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This unit is an introduction to studying the arts and humanities. It takes you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and improve your confidence as an independent learner.

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This unit gives you the opportunity to practise good study techniques using the theme of commemoration and memorials. It will help you to begin to think about how form influences meaning in the arts and how ideas influence approaches to the humanities.

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This unit explores the commemoration of war through treating two war memorials – the Sandham Memorial Chapel and the Royal Artillery Memorial – as 'visual texts'. By helping you to respond to visual cues the unit aims for you to develop your understanding of these memorials, not only as memorials, but as artefacts or 'made objects'. It does this through consideration of such factors as the location of the monument; its function and purpose; its symbolism or realism; use of materials and overall form.

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In this unit we will consider how language can be used in different ways for different purposes. To do this we will use the theme of memorial and commemoration. In the first section we briefly discuss the life of the poet Siegfried Sassoon before examining both his poetry and prose. Through this we will see how he conveys meaning in different ways for different audiences using different forms. Following this we discuss more generally how different meanings can be conveyed using prose and poetic language.

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Commemoration – remembering and marking your past – makes an important contribution to our sense of community. Written texts, memorials, letters and photographs can all serve to commemorate events, people and values we wish to remember from our past.

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Besides being simple mementos family photographs can offer insights into the past. This unit looks at some of the ways photographs can reveal, and sometimes conceal, important information about the past. It teaches the skills and provides some of the knowledge needed to interpret such pictorial sources.

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Have you always wanted to write, but never quite had the courage to start? This unit will give you an insight into how authors create their characters and the settings for their work. You will also be able to look at the different genres for fiction.

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In this unit we will examine a range of Napoleonic imagery by David, Gros and a number of other artists, beginning with comparatively simple single-figure portraits and moving on to elaborate narrative compositions such as Jaffa and Eylau. In so doing, we will have three main aims: to develop your skills of visual analysis, to examine the relationship between art and politics and to introduce you to some of the complex issues involved in interpreting works of art.

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This unit looks at the short poems in German that were set to music by Franz Schubert (1797–1828) for a single voice with piano, a genre known as ‘Lieder’ (the German for ‘songs’). Once they became widely known, Schubert's Lieder influenced generations of songwriters up to the present day.This unit then discusses a selection of Schubert's settings of Goethe's poems, and recordings of all of them are provided. You can find the poems, in German with parallel translations into English and the music scores of four of the song settings, on the unit home page. You are not expected to be able to read the music, but even if you are not very familiar with musical notation, you may well find the scores useful in identifying what is happening in the songs.

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What influenced Goya? Did Napoleon's invasion of Spain alter the course of Goya's career? This unit will guide you through the works of Goya and the influences of the times in which he lived. Anyone with a desire to look for the influences behind the work of art will benefit from studying this unit.

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This unit provides basic historical background to the French Revolution. It will show that the Revolution accelerated intellectual, cultural and psychological change, and opened up new horizons and possibilities. In fact, while much controversy and scepticism remain as to the real extent of underlying change in the social and economic structure of France, it is generally agreed by scholars that the Revolution stimulated a widening of expectations and imaginative awareness: a belief, inherited from the Enlightenment, in the possibility of progress, as well as a conviction that state and society could be reconstituted with a view to realizing social and individual aspirations and human happiness generally. As it degenerated into violence and bloodshed, however, the Revolution also provoked scepticism and pessimism about progress and human nature. The two basic types of modern political outlook, progressive and conservative, date from this experience. Which, if any, of these sets of beliefs was true is not at issue here. What matters is that the Revolution gave rise to them and gave them lasting life

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In this unit you will be introduced to a variety of Delacroix’s work and see how his paintings relate to the cultural transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism. You will study Delacroix’s early career, his classical background, the development of Romantic ideas and their incorporation into his work. You will have the opportunity to study some of his most important paintings and compare them to works favouring a Neoclassical approach. You will also be able to see how his themes, subjects and style were influenced by Romantic ideas, the exotic and the Oriental. Through this you will develop an understanding of the classic-Romantic balance that how his work was influenced by cultural change of that period and to some extent contributed to the progression from Enlightenment to Romanticism.

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In this unit we examine the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and its relationship to nineteenth century romanticism and exoticism. We begin with a biographical discussion of the Prince of Wales, afterwards Prince Regent and eventually King George IV, to whose specifications the Pavilion was built. With the help of video and still images we take a tour of the Pavilion, examining the exterior then a series of interior rooms as a visitor in the 1820s may have experienced them. Besides this we look at contemporary aesthetic, cultural and political reactions to the building, its contents and its social millieu.

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This unit will help you to identify and use information in Arts and History, whether for your work, study or personal purposes. Experiment with some of the key resources in this subject area, and learn about the skills which will enable you to plan searches for information, so you can find what you are looking for more easily. Discover the meaning of information quality, and learn how to evaluate the information you come across. You will also be introduced to the many different ways of organising your own information, and learn how to reference it properly in your work. Finally, discover how to keep up to date with the latest developments in your area of interest by using tools such as RSS and mailing lists.