Course Archive
Spring 2016
Spring 2016
Leslie P. Tolbert
TUESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 26 to Feb 23
The human brain, guiding our every thought and action, is as complex as anything we know. Its almost unimaginable complexity arises from minute interconnections between tens of billions of nerve cells. If we could map every connection among the cells, we still would have only a rough foundation for understanding brain function, because those connections are changing every moment of our lives. They are recording our experiences, our emotions, our plans for the future, and they are constantly repairing disruption and injury. Evidence is mounting that intellectual challenge, social engagement,...
Spring 2016
Richard Cosgrove
MONDAYS
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Jan 25 to Apr 4
Why study the Tudors? This dynasty has a special place in English history because it presided over the transition from medieval to modern (or so most historians, but not all, argue). In addition, the major figures, especially Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, have long fascinated historians and the general public. This period also contained the Reformation in England that separated the English church from the papacy in Rome.
The Tudors have transcended the sphere of history, for they are now the rock stars of contemporary media. In movies, novels, and television series the Tudors live on, achieving...
Fall 2015
Fall 2015
Fabian Alfie
THURSDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Nov 5 to Dec 3
Dante’s Purgatorio, as is well known, is not a standalone text; it is simply the second part of The Divine Comedy. In this course we will deal with Dante’s views on redemption and salvation as represented in his Purgatorio. Our focus will be the nature of sin: How it is that appetites which keep the body and species alive are evil (i.e., lust and gluttony). And how human beings can transcend their fallen nature (with divine assistance). We will cover the numerous historical personages and references in the work, as well as the theology implicit in it. Dante’s Purgatorio changes the tone of...
Fall 2015
Jay Rosenblatt
MONDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Nov 2 to Nov 30
Few composers have been as prolific in so many genres as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In this course we will survey a portion of this vast output from the unique perspective of specialists in the field, all professors at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music. The first session will be led by Jay Rosenblatt and will offer an overview of Mozart’s life, covering such topics as his years as a child prodigy, his difficulties with the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, and his final decade in Vienna. He will also introduce the class to the stylistic characteristics of Mozart’s music. For the...
Fall 2015
Paul Ivey
FRIDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Oct 30 to Dec 4
This five-week course examines concepts that have become increasingly relevant to contemporary artists working in a variety of media over the past 50 years. It concentrates on more recent art, understood against the backdrop of modern art movements. In this class we will look at some of the broader theories, practices, and institutions that have emerged in the contemporary art world. Subjects include aura, the digital, photography, monumental and unmonumental sculpture, new image painting, time, science, the environment, personal and cultural identity, religion and spirituality,...
Fall 2015
Steven D. Martinson
MONDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Oct 5 to Dec 14
Faust is alive and well. His emanations appear in literature, art, music, film, and cyberspace. Not only Adam and Eve but also Faust ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So he has excited the human imagination for centuries. But who was this mysterious alchemist or learned academician who dared transgress the borders of accepted knowledge and revel in the world of darkness that the Church condemned and warned against?
We will look for him on the Internet, in Marlowe’s Tragical History of Dr. Johann Faust, and in Gounod’s Faust opera, Liszt’s “Faust” symphony, and...
Fall 2015
Norman Austin
THURSDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Oct 1 to Dec 10
What was the relationship of ancient Greek culture to early Christianity? This seminar will open with two topics of significance in the early development of Christianity: the image (or icon) and the Jesus story itself. The course will also include lectures on the tragic paradigm in Greek poetry (Homer and Sophocles) and a discussion of the soul in Plato's Phaedo. Then we trace the Hellenization of the ancient Mediterranean, beginning with the conquests of Alexander the Great and their influence on the diffusion of Hellenic philosophy and culture. We will also discuss the Logos in the Gospel...
Fall 2015
Meg Lota Brown
WEDNESDAYS
600 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sep 30 to Oct 28
Many of Shakespeare’s most powerful, intelligent, and subversive characters are female. How were such vividly complex roles constructed in a culture that legally defined women as property on the grounds of their intellectual and moral inferiority? Given the early modern imperatives of feminine silence, chastity, and obedience, how is it that women impel Shakespeare’s plots, orchestrate conflicts, and—in many instances— impose “resolutions”?
This course will address the social and historical contexts of Shakespeare's women and how the playwright both generates and subverts his culture’s...
Fall 2015
Laura C. Berry
WEDNESDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Sep 30 to Dec 16
How can we best know the past, and how much can we really know of it?
This interdisciplinary course will seek answers to these questions in relation to mid-Victorian England. We will read primary material published around 1859, providing a “snapshot” of a particularly important moment in the middle of one of the world’s most interesting centuries. The readings will include two novels and diverse original texts drawn from political, economic, scientific, social, and popular writing. Expect authors as well-known as Karl Marx and as new to modern readers as Isabella Beeton, whose book on...
Fall 2015
Susan A. Crane
TUESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Sep 29 to Dec 15
This course addresses the twentieth-century genocide that was the Holocaust, the attempted annihilation of European Jews and other designated racial and political opponents led by the Third Reich in Germany. We will review the horrific events of the Holocaust and explore the current scholarly understanding of this history: What does it mean to remember the Holocaust today?
The Holocaust continues to be relevant, and not only for surviving victims and perpetrators. We will consider how and why the Holocaust has been remembered in the United States and abroad, whether in museums and schools or...
Summer 2015
Summer 2015
Melissa Tatum
FRIDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Aug 7 to Aug 28
In the 1800s the newly created United States of America was seized by what was labeled “Manifest Destiny”--a deep-seated drive to expand from coast to coast. This drive encountered several obstacles, ranging from the challenges presented by geography and travel to the fact that large segments of land were already claimed by America’s indigenous people. The impulse toward a unified continent was also derailed by the Civil War and the division between the states. The military played a significant role in conquering the West and, obviously, in the Civil War. This course will explore how the...
Summer 2015
Peter Medine
MONDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Aug 3 to Aug 31
This seminar begins by putting Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist into their social and literary contexts. We will then spend two meetings on each work. Though in different genres—the short story and the education novel—they are companion pieces in significant ways. Dubliners illustrates the oppression of Irish Catholics by British Protestants and by Irish Catholics themselves through the strictures of the institutionalized Church. A Portrait tells the tale of an individual who refuses to submit to either authority, and who seeks artistic freedom to write. The seminar will explore these...
Summer 2015
David Soren
WEDNESDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jul 8 to Jul 29
Join anthropologist and classical archaeologist David Soren for an overview of ancient Rome. Moving from the Early Iron Age to the so-called fall of the Roman Empire, the course will also look at the mysterious people known as the Etruscans. It will delve into Republican Rome’s development into an international powerhouse, drawing cultural inspiration from the ancient Greeks. The rise of Imperial Rome features propaganda-master Octavian, conqueror of Antony and Cleopatra, and heir to Julius Caesar. Finally, the class looks at the latest evidence about the “end” of Rome, highlighting Dr. Soren...
Summer 2015
Laura C. Berry
TUESDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jun 2 to Jun 23
Virginia Woolf famously said that Middlemarch is “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” It is also frequently said to be the best nineteenth-century novel written in English and the most perfect example of classic British realism. Its capacious scope, depth of compassion, and careful attention to the details of human experience transcend its Victorian origins; it continues to attract ardent devotees almost 150 years after its publication. In this course we will examine the language of Middlemarch and nuances of form, plot, and character. We will explore George Eliot’s...
Summer 2015
Herbert Schneidau
MONDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jun 1 to Jun 29
What's really in the Bible? As opposed to what we've been told by well-meaning but often not well-informed parents, clergy, and others? This course provides an innovative look at many instructive and amusing aspects of this most consequential book in Western culture. It examines clichés and received wisdom about the text, with a view to replacing widely accepted readings with students’ own more informed and insightful revisionings of the book. Not your average Bible reading class, this course aims to explore many controversial and contested passages, and to explode preconceived and ill-...
Summer 2015
Eleni Hasaki
FRIDAYS
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
May 1 to May 22
What were the key technologies and major technical achievements of classical Greek antiquity? This course examines crucial technological wonders from ancient Greece, focusing on: temple construction (the Parthenon), the mastery of fire for bronzes (the Delphi Charioteer) and ceramics (the Euphronios Vase), and the transformation of marble into sculptures (the Aphrodite of Melos). We will look at the qualities of the raw materials used, the technological know-how of ancient craftspeople, the scientific principles of their work, the interconnection of various crafts, as well as the social,...
Spring 2015
Spring 2015
Richard Poss
FRIDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 30 to Apr 10
Can a movie probe more deeply into theology than other works? Can it show the strengths and weaknesses of religious thought more directly, more dramatically? This seminar probes theology and film, examining movies with strong Christian themes. We will use film criticism and literary and art theories to look at and interpret movies that address the spiritual dimensions of life. The class will study classic directors like Buñuel, Pasolini, and Zeffirelli, tease out new meaning from familiar texts such as A Man for All Seasons and The Matrix, and make brief forays into many less familiar works...
Spring 2015
Brian Silverstein
THURSDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 29 to Apr 9
Is Turkey in Europe or the Middle East? Is this a question of geography, history, politics, or culture? This course explores all those sides of Turkey since the late 19th-century empire, focusing on the republican era after 1923. Turkey is one of the world’s most populous Muslim countries, a parliamentary democracy, a NATO member, and a candidate to join the European Union. The country is also not a postcolony--the Republic of Turkey emerged directly from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The seminars will be presented by Dr. Silverstein, as well as other UA experts on Turkey. Each week...
Spring 2015
Anna Dornhaus
WEDNESDAYS
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Jan 28 to Apr 8
What is intelligence? What differentiates humans from other animals? This course explores the evolution of cognition in humans and other species, and discusses how science investigates these questions. Why are humans such a unique species on earth--or are we? Why we are so good at solving some problems and yet fail so often at solving others? Research in evolutionary biology has a lot of answers to questions about why animals behave the way they do, and we will examine how this applies to our own lives. We will also touch on the underlying neurobiology, for example, on why is it that insects...
Spring 2015
Charles Tatum
WEDNESDAYS
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Jan 28 to Apr 8
The short story has held a prominent place in Latin American literature for at least 200 years, but it is only within the past few decades that it has become widely known in translation. The course will use the short story as a vehicle to introduce some of Latin America’s best-known writers, including Nobel Laureates Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), and Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), as well as Jorge.Luis Borges (Argentina) and Isabel Allende (Chile and the U.S.). The course will draw on their short stories and those of a few younger writers, including...