothic, from film and television to music, subcultures and online. Questions of cultural value will be foregrounded, in relation to adaptation of Gothic across cultural forms. In addition, the identities of Gothic representations and audiences will be considered. This course includes a tour of Strawberry Hill House.
Dates and times
This is a 6-week course running on Fridays from 10am to 5pm including a lunch break.
- There are currently no dates available for this course.
Price
The full cost is £983, excluding the course assessment.
Participants can opt to take the course assessment at an additional cost of £250. The deposit cost is £50, payable upon application.
The class trip to Strawberry Hill House on Friday 10th June is included within the course fee. Please note that travel costs are the participant’s responsibility. Please ensure you can commit to the scheduled dates as unfortunately we are unable to give refunds.
Content
The course will explore the origins and contexts of Gothic traditions in arts and popular culture. Participants will develop current awareness of Gothic in contemporary media texts and explore aspects of identity that feature in Gothic texts at the levels of representation and consumption. Once on the course, participants will interrogate notions of cultural value and subcultural capital as they relate to Gothic texts and their consumption.
By the end of this course participants will be able to:
- Demonstrate a thorough understanding of Gothic themes and style across cultural forms
- Understand fully the ways in which Gothic has been adapted across different mediated popular culture forms
- Select and synthesise appropriate cultural and theoretical frameworks with which to analyse Gothic texts
- Demonstrate creativity and originality in formulating a creative response to module themes
Optional course assessment
Participants who wish to take the assessment on this course are required to complete an essay which is designed to test understanding of the original contexts in which Gothic texts emerged. The second assignment allows participants to devise a creative response to the second half of the course, engaging with more recent mediated and subcultural aspects of Gothic culture. Options for this assignment might include short fiction, fan fiction, a short film script, a review feature of a tourist attraction, etc.
Requirements
It is recommended that Learners should have achieved a level of education equivalent to five GCSEs at grades A*-C prior and two A-Levels, however exemptions may be made for adult returners.
Due to the amount of information covered in the course, home studies of approximately 13 hours per week will be required.
Award
Participants will receive a certificate of attendance while those who opt to take the assessment and pass will also receive a transcript detailing 20 credits at level 5. Please note that the transcript will follow once internal and external quality assurance processes have been completed.
Book your place now
For more information about this course please contact the Short Courses team:
Tel: 020 8240 4321
Email: shortcourses@stmarys.ac.uk