The concept cultural studies is rather complex. To begin with the word 'culture' itself means different things to different people, such as great works of art and literature, or works of popular culture, such as pop songs and soap operas, or the way that particular groups of people live their everyday lives. Generally, when you talk about cultural studies as a subject at university it is not so much about another culture, but it has more to do with a particular way of looking at the world in which people live, and how and why people think, produce and do the things they think, produce and do. This self-study pack offers an introduction to cultural studies, using representations of Amsterdam as an illustration. The material assumes no knowledge of Dutch.

This self-study pack is designed to help you understand the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century, using a key historical document from the period. It is aimed at learners with only a minimal knowledge of Dutch. You can check out an original edition of the document, read four fragments of it, get help with historical references and concepts, analyse certain themes, and explore related pictorial material.

This self-study pack is designed to help you understand the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century, using a key historical document from the period. It is aimed at learners with an intermediate knowledge of Dutch. You can check out an original edition of the document, read some fragments of it, get help with historical references, analyse certain themes, and explore related pictorial material.

This interactive multimedial timeline on Anglo-Dutch relations from antiquity to 1830, uses MIT’s Simile technology and is based on the manuscript 'The Stranger’s case : a timeline of Cross-Channel Interactions' by Jaap Harskamp, curator of the Dutch and Flemish collections at the British Library, in which he has compiled and annotated a comprehensive list of over 800 events relating to Anglo-Dutch relations throughout the centuries. It is part of the Open Learning Environment in early modern Low Countries history (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dutch/OER).