Evening & Short Course Programme - Booking
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Classics
SC01 Introduction to Greek Art and Architecture
This module offers an introductory survey of the development and major artistic achievements of Greek architecture, sculpture and painting from the Greek Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. The module places art and architecture in its social, political and cultural context. It explores themes such as the representation of the human form, the use of narrative and mythology in art, urbanisation, and the development of architectural forms such as temples and theatres.
Lecturer: Dr Giorgos Papantoniou
SC02 Introduction to Greek History
This course provides an introductory survey of the history of the Greek world, from the Greek Archaic age to the Hellenistic period. The main trends and issues of this period will be explored through major themes such as colonisation, imperialism, war, the Athenian invention of democracy, and the rise of Alexander.
Lecturer: Dr Shane Wallace
SC03 Greek and Roman Mythology and Religion part 1
What is myth? How do myths deal with fundamental human concerns about who we are and the world we live in? This module is an introduction to the major myths of the classical world using the full range of primary source material: literary, artistic and archaeological. It explores the functions of myth within society and the various theories of myth. The key themes of the module will include creation myths in the wider context of Near Eastern mythology, the character of the Olympian gods, heroes and their monstrous opponents, divine-human relations, and the major mythic cycles of the Trojan war, and the Atreus and Theban sagas.
Lecturer: Dr Suzanne O'Neill
SC06 Modern Greek – Beginners
This evening course will run subject to sufficient numbers enrolling – there will be a limited number of places available.
This module is designed for students with no previous knowledge of modern Greek.
You will develop a basic knowledge of Greek vocabulary and grammar, and develop skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing at a basic level. Students will also be introduced to some key features of Greek culture. The course is taught by a Greek native-speaker.
The module is taught in small groups through one weekly class across an academic year. Attendance, homework assignments and preparation for each class are compulsory.
SC15 Modern Greek – Post beginners
This evening course will run subject to sufficient numbers enrolling.
This module is designed for students with a basic knowledge of modern Greek.
This post-beginners’ Modern Greek course deepens students' language skills while introducing them to more complex grammar and everyday conversation. Alongside language acquisition, the course explores key elements of Greek history and culture.
The module is taught in small groups through one weekly class across an academic year. Attendance, homework assignments and preparation for each class are compulsory.
SC16 Latin language and culture
This course is for those wishing to learn Latin grammar, whether you are a complete beginner or you have some prior experience and would like to revise at a leisurely pace. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the language of ancient Rome and some of the central features of its literature. In this course we aim to examine the cultural context surrounding classical Latin and its successors.
In the first term, those who have knowledge of Latin grammar will be able to review it at a leisurely pace, while people with little or no knowledge will have an opportunity to learn the basics. Aspects such as the origins and development of the Latin language, its power of communication, comparisons between formal and informal Latin in antiquity and beyond will also be considered.
The second term will be devoted to a careful study of the Latin literary language through samplings of Latin authors, in both poetry and prose, ranging from antiquity to early modern times.
Please note: this year the Beginners and Intermediate classes have been merged into a single, two-hour, class.
History Of Art And Architecture
SA01 Introduction to the History of Art 1
This module offers a survey of art up to the end of seventeenth century, with a focus primarily, although not exclusively, on the Western world. It provides an introduction to the critical analysis of artworks, including painting, mosaic, fine metalwork, manuscripts, and sculpture. The module considers such matters as the iconography of major religious and mythological subjects, issues of style, the functions of works of art, as well as the range of technical methods employed by artists. Art works are considered in the context of influential factors such as historical period, geographic location, inter-cultural influences and the prevailing social, political and religious environments.
Lecturers: Team taught by staff from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture
SA02 Introduction to the History of architecture 1
This module offers a survey of architecture up to the end of seventeenth century, with a focus primarily, although not exclusively, on the Western world. It introduces the critical analysis of buildings and the spaces that they occupy considering issues of style, function and technical innovation. Architecture is considered in the context of influential factors such as historical period, geographic location, inter-cultural influences and the prevailing social, political and religious environments.
Lecturers: Team taught by staff from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture
SA03 Themes in Irish Art 1
This course presents a thematic introduction to Irish art, architecture and design in its broader international context. Subjects will be connected across periods and styles – the focus not on presenting individualised summarized histories but rather considering how aspects of Irish visual history are connected and have evolved over time. Lectures will include the identification of key works from Irish art and architecture, addressing fine, applied and popular artforms. Throughout the course, Irish visual history will be discussed within its artistic, social and cultural contexts and will be cognisant of its place within a broader European perspective.
Lecturers: Team taught by staff from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture
SA04 History of Art – Cultural intersections in the History of Art 1
This module presents a thematic overview of the global intersections and relationships of Western visual and material culture across a range of historically located examples. Topics are explored in this module under the broad themes of knowledge and discovery and empire building. Through these lenses lectures will explore topics as diverse as the Wunderkammer, Islamic Iberia and the space race and what they reveal about cultural transmission through the ages.
Lecturers: Team taught by staff from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture
SA05 Arts of Japan
This module will examine cultural highpoints in the arts of Japan from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Artefacts in all media - painting, ceramics, lacquer and textiles - will be examined in the context of the influence of China on Japan, the creation of the Shogun Court, the rise of the merchant classes and the establishment of the pleasure districts in burgeoning Tokyo. Particular attention will be paid to lacquer ware created for the domestic and European market, the arts associated with the \tea ceremony and traditional Japanese theatre. Themes of Japonisme will be explored, particularly in nineteenth century Ireland as Japan emerged after 250 years of self-imposed isolation from the outside world.
Lecturer: Ms Ruth Starr
SA08 Arts of Astrology: Science and Belief from the Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century
This module examines images of astrology found in illuminated manuscripts, astrological charts and talismans, playing cards, prints, maps, paintings and tapestries, as well as in architecture in the broad global early modern world to explore their political, medical, divinatory, and magical use. Considering the early modern Western astrology as the result of the intercultural exchanges from Greece, Babylon and India to the rest of the world via images and texts that translated diverse ideas on natural philosophy, the students will learn key concepts from Renaissance Neoplatonism and Hermeticism to discuss the reception of astrological knowledge in a variety of everyday objects. Students will also reflect on the role of astrological images in the transmission of Western knowledge (deemed magical or scientific) via colonisation, as well as on the influence that early modern celestial observations taken forth by cutting–edge artifacts and novel circumnavigations around the world had on the global shaping of astrological imagery.
Lecturer: Dr Vanessa Portugal
SA14 Building Modernity In Paper and Stone
Through the study of buildings and architectural publications (1500-1700) this module examines the role of architecture in the construction of modernity. To do so, architectural production in the early modern period will be studied under three lenses: architecture and antiquity/modernity, architecture and power and, architecture and the New Science. This module recognizes architectural publications as an important part of the architect´s work and will include visits to study some important architectural books kept at Early Printed Books in Trinity Library.
Students in this module will reflect on the formal differences that have led historians to classify works under Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque architecture and reflect on the usefulness -or not- of these art historical categories to describe the architecture of the early modern period. Students will consider the relationship between architectural theory and practice and how ideas shape architecture to propose alternative readings of early modern architectural production.
Lecturer: Dr Maria Elisa Navarro Morales
SA18 Global postmodern and contemporary Art
This course examines global postmodern and contemporary art from the 1950s to the present day. It will discuss transformations in media, authorship, spectatorship, display, and distribution, along with the globalisation of art through art markets, biennales, artistic networks, and museum franchises. Students will learn about key developments such as Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Performance, Computer Art, and the Social Turn, with particular emphasis upon how these have been interpreted, expanded, and challenged by artists outside of Western metropolitan centres in, for example, Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Japan, and Oceania. In addition to the themes and contexts of postmodern and contemporary art, students will engage with relevant debates concerning economic and cultural globalisation, transcultural exchange, Indigeneity, and postcolonial politics.
Lecturer: Dr Timothy Stott
History
SHH01 Across the Sea: Ireland and its Neighbours in the Early Middle Ages
Much of insular history is determined by connections forged across the seas. This module explores significant times and places in insular history where this dynamic played an especially important role. Beginning with an introduction to Ireland and Britain at the close of the Late Antique period, this module covers themes such as the dynamics of slave trade in relation to St Patrick and Ogham culture, the origin of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the dynastic politics of Dal Riata and Iona, the cultural exchanges between Ireland and the English kingdoms in terms of book learning, the Easter controversy in the context of relations with Rome, and the significance of sea journeys in secular and ecclesiastical law and literature. The second half of the module explores interactions, both political and scholarly, with the Merovingian and Carolingian courts and with the Germanic kingdoms as well as the arrival of the Vikings and their impact on trade, literature, kingship and the geography of Ireland and Britain.
The module explores each of these themes at the hand of primary sources contextualized with modern scholarship, allowing students to explore questions of historicity, genre, and source analysis.
Lecturers: Professor Immo Warntjes/Dr Nicoloe Volmering
SHH02 American Dreams: Culture in the US, 1840-present
This module provides an overview of some of the major developments in American culture since 1840. It will introduce students to the basic methods of cultural history and teach them how to place cultural developments within broader economic, political, and social contexts. Some of the themes that might be discussed in the module include: the way culture has shaped racial, gender, and lecture conflicts and identities; the role of popular music in American life; the growth of advertising and consumer culture; the role of culture in debates over immigration and multiculturalism; and how the conquest of the American West was registered in American culture.
Lecturer: Professor Dan Geary
SHH03 Europe Divided, c. 1480-1620
This module explores the history of Europe during the sixteenth century. It assesses the era of Europe’s Renaissance and Reformation, and considers efforts to revive European culture, religious life, politics, and society. It examines the impact of reform movements, analysing how cultural divisions and competition for power led to conflict within European societies and between European states. It covers a long sixteenth century, taking the 1492 defeat of the last emir of Granada as a point of departure and the second defenestration of Prague in 1618 as a moment of culmination and conclusion. The module covers all of Europe’s major states from the Ottoman empire to Tudor England and considers European engagement with the rest of the world. Lectures and tutorials will focus on key moments to reflect on the wider changes that shaped the sixteenth century from 31 October 1517 in Wittenberg to 24/25 August 1572 in Paris. Lectures and tutorials will highlight important authors (including Niccolò Machiavelli and Desiderius Erasmus) and key historiographical texts to allow for discussion of political and cultural change across the sixteenth century in Europe.
Lecturer: Professor Graeme Murdock
SHH04 Humans and the Environment in Modern History
In contrast to the modern myth of mankind’s liberation from nature, human interactions with the nonhuman world got more – and not less – intense in the past 200 years, creating some of the most severe environmental problems that we are facing today. In this module, we will take an environmental perspective on European imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, modern farming practices and international conflict to explore the relationship between social and ecological change in the modern world. At the same time, we will trace the rise of nature protection and environmental policies as responses to modernity’s unintended by-products, such as pollution, the loss of wildlife, nuclear accidents and climate change. This module will introduce key approaches to the exciting study of historical human-nature relations, and combine local and transnational case studies that exemplify how the environment has mattered in modern history.
Lecturer: Dr Katja Bruisch
SHH05 Modern Eastern Europe, 1890-1990
This module provides an overview of major themes in modern Eastern European history from the late Habsburg Empire through the fall of communism.
This lecture-only module comprises of one lecture per week over one term, commencing the week beginning 15 September 2025. Lectures take place on the Trinity Campus
Lecturer: Dr Molly Pucci
SHH06 Saints and Sinners in Medieval Europe
The institutional church never had the kind of control over the populace of medieval Europe that modern people think it did. This module explores the multiplicity of types of belief and practice amongst those who lived in accordance with the church’s teaching—monks and nuns, wandering preachers, pious families—and the varieties of resistance among those who did not—Jews, Muslims, and heretics, social revolutionaries, sexual nonconformists, practitioners of the occult, student wastrels. We will discuss the kinds of sources that tell us about these groups, including saints’ lives, chronicles, Inquisition registers, letters, and poetry. People in the Middle Ages were no more credulous than we are today, but they had different sources of information. This module will help students appreciate how people in the past operated much as people do today, but in a very different world with a different set of assumptions. Continuous emphasis will be placed on the geographical and cultural diversity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and the decentralized and multivocal nature of medieval religion.
Lecturer: Professor Ruth Karras
SHH07 The Sexual Politics of Modern Ireland
How important was sex to people’s understanding of power, politics and policy in twentieth-century Ireland? This module explores the role of powerbrokers and stakeholders in the shaping of the sexual politics of modern Ireland. It asks questions about how power was mediated and framed in modern Ireland and why ideas of sex and morality were important. It examines the role of key players, such as the state, the law, the churches/voluntary organisations, campaigners and the media. Central questions considered are: How did concepts regarding sex inform ideas of citizenship in Ireland? How did legislation shape people’s sexual relationships and sexual lives? What role did the churches play in the contemporary framing of sexual relationships? How did ideas about sex inform health and welfare policies? How did the law reinforce certain beliefs about sex and sexuality? How and why did a particular narrative about Irish sexual cultural as pathological and harmful emerge? Can we identify key moments of change in the sexual politics of twentieth-century Ireland?
Lecturer: Professor Lyndsey Earner-Byrne
SHH08 US History: Power, Politics, People
This module provides an introduction to the diverse and dynamic history of the United States. Through a range of historical approaches—including political, social, cultural, and foreign policy perspectives - students will investigate the forces that have influenced the development of the United States. Themes such as popular culture, multiculturalism, the role of the state, sexuality, gender, race, religion, lecture, and varied identities might be explored, alongside foreign policy, the presidency, and the evolution of America as a global power. The module seeks to provide a broad yet nuanced understanding of how power, politics, and different groups of people have intersected across different eras, equipping students with the analytical tools to engage critically with historical narratives and debates. The module is team taught and introduces JF students to different ways of thinking about American history. It is designed to encourage students to think critically about the forces that shaped American politics and culture and empower them to engage with debates about its past, present and future.
Lecturer: Professor Dan Geary
School Of Histories And Humanities
SCH100 Material Witnesses: Sixteen Objects and the Shaping of History
Material Witnesses endure not only in museums, but in the art, architecture and texts left behind by people. Each carved statue, work of art, sacred manuscript, monumental structure or historical document is more than an artifact; it is a witness to human lives. These objects speak not just of empires, ideologies, and revolutions, but of the humanity within them: the aspirations, fears, and questions that have shaped our shared story.
Spanning Ireland, Europe, and beyond, this interdisciplinary lecture series – led by scholars from History, Classics and History of Art, centres on the human experience embedded in material culture. From grand monuments to intimate letters, devotional art to state documents, each object reveals how people have navigated power, identity, belief, and memory.
Across sixteen talks, Material Witnesses considers how materials have shaped, challenged, and preserved human stories—reminding us that history is not only recorded in events, but in the enduring traces people leave behind.
S002 Introduction to Irish Family History
Family History isn’t just about the past: learning about our origins allows people to get down to the granular details of our ancestors’ lives. It enables people to construct their own family narrative and their personal identity. This lecture-only module is taught through a series of eight lectures per term over two terms by Fiona Fitzsimons & Brian Donovan of the Irish Family History Centre (Eneclann). The course covers a broad sweep of Irish history (1650s to 1950s) and is deeply rooted in the sources. The focus is on the records generated by churches, central and local government, enterprises, families and individuals; exploring what section of the Irish population is documented in these records, and how to interpret the evidence. Where record collections were destroyed, do any collateral records survive that contain relevant information? The fee includes archival visits and free access to the largest Irish collection online, www.Findmypast.ie. It will also provide support for all participants to construct a simple family history portfolio over sixteen weeks, including creating a family profile; research to collect documentary evidence; building a family tree; and writing a simple report.
SO03 Irish Family History: Intermediate Level
(You must have completed the introduction module to enrol on this course)
Building on the theoretical foundations of the first year, we begin to move into experiential learning with the option of project work in term 2. We explore the Irish diaspora in all its aspects (military, mercantile, civilian, political and criminal exiles and convicts, adventurers, orphans) anywhere they went, and where sources survive, in Irish and overseas archives. In term two we will turn a spotlight on demographic groups that are more challenging to trace: finding women in the sources; researching Irish Travellers before 1950; and children in care 1840s to 1952. There will be a continuing emphasis on the appropriate methodology to use in family and social history, for a successful research outcome.
If you have any questions about these programmes,
please contact:
Dr. Patricia Stapleton,
Evening & Short Courses Coordinator,
Room 3141,
School of Histories and Humanities,
Arts Building,
Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2.
Tel: 01 896 8589,
E-mail: extramural.hh@tcd.ie