This course will help you learn more about London, Europe’s largest and most culturally diverse city. We will explore the history and development of the city from Roman times, through the Middle Ages and the Great Fire, through the Blitz and the Swinging Sixties, up to the present day, as London prepares to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic Games.

Our journey will takes us from the financial centre of the City, to the ethnically mixed East End, the traditional home of the Cockney, where successive waves of immigrants arrived, and on to the fashionable West End with its theatres, luxury department stores and fine restaurants. We will also stroll through London’s parks and along the Thames, call in at London’s world-famous museums, art galleries and well-known sights and historical monuments, as well as study some of the most recent buildings that architects have designed for the city. Don’t worry, we won’t forget London’s sporting venues for football, rugby, tennis and horse racing.

We will also look at the way London has been portrayed in films, literature (novels, short stories, poems and plays), songs and paintings, both by Londoners and visitors from abroad.

Students will be encouraged to draw comparisons with Paris wherever possible and will make at least one oral presentation in class on a London-related topic of their choice. They will also be required to do regular reading and writing tasks at home. There will also be an end-of-term exam and participation will be taken into account for the final mark.

Dernière mise à jour : lundi 9 janvier 2012