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...
The Evolutionary History of Plants

The Evolutionary History of Plants

Plants represent an important and extraordinarily diverse group of organisms. Photosynthesis in plants and algae contributes the energy supporting life in nearly all of the Earth’s ecosystems. Oxygen, produced by photosynthesis, has also radically changed the...
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...
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...
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...
Sacred Places

Sacred Places

Religion is often viewed as among the most intangible aspects of culture. Yet, from cathedrals to pyramids, some of the largest and longest-lasting monuments of past societies are religious. Today people throughout the world continue to worship in, make pilgrimages...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Two Novels, Two Cities, Two Centuries: Dickens and McCann

Two Novels, Two Cities, Two Centuries: Dickens and McCann

When Charles Dickens published Bleak House in the early 1850’s, London was the world’s wealthiest and most powerful city. It was also among the most crowded, polluted, and poverty-stricken places on the planet, where rich and poor lived separate but intertwined lives...
Supreme Court Cases During A Pandemic

Supreme Court Cases During A Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to many legal and sociopolitical debates. This course will review the US Supreme Court’s role in those debates. The course will start off with a review of the Court’s 2020-2021 term. We will then explore in greater detail...
Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was both a beloved and rejected painter of the Baroque era. His paintings, which often included realistic figures, theatrical lighting, and dark, obscure settings activated a deep sense of spiritual contemplation for many....
A Symposium on the Spirit World

A Symposium on the Spirit World

“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life,” quipped George Bernard Shaw. To be sure there is truth in this observation, but it’s hardly the whole story. For millennia, human beings have been fermenting and distilling spirits and putting...
Journeys to Geriatrica: Keeping our Minds Active as We Age

Journeys to Geriatrica: Keeping our Minds Active as We Age

How come a retired pediatrician, as far from a geriatrician as you can get, wrote a book on aging? This retired pediatrician became a nonagenarian! What does this book cover? It is a travel guide to the land of Geriatrica where us aging folks live with maps drawn by...