Course Registration

Current & Upcoming Courses

Summer 2024

Summer 2024 – Hybrid
Robert Groves
Tuesday
2 PM - 4 PM AZ Time
May 21 to Jun 25
One testament to the impact of Ancient Greek tragedy is its enduring relevance.  In this course, we’ll examine one story told over and over again over the millennia: The murder of the Greek warlord by the Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra and his cousin Aegisthus.  This act prompts still more familial violence: But will the cycle of violence continue forever or can the curse finally be broken?   Together we’ll carefully examine 3 versions of this story told by the greatest Greek Tragedians.  Then we’ll jump forward to Eugene O’Neill’s shocking Freudian re-telling of the story, Mourning...
Summer 2024 – Hybrid
Peter Medine
Wednesday
2 PM - 4 PM AZ Time
May 29 to Jul 3
This seminar will compare Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited and its cinematic adaptation in the 1981 BBC television series with the same title. Both works recount some twenty years in the life of the gifted, central character and narrator Charles Ryder. The narrative moves from his years at Oxford to his romantic relationships first with the aristocratic Sebastian Flyte and then with Sebastian's beautiful sister Julia. It concludes with his maturation as an artist and finally his wrenching breakup with Julia. The seminar will begin with an analysis of the novel, attending...
Summer 2024 – Hybrid
Steve Smith
Tuesday
10 AM - 12 PM (AZ Time)
Jun 4 to Jul 9
The food crops upon which our lives are so dependent each have their own, often meandering origin stories. In a process we now refer to as “crop evolution,” starting with wild or weedy plants, humans gather, tend, cultivate, domesticate, and modify crop plants to feed and enrich their culture. Understanding the evolution of crop plants is based primarily on a knowledge of plants and their interactions with the environment. Just as important though is an appreciation of the complexities of the behavior of humans as they deal with plants in a variety of settings.  In this course we explore the...
Summer 2024 – Hybrid
Malcolm Compitello
Wednesday
10 AM - 12 PM (AZ Time)
Jul 10 to Aug 7
Both Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso exercised a profound influence on the development of the techniques, forms and meaning of modern art. They also confronted modernity’s monsters and produced works that offer reflections on the relationship between social issues, war, their effects on modern society and artistic forms. This course will examine the parallels between their work and the way their artistic creations help to shape our visions of the modern world. Summer 2024 Registration Opens Online:Monday, March 4, 2024 at 8 AM (AZ Time) 
Summer 2024 – Hybrid
Bruce Seligmann
Monday
2 PM - 4 PM AZ Time
Jul 22 to Aug 26
Major advances in science in our lifetime have transformed healthcare and enabled the breakthroughs in medicine we enjoy today. We will explore the chronology of advances in the lab, and how they impact our health care. The study of diseases and discovery of new drugs has evolved from animal testing and growing bacteria in petri dishes, to lab bench testing of enzymes and proteins and growth and use of cancer, diseased, or normal cells in the lab for drug discovery. We can now grow viruses, produce more effective and safer vaccines, test antiviral agents, use optics, automation, computer...
Summer 2024 – Recorded Course (Re-Release)
Chris Impey
OFFERED ORIGINALLY: SPRING 2022
(5 THREE-HOUR CLASSES)
Aug 1
This course will cover the history of the oldest field of science, from prehistory and the ancient Greeks to research on the earliest instants of our 14-billion-year-old universe. We will be looking at the history of ideas and discoveries and the more profound questions of how knowledge is created. This class addresses fundamental issues of time, space, and our place in the universe. Ted and Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award— 2022 Award-Winning Course — The teaching excellence displayed in this course earned this professor the highest honor that the Humanities Seminars Program has to...
Summer 2024 – Recorded Course (Re-Release)
Steve Smith
Offered Originally: Summer 2022
(6 Two-Hour Classes)
Aug 15
Arid and semiarid environments, commonly known as "deserts," make up about one-third of the earth's land surface and are home to more than one billion people. We will begin this course by discussing the geographical features of desert regions, answering seemingly simple questions: What is a desert, and why do they occur where they do? While humans are particularly maladapted to life in deserts, many other organisms present in these environments exhibit remarkable and compelling adaptations to aridity and other desert-associated conditions. We will investigate examples of these within plants...
Summer 2024 – Recorded Course (Re-Release)
Thomas P. Miller
Offered Originally: Fall 2022
(8 Two and a Half Hour Classes)
Aug 17
Moderate Democrats blame progressives for their divisions, and Republicans use them to depict Democrats as socialists. We will look beyond these partisan divisions to consider how our times parallel those of the Progressive Era. One has to go back a century to find the same levels of economic inequality and mass immigration. The historical precedent for our global pandemic is the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated fifty million people worldwide—twice the number of Covid victims and a far higher percentage of the world’s population at the time. The period is also known for...
Summer 2024 – Recorded Course (Re-Release)
Christie Kerr
Offered Originally: Fall 2022
(6 Two-Hour Classes)
Aug 17
Explore the history and significance of Musical Theatre Dance in the American Musical Theatre genre. Musical Theatre Dance has evolved through the years thanks to many significant choreographers. We will examine the work and style of many of these influential choreographers that have helped shape and mold the American Musical into what it is today. Each week we will discuss different choreographers and their contributions to Musical Theatre. Examples and video footage of choreographers and their dances will be shown and discussed. Additionally, we will focus on what makes each choreographer...