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 VirtualDutch self-study pack helps you understand what concrete poetry is by giving you background information about this form of poetry as well as some examples written by Mark Insingel. The level of difficulty of the studypack is for beginners, so if you have only recently begun to learn Dutch it should not be too difficult for you. Word explanations are given with the poems.

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).

Interested in Dutch? Curious how Dutch sounds? Wondering how difficult or easy it is? Perhaps you are thinking of studying Dutch? Then here is your opportunity to have a go at the language yourself and experience what it is like to learn Dutch from scratch. You can work through the pack all by yourself. No previous knowledge of Dutch is required.