Gresham College Lectures

Sex manuals can incite revolution. In the early 1970s a feminist collective released Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970) while 'free love' proponent Dr. Alex Comfort published The Joy of Sex (1972). Both manuals have been read and updated and republished many times.

What do changes in the advice given in these and other manuals tell us about the way sexual mores and practices have shifted between the 1970s and the present? What factors contribute to changes in ideas about sexual pleasure?

A lecture by Joanna Bourke

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/pleasure

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.'

This lecture will critically assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern history. Africans are integral to English history and forgetting this diminishes Englishness, by preventing us from understanding ourselves.

A lecture by Dr Onyeka Nubia

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/blacks-britannica

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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How can we help human society flourish without destroying nature?

The Wellbeing Economy and Natural Capital are linked strategies that can help achieve this. The Wellbeing Economy provides design principles to ensure that our planet serves both humanity and the planet's ecosystems. Natural capital provides design parameters to track the quality and quantity of ecosystems and resources, including the invisible value of nature.

A lecture by Jacqueline McGlade

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/planet-first

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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Commonwealth citizens once enjoyed the right to live, work and settle in the UK without any restrictions. But a racist backlash against Black and Asian immigration led to legislators introducing immigration controls in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, which were broadened by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 to deprive East African Asians of the right to settle in the UK.

Its shameful successor, the Immigration Act 1971 continues to form the basis of our xenophobic immigration laws today.

A lecture by Leslie Thomas QC

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/immigration-act

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

Because apes seem most like humans, science fiction has used them as a mirror in which to view ourselves. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau saw in orangutans the original, natural man, uncorrupted by society. Meanwhile most of his contemporaries used apes to embody racially charged fantasies of bestial brutality. These conflicting views shaped the numerous versions of King Kong and the Planet of the Apes films, which the lecture will use to look at evolving images of humanity.

A lecture by Jim Endersby

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scifi-apes

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

This lecture will examine the evidence for and the significance of events that unfolded in the early Universe. "Early" here refers to within the first few seconds after the Hot Big Bang. These very early developments give rise to fundamental characteristics of the nature of the Universe.

A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/early-universe

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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The most outrageous Russian modernist composers of the 1920s were Dmitry Shostakovich in Leningrad, and Alexander Mosolov in Moscow. They were not merely following European avant-garde trends, and their work was genuinely pioneering. Russian culture was undergoing a vigorous renewal at the time, and these composers worked across several arts: Shostakovich’s absurdist opera The Nose extends the theatrical innovations of the celebrated theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, while Mosolov’s 'machine music' embodies many constructivist ideas of visual artists and filmmakers.

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/modernism-rampant

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Because apes seem most like humans, science fiction has used them as a mirror in which to view ourselves. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau saw in orangutans the original, natural man, uncorrupted by society. Meanwhile most of his contemporaries used apes to embody racially charged fantasies of bestial brutality. These conflicting views shaped the numerous versions of King Kong and the Planet of the Apes films, which the lecture will use to look at evolving images of humanity.

A lecture by Jim Endersby

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scifi-apes

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

It’s usually said that Protestant and evangelical Christians made very little missionary effort in the 16th-18th centuries. In fact, there was much more than we remember. But they used strategies that look very alien to modern eyes: whether trying to spread ‘civilisation’ as a prerequisite for conversion, or seeing these efforts as part of a global apocalyptic conflict.

This lecture will introduce this series about these early missionary projects; why they mostly failed; and why they still matter.

A lecture by Alec Ryrie

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/protestant-failure

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

The most outrageous Russian modernist composers of the 1920s were Dmitry Shostakovich in Leningrad, and Alexander Mosolov in Moscow. They were not merely following European avant-garde trends, and their work was genuinely pioneering. Russian culture was undergoing a vigorous renewal at the time, and these composers worked across several arts: Shostakovich's absurdist opera The Nose extends the theatrical innovations of the celebrated theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, while Mosolov's 'machine music' embodies many constructivist ideas of visual artists and filmmakers.

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/modernism-rampant

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show