Dancin’ Fools–The Art of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Dancin’ Fools–The Art of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly once said that “the history of dance on film begins with Astaire.” One might say that the history of dance on film ends with Kelly. Dancin’ Fools will explore the Broadway and Hollywood careers of these two iconic song and dance men who define the Golden...
Travels in Consciousness

Travels in Consciousness

Travels in Consciousness, taught by Norman Austin, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Classics, will explore the history of consciousness as reflected in a variety of texts. Readings will range widely, from Bronze Age Greece to American authors of the Twentieth...
Homeric Echoes through the Ages

Homeric Echoes through the Ages

Homer’s sublime epics, Iliad and Odyssey, fire the imagination. We’ll explore how these stories develop from an ancient prequel to modern sequels. Homer’s poetic tradition harkens back to the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh: the part-divine conflicted hero who wrestles...
Introduction to African American Literature

Introduction to African American Literature

African American literature has engaged consistently with the relationship between being black and being American. W. E. B. DuBois asked if that was even possible. Many writers and artists believed that control of representations of black Americans through art would...
Understanding Music

Understanding Music

Sorry! This course has sold out. Click here to join the course waitlist Music from Haydn and Mozart to Beethoven and Brahms forms a canon of works held dear by performers and concert-goers alike. While each of these composers has his own distinct style, structurally...
Pueblos and their Ancestors – SECTION 1

Pueblos and their Ancestors – SECTION 1

Sorry! This course has sold out. Click here to join the course waitlist Many of us are familiar with and may have even visited the seemingly mystical places in the Four Corners of the U.S. Southwest on the Colorado Plateau, including Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon...
Excavating the Birthplace of Zeus

Excavating the Birthplace of Zeus

This course was originally scheduled for Spring 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19 Since 2004 the University of Arizona has been excavating at the sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion, known as the “Birthplace of Zeus.” High in the Arcadian mountains of Greece, it has...
Religion, Gods, and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt

Religion, Gods, and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt

This course will survey the fundamentals of ancient Egyptian religion from the Predynastic period (ca. 4000 BC) to the end of the New Kingdom (ca. 1000 BC). Material will be covered both as an overview of how things unfolded over the various periods as well as how...
Chinese Poetry Then and Now

Chinese Poetry Then and Now

It is for good reason that China is often called a land of poetry. As the longest continuous form of creative writing in the country, poetry has been a defining feature in the life of China’s elite, from their participation in the civil service exams to their...
Tackling Putin’s Russia

Tackling Putin’s Russia

This course is now sold out. Click here to join the course wait list. If space opens up we will contact those on the wait list on a first come, first served basis. This course moves beyond the cartoon-character stereotyping of Putin-period Russia to examine important...
Narratives of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Narratives of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Please Note: This course is located in the Dorothy Rubel Room on the Main UA Campus NOT in Oro Valley as was originally advertised. The U.S.-Mexico borderlands have for over 400 years been the subject of numerous Spanish, Mexican, Mexican-American, Native-American,...
How Buddhism Changed World Civilization

How Buddhism Changed World Civilization

Sorry! This course has sold out. Click here to join the course waitlist How did Buddhism change world civilization? This is a puzzling question for many people interested in philosophy, spirituality, and practice. As a major religious tradition, Buddhism deserves our...
Enigmas of the Universe

Enigmas of the Universe

Astronomy has seen tremendous progress in the past century. Large telescopes on the ground and in space now give us views of the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum. Powerful computers can handle exponentially increasing volumes of data, and they allow...
John Milton’s Paradise Lost: The Poem and its Contexts

John Milton’s Paradise Lost: The Poem and its Contexts

This seminar will explore some of the enduring questions Milton addresses in Paradise Lost: Does justice exist? What is the nature of evil? Can we know the truth? What are the limits to authority? Discussion will focus on the language and narrative structure of the...
A Cultural History of German Romanticism

A Cultural History of German Romanticism

Romanticism embraces love and sensuality, but it includes much more. The romantic movement powerfully affected all forms of literature and the arts, and even science. In this seminar we investigate several texts in historical, political, philosophical, literary,...
Theater and Performance in Apartheid South Africa

Theater and Performance in Apartheid South Africa

This course surveys theater and performance produced in apartheid South Africa between 1970 and 1994, an era commonly seen as one of intense cultural struggle and resistance. We will chronologically study the history, development, and aesthetics of South African...
Reading the Russian Classics

Reading the Russian Classics

What makes Russian literature so Russian? This course will take us through two of the best-known Russian classics—Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov—as well as Turgenev’s little-known Sportsman’s Sketches as we uncover the world of...
Evolution of Cognition

Evolution of Cognition

This course is now sold out. Click here to join the course wait list. If space opens up we will contact those on the wait list on a first come, first served basis. Why are humans such a unique species on earth—or are we? We often think our intelligence (or more...
Democracy, A Work in Progress

Democracy, A Work in Progress

This course is now sold out. Click here to join the course wait list. If space opens up we will contact those on the wait list on a first come, first served basis. This course examines Supreme Court decisions and related social movements as historical case studies in...