AA100

Just a few notes on what I am going to be doing from October, when I am not careering around the forest with Nell, that is. I have registered for the Open University’s Level 1 module, AA100 The Arts Past and Present. I have no wish to bore so if you desire a more in depth introduction to the module, look here. Broadly the equivalent of the old Arts Foundation Course, it is a multi-disciplinary introduction to the Arts and Humanities and encompasses a wide variety of subject areas:

• art history
• classical studies
• English
• history
• philosophy
• music
• religious studies

The multi-disciplinary study is made across a group of Themes:

• Reputations
• Tradition and Dissent
• Cultural Encounters
• Place and Leisure

The Course Team say that: “Your studies will range from poetry to string quartets, and from sculpture to short stories – across a wide variety of cultures and historical periods.”

It is not going to be a romp and several areas of study are either new to me or possibly quite unwelcome. I already feel a bristling of antipathy towards Antigone,  though the prospect of some Creative Writing elements is very pleasing and I am already psyched up for the final module and its multidisciplinary study of the seaside:

[su_quote cite=”The Open University” url=”http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/details/aa100″]This material combines social history of the development of the British seaside resort in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including work on the changing technologies and medical ideas that fostered seaside holidays, with analysis of different representations of the seaside phenomenon in film, music and visual art.[/su_quote]

It is difficult to see how they could leave Martin Parr out of that study and the prospect of getting to grips with his body of work is a very exciting prospect for me.

One thing is for certain; a course that dances from Cézanne to Sophocles via such notables as Cleopatra, Joseph Stalin and the Dalai Lama… is not going to be boring in any way at all.

Having mentioned that I have been shopping already  – here is the set list:

Set books

• Marlowe, C.: O’Connor, J. (ed) Doctor Faustus: The A Text Pearson Longman £10.50 – ISBN 9780582817807
• Muldoon, P. (ed) The Faber Book of Beasts Faber and Faber £9.99 – ISBN 9780571195473
• Prescott, L. (ed) A World of Difference: An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents Palgrave Macmillan £13.99 – ISBN 9780230202085
• Heaney, S. (trans.) The Burial at Thebes Faber and Faber £9.99 – ISBN 9780571223626

Other materials

• Gurinder Chadha (Director) Bhaji on the Beach DVD Channel Four Films £15.99

Study begins October 1st though I do not expect to see my OU materials before the 3rd. The following week is the Mezzacotta puzzle week. I don’t anticipate having problems keeping up but my old brain does not work as well as it did in former years and it is quite possible that I will struggle at times, so catching up at the start might prove to be more difficult than I think. Only time will tell.

All that I really know for sure is that now that I have committed, I want to get stuck in straight away. Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartets feature in the second module. I will certainly have a hard time with that so I may spend the next few days prepping. I found  a very useful website in that regard: http://www.quartets.de/

There had been some debate over recent weeks on the matter of updating our laptop or not. Mr L feels that as we will be in serious contention for a single computing facility, with me needing to do OU work and his supporting of Cumulus, we shall be needing a second laptop rather than a simple upgrade. He has found some good value refurbed Windows models and we will probably be buying one of those soon.

My registration and funding application papers went in the post box tonight. While we were out at the post we called in to the pub for a Fish Supper and a swift Guinness. Probably our final splurge before we leave.