Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Bawdy Medieval Literature

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Bawdy Medieval Literature

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1348-1351) is a masterpiece of world literature. Boccaccio is one of the Three Crowns, the three founding authors of Italian literature (along with Dante and Petrarch). Yet his Decameron is a conundrum. Composed in the wake of the...
1968

1968

This seminar will examine the social movements that came to the fore in the year that began with the Tet Offensive and ended with the launch around the moon. The first three classes will examine the antiwar, civil rights, and women’s movements using images and texts...
Sense of Wonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Sense of Wonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Science fiction is a modern art form closely tied to advances in science and technology. It generates an imaginary space where a new development in science can be imaginatively tested for its possible effects on humanity. Some scenarios are cautionary, while others...
Between World Wars: Germany’s Roaring Twenties

Between World Wars: Germany’s Roaring Twenties

Professor Kosta repeats her popular course from 2015 with a few variations: Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933) rose out of the ashes of World War I to become both an immensely creative and fraught period of the twentieth century. The exciting capital Berlin, a...
Immigration and the U.S. – Mexico Border

Immigration and the U.S. – Mexico Border

Since the formation of the current U.S.-Mexico border resulting from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase, immigration (both legal and unauthorized) across this border has been a hotly debated political issue. That debate continues today as seen in...
The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance

In the 1920s and 1930s the soulful rhythms of blues and jazz signaled an explosion of African American creativity. During this period, known as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, musicians, dancers, visual artists, writers, and scholars sought...
Masterpieces of French Realist Fiction

Masterpieces of French Realist Fiction

This seminar examines the relations between culture and power in nineteenth-century France through the study of masterpieces of realist fiction. The realist novel is a cultural artefact specific to the nineteenth century, a genre born with the modern democratic...
Has the United States Become an Empire?

Has the United States Become an Empire?

U.S. intervention in underdeveloped countries raises many basic issues of international relations and foreign policy. The main purpose of this class is to provide students with an ability to examine such issues critically and in a historical context. Among the general...
Islam in the 21st Century: Resources and Challenges

Islam in the 21st Century: Resources and Challenges

This course explores Islam and Muslim societies in the contemporary period. It begins by focusing on the fundamentals of Islam, such as the life of Muhammad, the Qur’an, law, and theology. The topics we will discuss include opportunities for Muslims in the United...
Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology

Biology has well-supported insights into how animals make decisions and why they behave the way they do, in contexts from foraging to cooperation. This knowledge is grounded in theory as well as empirical evidence. Generally these insights also apply to humans: humans...
The Romantic Poets: Revolution and Retrospection

The Romantic Poets: Revolution and Retrospection

This seminar focuses on the six poets (one recently rediscovered) who most defined English Romanticism in poetry and verse drama between 1798 and 1824. It emphasizes their philosophical, emotional, and stylistic tugs-of-war, despite their quite different politics:...
Beethoven

Beethoven

This course surveys the music of Ludwig van Beethoven from the perspectives of different professors at the Fred Fox School of Music. Jay Rosenblatt begins with an overview of Beethoven’s life: his youth in Bonn, the reasons for his move to Vienna, and the outline of...
Great Romantic Composer-Pianists of the 19th Century

Great Romantic Composer-Pianists of the 19th Century

What inspired Romantic composers of the 19th century to create the significant piano works that continue to speak profoundly to today’s audiences? Throughout the Romantic era the piano and the pianist-composers who wrote for it assumed an increasingly important role...
Deserts, Plants, and People

Deserts, Plants, and People

Environments commonly known as “deserts” occupy nearly one-third of the earth’s land surface and are home to about a billion people. We will first discuss the geographical features of deserts, answering seemingly simple questions: What is a desert, and why do they...
Histories of Memories

Histories of Memories

This course examines modern histories of collective memories through the institutions and technologies that facilitate recall, such as museums, photography, and visual culture. We will consider moments of tension when history and memory appear to be at odds, when...
Art and the Classical Ideal

Art and the Classical Ideal

Experience the classical world and its enduring legacy on a tour led by archaeologist and art historian Dr. David Soren. Beginning with the amazing structures of ancient Greece and Rome, the course surveys the continuing influence of the classical ideal from antiquity...
1968 (2nd section)

1968 (2nd section)

This seminar will examine the social movements that came to the fore in the year that began with the Tet Offensive and ended with the launch around the moon. The first three classes will examine the antiwar, civil rights, and women’s movements using images and texts...
Deserts, Plants, and People

Deserts, Plants, and People

Professor Smith brings his popular June 2017 course to Oro Valley! Environments commonly known as “deserts” occupy nearly one-third of the earth’s land surface and are home to about a billion people. We will first discuss the geographical features of deserts,...
Resistance and Revolution

Resistance and Revolution

This course brings together six distinguished scholars from the College of Humanities to explore movements of social resistance and revolution. Malcolm Alan Compitello, Professor and Head of Spanish and Portuguese, examines the Spanish Civil War as a crucial moment...