The Course Register 1965
Bold Type indicates we believe to have an up-to-date postal address.* Asterisk indicates a son or daughter has also been on the Course.
Charles Atkinson, Philip Bann, Robert Berg, Michael Burton *, Elizabeth Coates, Sally Cockburn, Meriel Cowen, Robin Fenton, Robin Frith, Christopher Grace, Richard Gutch *, Paul Hills, Peter Howard, Jane Lichfield, David Linstow, Patricia Long, Anthony Maddison, Prudence Norton, Michael Parroy, Susanna Piper, George Reid, Georgina Russell, Anthony Sanderson, Philip Scoones, Hugh Tweedie (Deceased), Simon Ward Jackson (Deceased), Alastair Warman, Della Whiles, Giles Wilkinson (Deceased), David Williamson, Selina Woods.
Record of Past Programme
The first Course, in 1965, was called The Contemporary Europe Pre-University Course, and its content was predominantly topics of contemporary interest- political theory, economics, sociology, psychology, urban planning, etc. Few people did art history at school at that time. Due to the inspiring lectures on Venetian Art by Professor Pignatti, Vice Director of the Civic Museums, art history became popular with our students and gradually, together with Music and World Cinema, became the core of the Course. In 2010 we are returning to our original involvement with contemporary affairs by including a set of lectures on global environmental and political issues- without reducing our principal focus on the European cultural tradition.
In the first years of the Course we were guests of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of S.Giorgio Maggiore. Later, for 19 years, our lecture centre was in the Arsenale, guests of the Societa Dante Alighieri.
The Contemporary Europe Pre-University Course in Venice
Spring
February 7 – April 26
Director: John Hall
Accommodation
Venice. Pensione alla Salute da Cici
Lectures: Giorgio Cini Foundation, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Lecturers and Syllabus
Thought, science and imagination, society
Stephen Medcalf B.Lit., M.A. (Oxon) Lecturer in English Literature and the History of Ideas, Schools of English and American Studies and School of European Studies, University of Sussex
Michael Moran Lecturer in Philosophy, School of European Studies, University of Sussex
John Wilson M.A. (Oxon) Lecturer in Philosophy, School of European Studies, University of Sussex
Edmund Ions Lecturer in Sociology, University of York
Thought, science and imagination, society in Modern Europe
Lectures, seminars and discussions based on an attempt to understand the reactions of the European mind and imagination during the last hundred years to Industrialization.
Thought
A critical study of Marx, Freud, modern Existentialism and of certain modern European novelists, particularly Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Camus, Kafka.
Science and Imagination
Beginning with a discussion of the medieval world picture, the seminars will continue with its disruption in the 16th and 17th centuries and the building of modern cosmography and will conclude with current views of science on the human personality. The relations between religion and science will also be discussed from Galileo onwards.
Society
An introduction to sociology with reference to contemporary European society. The following aspects will be examined: social structure and function; socialization; stratification; mobility; primary groups; social change; the sociology of religion, education and knowledge.
The Arts
Cinema
Flavia Paulon Secretary of the Venice Film Biennale
Rosselini Visconti, Antonioni, Fellini
Venetian Art
Professor Terisio Pignatti Vice-Director of the Civic Museums of Venice
Venetian history, painting and architecture
Venetian history from the first settlement following the invasion of the Roman Empire by the Barbarians to the fall of the Republic in 1797. Venetian painting from the Ravenna mosaics to the Tiepolos. Venetian architecture, surveying the Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles. This will include lectures on the influence of Venice on English architects with reference to Inigo Jones, Colen Campbell, Ruskin.
Film Making
Peter Theobald
Theatre production by students in Teatro Ca’Foscari
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice.