Ted and Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award
— Award-Winning HSP Course —
Each year, Humanities Seminars Program students select a small group of professors whose teaching rises to the highest level of excellence. Chosen entirely through student evaluations, the Ted and Shirley Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award recognizes faculty who combine deep scholarly expertise with the rare ability to ignite curiosity and sustain lively intellectual discovery in the classroom.
This summer, we are pleased to make our 2024 award-winning seminars available again as recorded courses. These classes capture the energy, insight, and conversation that made them standouts among HSP’s many seminars. If you missed the opportunity to take the course live, this re-release offers a chance to explore an exceptional seminar led by one of the University of Arizona’s most inspiring teachers. For those who have never experienced an HSP course, it is also a perfect way to test the waters. Enrollment provides online access to the complete course experience, including video recordings of each session, the original syllabus, and course readings. The seminar remains exactly as students encountered it during its original presentation—an invitation to join a community of curious learners and follow the ideas wherever they lead.
Course Description
The monumental symphonies of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), which have captivated and challenged musicians and audiences for more than a hundred years, stand as landmark works of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In each of the unique works, Mahler drew heavily on the established Romantic musical tradition but also expanded the landscape of the symphony as a musical genre in unprecedented ways. Primarily through lectures and listening to recordings of excerpts, we will explore all ten of Mahler’s completed symphonies (including Das Lied von der Erde) to consider their compositional circumstances, inner musical workings, broader meanings, and reception. In doing so, we will investigate the inspirations behind these unique works, which include Mahler’s own experiences and other works by Mahler himself and his colleagues and predecessors. We will also discover how each of these symphonies shaped the works of later 20th-century composers, flourished (and at times floundered) in the concert hall, and permeated popular culture.
Summer Registration Opens
Monday, March 30, 2026 at 8 AM (AZ Time)
