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  Zooming Through the Autumn
               On-line Courses
   September 2024 ~ December 2024
                     

Payment 2024
Your Zoom Season Pass
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In order to make "Zooming Through the Autumn" on-line term as flexible as possible, we are again offering a single payment "season pass" which will entitle you to join any or all of the autumn sessions below. The Autumn Zoom Season Pass costs just £20 for members or £30 for non-members*.

 

* To pay for the lectures as a non-member select the arrow in the white box opposite to this text, then on the drop-down menu select the non-member price of £30, next select "Buy Lectures" and follow the prompts.

 

Note:- The non-member price of £30 means you get the Autumn Zoom Season Pass and Guild Membership, entitling you to member discounted prices for all our other autumn and spring term courses (both Zoom and Venue) until the end of April 2025.

 

​Zoom courses for 2024 have all been completed. This page is for reference only. 

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After receipt of payment you will receive a joining invite to each individual session which contains a session ID, password and internet link.

Note: These invites are usually sent out on the preceding day of each course.

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Anchor 1
The Middle East Mandates
Tutor: Alan Sennett

3 Mondays 23rd, 30th September & 7th October 2024

10.00 am - 12.00 pm

The British and French Mandates in the Middle East formally began just over a century ago and lasted for 30 years.  Modern Palestine-Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq were all shaped by decisions taken by the two European nations.  These three sessions ask why Britain and France were present, how their interests initially shaped the Mandates and how resistance and changing realities created profound problems leading both powers to withdraw.  We will look at how the Mandates were governed, consider in which ways Zionism, Arab resistance, events in Europe during the 1930s, war and the Holocaust were all instrumental in shaping the history of the modern Middle East.

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(1)  Lines in the Sand – How the Mandates came about.

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(2)  Resistance – Revolts in Iraq, Syria and Palestine, 1920-1939.

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(3)  Endgame – War, Holocaust and Imperial Retreat, 1940-48.

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This course has been completed

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The African-American Experience: Porgy And Bess and Songs Of Civil Rights 1963-64
Tutor: Steve Millward

Wednesday 16th October 2024

1.30 pm - 3.30 pm

Based on a 1925 novel by DuBose Heyward, George Gershwin's Porgy And Bess is a landmark of twentieth century opera.  Set in a tenement in South Carolina it vividly reflects the day-to-day drama of African-American life, though its themes of yearning, love and betrayal are universal and timeless. Forty years on, and the concerns of black America were being represented very differently - and this time by African-Americans  themselves. Until the early 1960s black protest music was largely muted and suppressed but now there was a confidence and assertiveness in both songs and performance that contributed directly to the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act of 1964

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This course has been completed

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Where did Tolkien Come From? - The Genesis of English Fantasy Writing
Tutor: Patrick Thom

Monday 21st October 2024

1.30 pm - 3.30 pm

JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is one of the highest-selling books ever, and nearly 50 years after his death the Tolkien industry has become a great juggernaut, spawning new books, films and television programmes. In this talk we will examine where this remarkable phenomenon came from. We look at a few of the details of Tolkien’s life to find out what were the things within his own experience and interests that led to his writing his works, which were private writings for decades before their publication. We will look at the literary influences, acknowledged and unacknowledged, which may have helped shape both his themes and his style. And also look at some of the other writings, broadly within the fantasy genre, of the same period, in the spirit of Amazon’s “Readers who bought this also looked at…” We do not, however, look at his literary heirs and imitators: that would be the stuff of another talk.

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This course has been completed

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J R R Tolkien 1892-1973

TuckerFTW, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos
Tutor: Rosemary Broadbent

2 Wednesday afternoons

30th October & 6th November 2024

1.30 pm - 3.30 pm

The six ‘Brandenburg Concertos’ are among Bach’s best know works, but it is easy to miss their oddness.  We owe their existence to a job application which came to nothing, and their survival to a dedicatee who may never have heard them.  Through them, we can picture Bach working with the musicians he knew best at what was probably the happiest time of his life.  They also amply demonstrate Bach’s consummate skill and his ever-inventive imagination.

 

Part One – Concertos 1, 2 and 3

Part Two – Concertos 4, 5 and 6

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This course has been completed

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Johann Sebastian Bach

Suffragette City
Tutor: Steve Millward

Monday 11th November 2024

10.00am - 12.00 pm 

This talk will look at the Manchester people, places and organisations that featured in the suffragist/suffragette movement from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.  Naturally, the Pankhurst family feature prominently, but there were many other women who contributed enormously to the ultimate success of the movement – but who, in some cases, are in danger of being forgotten.

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This course has been completed

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Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, Leader of the Women's Suffragette movement, is arrested outside Buckingham Palace while trying to present a petition to King George V in May 1914.

Women of the Raj
Women of the Raj
Tutor: Creina Mansfield

2 Monday mornings

18th & 25th November 2024

10.00 am - 12.00 pm 

British women were at the heart of the imperial enterprise. They supported the men's work, raised the children, and attempted to replicate British society thousands of miles from home. They struggled in the face of heat, illness, loneliness & boredom. And not every woman was a memsahib. Books relating to this course are Women of the Raj by Margaret Macmillan, A Passage to India by E.M. Foster and The Alien Sky by Paul Scott

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This course has been completed

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