Expand+Enrolment & General Information
Students are encouraged to enrol as early as possible. If you enrol late, the class may be full or may have been cancelled due to low numbers.

You can enrol in person (at the Access and Lifelong Learning Centre i...

Hide-Enrolment & General Information
Students are encouraged to enrol as early as possible. If you enrol late, the class may be full or may have been cancelled due to low numbers.

You can enrol in person (at the Access and Lifelong Learning Centre in the James Joyce Library Building), Monday - Friday 9.00am - 1.00pm and 2.00pm - 5.00pm.

Enrol by credit or debit car over the phone (01) 716 7123 or online www.ucd.ie/all/study

Cancellations
Lifelong Learning courses are offered subject to sufficient numbers. Where there are insufficient registrations, the course will be withdrawn.

Expand+Introduction
Our Lifelong Learning courses cover a range of topics from Art History through to History, Literature, Philosophy and Writing. The courses are open to all and provide a chance to explore a subject without concerns about assessment. Thes...

Hide-Introduction
Our Lifelong Learning courses cover a range of topics from Art History through to History, Literature, Philosophy and Writing. The courses are open to all and provide a chance to explore a subject without concerns about assessment. These courses are part of a long tradition in University College Dublin (UCD), and follow the legacy of the university’s founder Cardinal John Henry Newman, who wished to make higher level education accessible to a broad sweep of Irish people.

Today, UCD remains committed to widening participation in higher education, in all its forms, whether to accredited formal learning programmes or informal open learning provision. We believe the rich intellectual resources of the university should be available to all. Our commitment is reaffirmed when we hear the important role learning plays in enhancing people’s lives, whether through providing intellectual stimulus and new friendships, or as an opportunity to sample a topic before further study.

The programme is developed in collaboration with tutors, UCD schools and the broader UCD community. Student feedback informs the type of courses we offer and the style of teaching promoted. Student evaluations have indicated that learning is enhanced through discussion, group work and participative approaches, and by getting out and about to learn on the move. Many of our courses now include field trips or gallery visits, which bring course material to life and provide a social learning opportunity. Further course details are available online at www.ucd.ie/all/study.

We hope you find a course that suits your interests!

Your Tutors
UCD Access and Lifelong Learning is privileged to work with a highly expert and committed group of tutors who are recruited not just on the basis of their subject expertise, but also for their demonstrated interest in adult learning. You can read about your tutor’s qualifications and areas of expertise online where we have included a short tutor biography alongside the course information.

Reading & Booklists
Booklists are available online alongside course descriptions. For the majority of courses, the booklist contains suggested reading for those interested in investigating the subject further. Your tutor can guide you as to which reading might be most suitable.

Booklists for literature students are more critical as classes are based on particular set texts. We recommend that initially you acquire just the first text listed as the list will be discussed with your tutor in class.

Expand+This course forms an introduction to the theme of death and resurrection in European painting and sculpture from c.1400-1700. There will be three broad areas of study. Firstly we will look at images related to belief in the afterlife, and expectation...

Hide-This course forms an introduction to the theme of death and resurrection in European painting and sculpture from c.1400-1700. There will be three broad areas of study. Firstly we will look at images related to belief in the afterlife, and expectations of Heaven and Hell. This will be followed by painted and sculpted memorials that reflect individual responses to the nature of mortality, and the need for personal commemoration. The final area of focus will be the impact of the Reformation on painting and sculpture, and the way in which scientific discoveries led to an increasingly rational understanding of corporeal decay.

This module examines death as a theme in European painting and sculpture during the period 1400-1700, and how art reflected shifting perceptions of mortality and the afterlife. There will be three broad areas of study: the first deals with images that reflect both ideological and eschatological responses to death in an age of religious reform. Topics include the iconography of the Last Judgment, Dives and Lazarus, and Danse Macabre themes, the development of Vanitas imagery and the ars moriendi – illustrated manuals for ‘dying well’. We shall then move on to address more individualistic responses to the nature of mortality with reference to the development of tomb monuments, effigies and memorial portraiture. The way in which both artists and patrons used commemorative and funerary imagery as a way of investigating and projecting their own sense of self and personality will be analysed. Topics include John Donne’s monument at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Michelangelo’s tomb designs, and the royal funeral effigies of Westminster Abbey. The final section of the module addresses an increasingly rational and scientific reaction to corporeal decay in the aftermath of the Reformation. Here we shall look at the imagery of disease and capital punishment in Renaissance and Baroque painting from the anatomical studies of Leonardo da Vinci to Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp.