The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci

The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci

Please Note: Summer 2020 Course Registration Opens Online on Monday, May 11th at 8AM Leonardo continues to fascinate and provoke, his myriad activities still studied by experts in a wide variety of fields. New discoveries are continually being made about his...
Outsiders, Outliers, and Monsters in Renaissance Literature

Outsiders, Outliers, and Monsters in Renaissance Literature

NEW! HSP Deep Dive Seminar The social, economic, religious, and political instability of the Renaissance informed some of the most brilliantly anxious literature in the history of England. As some authors strained to construct coherent identities, hierarchies, and...
Language and Identity

Language and Identity

Please Note: Summer 2020 Course Registration Opens Online on Monday, May 11th at 8AM This course explores the relationship between language and identity–how individual and group identities interact with language use. Language can show belonging/not belonging to...
Dante’s Paradiso

Dante’s Paradiso

Please Note: Summer 2020 Course Registration Opens Online on Monday, May 11th at 8AM This class deals with the climax of Dante’s Divine Comedy. While Inferno depicts sin and evil, and Purgatorio portrays redemption, Paradiso illustrates the possibility of...
Soul Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Soul Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Please Note: Summer 2020 Course Registration Opens Online on Monday, May 11th at 8AM Rhythm and blues music emerged as a genre in the late 1940s, coinciding with the rise of multiple civil rights movements in the United States. This course explores culture and...
Tackling the Russian Soul

Tackling the Russian Soul

Sorry! This course has sold out. Click here to join the course waitlist This course explores the nuances and key features of the Russian cultural-societal-historical experience often called “the Russian Soul.” Caught between East and West, Asia and Europe, and...
Localizing the Sacred: Medieval Christian Architecture and Art

Localizing the Sacred: Medieval Christian Architecture and Art

Saints and cult sites were central to religious practice in the Christian Middle Ages. This course examines four sites (Qalʿat Simʿān, Constantinople, Conques, and Chartres) to find evolving concepts of sanctity and forms of cultic practice in medieval sociopolitical...
The String Quartets of Beethoven

The String Quartets of Beethoven

This past year we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. He was one of the great masters of the Classical and Romantic eras in music, and aside from the symphony, no genre summarizes his achievement better than the string quartet. These...
Television and U.S. Culture

Television and U.S. Culture

Kill your television. TV is furniture. Film and theater are art. These are the vastly different and competing views on the value of television and its place in society today. When television began, it was on 8-in black-and-white sets. Today it arrives in color and...
German-Jewish Writers from the 1800s to the Present

German-Jewish Writers from the 1800s to the Present

This course explores German-Jewish texts starting in the eighteenth century and continuing until the present day. It examines how issues of identity are addressed by the writers, as well as how these writers are viewed by the general (largely non-Jewish) population....
The Plays of August Wilson

The Plays of August Wilson

August Wilson left as his legacy a ten-play cycle that documents each decade of the 20th century in terms of the African American experience. In his plays Wilson adeptly explores key historical moments in the so-called “American Century.” The course begins with Gem of...
From the Gods to the God Within

From the Gods to the God Within

THIS COURSE WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED IN THE SPRING BUT WAS POSTPONED TO SUMMER 2021 In 399 BCE Socrates was tried in Athens, the first trial in Western history to indict, convict, and condemn to death someone for impiety. In Plato’s Apology Socrates says that the...
Paul of Tarsus: Slave of Jesus Christ or Apostle of Liberation?

Paul of Tarsus: Slave of Jesus Christ or Apostle of Liberation?

The Christian religion is inextricably bound up with contemporary culture not only in America but also around the globe. Yet, even after centuries of scholarly inquiry, numerous questions regarding its historical origins remain contested and unanswered. The Christian...
Histories of Memories in the 19th Century

Histories of Memories in the 19th Century

The past is what happened. History is what we write about it. History and memory are not opposed terms; rather, history and memory shape each other through remembering, forgetting and erasure. Historical narratives are always informed by memories of the past that are...
Art History of the Cinema

Art History of the Cinema

Join Professor Soren for a personal online course showing the relationship of Art History and Cinema and featuring films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur. In addition there will be a special live visit from Rick Polizzi,...
The History of Yoga

The History of Yoga

Yoga is a ubiquitous presence in the landscape of American fitness culture. For many, it is synonymous with selfcare and holistic healthy living. While yoga is often vaguely connected to Asian traditions, its long history as a philosophical and religious system can be...