Jesus, the Bible, and the Invention of Christianity

Jesus, the Bible, and the Invention of Christianity

Please Note: Summer 2020 Course Registration Opens Online on Monday, May 11th at 8AM 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...
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...
Complexity: Ants, Networks, and the Emergence of Organization

Complexity: Ants, Networks, and the Emergence of Organization

The brain of an ant is smaller than a pinhead, yet social insect colonies implement effective organization and flexible problem solving at large scales. But their organization is alien to us: no hierarchy or central control(er) guides individual actions. Similar...
Introduction to Hindu Mythology

Introduction to Hindu Mythology

Images of Hinduism and Hindu deities have been integrated into our collective imagination as part of American popular culture. From the cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Axis: Bold as Love, photos of the Beatles seated alongside Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the goddess on the cover...
Celebrating Tap! An American Art Form

Celebrating Tap! An American Art Form

Since it first appeared in the dance world, tap dancing immediately enchanted the public in North America, becoming a vital part of jazz music culture and broader mainstream musical culture. Its staccato and style are homegrown. Come explore the history and...
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...
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...
Lyric Poetry in English from 1500 to 2000

Lyric Poetry in English from 1500 to 2000

A lyric poem is a relatively short statement in verse, usually in the first person, and deals with emotionally charged subject matter, such as unrequited love, personal loss, celebration, or even philosophical meditation. This seminar will address itself to lyric...
How Ansel Adams Came to Be the Photographer We Know

How Ansel Adams Came to Be the Photographer We Know

One of the most influential photographers of his generation, Ansel Adams is famous for his dramatic photographs of the American West. This course focuses on his early career and largely unknown early work. It will demonstrate how these early photographs are crucial to...
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...
French Connections

French Connections

In this seminar several professors from the College of Humanities address different topics that connect France with other nations. Alain-Philippe Durand will first look at American and Brazilian French literature—how American and Latin American studies developed in...
To Bennu and Back: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission

To Bennu and Back: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission

Dante Lauretta is principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission and a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. His research interests focus on the chemistry and mineralogy of asteroids and comets, and he is an...
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...
Introduction to Mexican American Literature

Introduction to Mexican American Literature

More than half of the 50 million Latinas and Latinos in the US today are of Mexican descent. Yet their culture and literature are relatively unknown. This course surveys their rich literary tradition from the mid-19th century, first tracing its development through the...
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...
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....
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...
The Supreme Court’s Role in a Polarized Society

The Supreme Court’s Role in a Polarized Society

Online Registration Opens: Monday, October 12, 2020 at 8 AM (AZ Time) A Review of the 2019-2020 Term & Preview of the 2020-2021 Term The Supreme Court’s last term dealt with issues of abortion, Second Amendment, sex discrimination, religion, and the weight to be...