Course Archive
Fall 2017
Fall 2017
Scott Lucas
THURSDAYS
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m
Sep 28 to Dec 7
This course explores Islam and Muslim societies in the contemporary period. It begins by focusing on the fundamentals of Islam, such as the life of Muhammad, the Qur’an, law, and theology. The topics we will discuss include opportunities for Muslims in the United States, Islamic spirituality (including Sufism), and successful Muslim-majority countries, such as Indonesia. The primary challenges we will address include political authoritarianism, sectarianism, and religious extremism. The objective of this seminar is to provide accurate information about the religion of Islam and to demystify...
Fall 2017
David Gibbs
FRIDAYS
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Sep 15 to Dec 15
U.S. intervention in underdeveloped countries raises many basic issues of international relations and foreign policy. The main purpose of this class is to provide students with an ability to examine such issues critically and in a historical context. Among the general areas we will look at are: the historical background that led to the emergence of the USA as a major power, beginning at the end of the 1940s; the role of covert operations during the Cold War; the Vietnam War and its long-term effects; the end of the Cold War; and the War on Terror. The course lectures will emphasize the...
Summer 2017
Summer 2017
Susan A. Crane
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Aug 1 to Aug 31
This course examines modern histories of collective memories through the institutions and technologies that facilitate recall, such as museums, photography, and visual culture. We will consider moments of tension when history and memory appear to be at odds, when competing interests in the meanings of the past have created social conflict, or when silences about the past are broken. Case studies may include: the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian in 1995; appeals for apologies for past atrocities, such as slavery, human trafficking, or genocide; or lynching photographs in the “Without...
Summer 2017
David Soren
THURSDAYS
9:00 am to 11:00 am
Jul 6 to Jul 27
The University of Arizona has one of America's greatest holdings in the field of vaudeville. Special Collections Guest Curator David Soren presents some of the best stars and specialty acts you've never heard of along with fascinating and little-known information about some of the biggest stars. Featured are vaudeville's most versatile performer Joe Cook, whose sidekick, pantomime comic Dave Chasen, founded Chasen's Restaurant (open 1936-1995) in West Hollywood. Learn about the dark side of Al Jolson, and witness one of his performances that was banned for many years on American television....
Summer 2017
Norman Austin
FRIDAYS
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Jun 30 to Jul 28
Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, did more to establish the idea of Rome (and hence of the Roman Empire) than any other ancient poet. As a young man he began his poetic career writing pastoral poems, which are called Eclogues. This seminar will study the political pressures in the final days of the Roman Republic that led Virgil to invent a new genre of poetry. He borrowed the idea of the pastoral from the Hellenistic Greek poets, but made a new genre of poetry uniquely his own. Concentrating on a selection from Virgil’s Eclogues, this seminar will trace both the influence of the Greek...
Summer 2017
Steve Smith
TUESDAYS
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Jun 6 to Jun 27
Environments commonly known as “deserts” occupy nearly one-third of the earth’s land surface and are home to about a billion people. We will first discuss the geographical features of deserts, answering seemingly simple questions: What is a desert, and why do they occur where they do? Humans are particularly maladapted to life in deserts, but many organisms exhibit remarkable adaptations to aridity. We will investigate examples of these within plants from different deserts. Here the key questions will be: How do these plants grow and develop in these environments? Deserts are also associated...
Summer 2017
Tannis Gibson
THURSDAYS
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Jun 1 to Jun 29
What inspired Romantic composers of the 19th century to create the significant piano works that continue to speak profoundly to today’s audiences? Throughout the Romantic era the piano and the pianist-composers who wrote for it assumed an increasingly important role in European society. These pianist-composers and virtuosi fully explored the inner depths of their imaginations, and it is perhaps in the solo piano repertoire most of all that we as listeners become privy to their most passionate and idiosyncratic work. In this course we focus on the piano works of Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic...
Summer 2017
Melissa Tatum
THURSDAYS
9:00 am to 12:00 pm
May 5 to May 25
The United States was founded on broad principles of individual freedom – declarations of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were central to the American Revolution and the subsequent foundations of the new country. Looking back, we know that those rights were meant at the time for white land-owning men, and it was only after two centuries of discrimination that formal actions were taken to eliminate institutional racism and gender discrimination from U.S. law.
This dismantling of institutional racism did not, however, encompass all Americans. Today, American Indians...
Summer 2017
Laura C. Berry
WEDNESDAYS
9:00 am to 12:00 pm
May 3 to May 31
The Bronte family – their extraordinary literary output, as well as their fascinating lives – have become something like a cottage industry, inspiring imitators, adaptations, a tourist attraction, tea towels, dance, music, and even the names of three asteroids. What accounts for this popularity? Is it the novels themselves? Or is it what is sometimes seen as the sensational aspects of their lives? In this course we will look at the novels, reading them as classic works of literature, understanding them as separate artifacts, but also examining their interrelations. At the same time, we will...
Spring 2017
Spring 2017
Alvaro Malo
WEDNESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Feb 22 to Mar 29
This seminar aims to elicit students’ participation in a free-spirited conversation and regain a sense of wonder and intimacy with architecture. The discussion topics will be based on five readings, which are accessible, practical, and poetic. They will offer a generous survey of philosophical and architectural thinking from classical to modern, examining the motives and reasons for the making of architecture and the concurrent material consciousness.
The five sessions address Mortimer Adler’s Aristotle for Everybody, which examines man the maker; Paul Valéry’s essay “Eupalinos, or The...
Spring 2017
Brian Silverstein
FRIDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 27 to Apr 7
Turkey, one of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority countries, is a member of NATO and has tried to enter the European Union for over ten years. Since 2002 the country has undergone rapid and profound changes under the rule of the Justice and Development Party and its leader Tayyip Erdogan. These changes include a growth-oriented economy, massive infrastructural investment, softening of the country’s secularist ideology, a transformed foreign policy oriented toward economic and political engagement, and in recent years controversial steps often described as “authoritarian” by observers...
Spring 2017
Susan Karant-Nunn
THURSDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 26 to Apr 6
This course surveys the Reformation. Beginning with Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, we discuss why Martin Luther broke with the late-medieval Roman Catholic Church, and explore traditional and novel theologies and ecclesiastical practices. We touch on other actors and movements like the Swiss Reformation (Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin) and the English Anglican/Puritan reforms. In addition, we look at smaller nonconformist ways of thinking like the Anabaptists and their martyrdom at the hands of Protestants and Catholics alike. Finally, we see how Catholicism underwent similar...
Spring 2017
Peter Medine
THURSDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Jan 26 to Apr 6
This seminar will concentrate on eight of Shakespeare's comedies, among them Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. The approach will assume that comedy is a genre distinguished not by light-hearted humor or triviality but by structure of plot. The action moves from conflict and separation to resolution and union, and the plays typically end in betrothal or marriage. But whatever its romance, Shakespeare's comedy is serious and psychologically realistic. The plays explore the hazards of human relationships and the perils of commitment. Ultimately it is the...
Spring 2017
Bruce Chamberlain
WEDNESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 25 to Feb 15
This course explores the background and the groundbreaking stylistic features of Stravinsky’s most famous works: Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces. Considered the epitome of early 20th-century composition, these works defined musical syntax for generations of composers. Les Noces, the least known of these works, is a ballet cantata, calling for four pianos, 11 percussionists, four singing soloists, mixed choir, and corps de ballet. Rarely performed due to its difficulty and complexity, it will not only be a major focus of our course, but the UA School of Dance and Fred...
Spring 2017
Mary Beth Haralovich
WEDNESDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Jan 25 to Apr 5
Set decorators call it the art of silent storytelling--how art direction and production design (everything on screen) establish and convey character and story. We examine this “narrative space” through three topics. “Life Stories” that range from personal to epic: class relations in WWI prisoner of war camps (Jean Renoir, La Grande Illusion); a father-daughter relationship in 1960s Japan (Yasuhiro Ozu, An Autumn Afternoon); and ethnicity in Paris suburbs (Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine). “Meditations on Landscape” explores the Australian outback (Warwick Thornton, Samson and Delilah); French...
Spring 2017
Bella Vivante
TUESDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Jan 24 to Apr 7
In this course we’ll explore Homer’s brilliant storytelling in The Odyssey: his tales of Odysseus’s struggles to return home after the Trojan War. While the poem highlights the hero’s fantastic adventures, the underlying meanings reflect profound social concerns: female and male identities, and their respective realms and relationships; revisiting The Iliad’s military-centered notions of heroism from social-oriented perspectives; the roles of gods; storytelling traditions, and more. The class looks at how these diverse tales interweave to create Odysseus’s story, his journey, and the...
Spring 2017
Thomas Kovach
MONDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 23 to Apr 3
This course explores works from the postwar era by Jewish and German authors--both writings and films--from East and West Germany and Austria. In these works we will see differences among the three successor states to the Nazis, including the ways people dealt with guilt for Nazi crimes, but also with feeling victimized by the bombing of German cities and the division of Germany after the war. The Jewish texts stem mainly from the post-Unification era, when many Jewish writers reflected on how their parents felt shame about deciding to remain in or return to the land that had carried out the...
Fall 2016
Fall 2016
Fabian Alfie
WEDNESDAYS
1:00 p.m.. to 4:00 p.m.
Oct 26 to Nov 16
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 transcendence. Not only does a blessed soul understand the transcendent universe, but that person also transcends her or his fallen human nature. Using a facing-page translation, in this seminar we will cover the numerous historical personages and references in the work, and discuss its cosmological and theological basis. Dante’s Paradiso is the culmination of the Comedy, illustrating the perfect nature of the universe, as...
Fall 2016
Jay Rosenblatt
MONDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Oct 24 to Nov 14
This course continues to survey Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s vast musical output from the unique perspective of specialists in the field, all professors at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music. Jay Rosenblatt leads the first session with an overview of Mozart’s life, focusing particularly on the music for, and inspired by, his association with the Freemasons. In another session Dr. Rosenblatt will continue last year’s discussion of Mozart’s operas. Subsequent sessions will be led by Brian Luce, Professor of Flute, who will consider Mozart’s varied output of chamber music, including...
Fall 2016
Roger Nichols
TUESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Oct 18 to Nov 15
This course traces the often-changing experiences American Indians had from just before the War for Independence to the twentieth century. It will focus on how they dealt with the expanding nation and its pioneer citizens. Their tactics varied from contact, cooperation, and competition to conflict with the newcomers. Major differences in how the two races saw their lands and resources explain the violence that resulted. The U.S. lacked any consistent policy for its treatment of the tribes; and even when its goals seemed humane, their implementation could be disastrous. When military...