St Hilda
The 7th century saint, Hilda, or Hild as she would have been known then, wielded great religious and political influence in a volatile era. The monasteries she led in the north of England were known for their literacy and learning and produced great future leaders, including 5 bishops. The remains of a later abbey still stand in Whitby on the site of the powerful monastery she headed there.

We gain most of our knowledge of Hilda's life from The Venerable Bede who wrote that she was 66 years in the world, living 33 years in the secular life and 33 dedicated to God. She was baptised alongside the king of Northumbria and with her royal connections, she was a formidable character. Bede writes: “Her prudence was so great that not only indifferent persons but even kings and princes asked and received her advice”. Hild and her Abbey at Whitby hosted the Synod which decided when Easter would be celebrated, following a dispute between different traditions. Her achievements are all the more impressive when we consider that Christianity was still in its infancy in Northumbria.

So what contribution did she make to establishing Christianity in the north of England? How unusual was it for a woman to be such an important figure in the Church at the time? How did her double monastery of both men and women operate on a day-to-day basis? And how did she manage to convert a farmhand into England's first vernacular poet?

Reading Judas
The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
read by Justine Eyre and Robertson Dean
When the Gospel of Judas was published by the National Geographic Society in April 2006, it received extraordinary media attention and was immediately heralded as a major biblical discovery that rocked the world of scholars and laypeople alike. Elaine Pagels and Karen King are the first to reflect on this newfound text and its ramifications for telling the story of early Christianity. In Reading Judas, the two celebrated scholars illustrate how the newly discovered text provides a window onto understanding how Jesus’ followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.

Andrew Loomis "Creative illustration"
Книга о рисовании на английском языке

Andrew Loomis (1892-1959) was an illustratorfrom the United Stateswho is best remembered now for a series of art instruction books that continues to influence realist artists, though they are in 2004all out of print, except for some excerpts available from the art publisher Walter Foster. The Loomis family, who still holds the copyrights to all the books published by Andrew Loomis, has not expressed any intention of re-printing any of his work in recent days despite popular demand.

TMS - Understanding the Holocaust
Professor David Engel (New York University)
14 lectures [30 minutes/lecture]
In Understanding the Holocaust, Professor David Engel of New York University examines the encounter between Germany’s Third Reich and the Jews of the twenty European countries that fell under Nazi domination between 1933 and 1945.