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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Writing in the World Stalin Built

Writing in the World Stalin Built

Attend In Person OR Online! See Below for full details about our new Hybrid courses There are people and epochs in history that are never entirely put to rest, chief among them the figure of Stalin. Among many Russians today there remains a nostalgic longing for the...
Ancient Greek Mythology

Ancient Greek Mythology

Attend In Person OR Online! See Below for full details about our new Hybrid courses Ever fascinating, ancient Greek mythology still inspires multimedia creative expressions. We will see why as we thematically explore a diverse array of delightful ancient tales. First,...
Contemporary Moral Problems

Contemporary Moral Problems

Attend In Person OR Online! See Below for full details about our new Hybrid courses This course is devoted to applying a range of competing moral theories to contemporary moral problems like euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, world famine, the moral basis for...
The Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Human Experience

The Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Human Experience

Every day we are confronted with paranormal and supernatural beliefs – loosely defined as things that exist or occur outside the natural world – and surveys show that most people in the United States and throughout the world are supernatural/paranormal...
Latin America Through Film

Latin America Through Film

This course provides a historical overview of Latin America through films. Special attention is paid to the different conceptualizations of the political, social and artistic purposes of film. This course takes a cultural studies approach to film; that is, it involves...