Fall 2020
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 expert in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials, including asteroid samples, meteorites and comet particles. […]
This course explores why the adage “it is in my DNA” is so true. Our experiences change our very DNA and affect how we react and behave, so that small differences we never noticed make one person at high risk for disease, another not. We will also discuss how forensics now uses DNA to construct […]
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 given to the Court’s prior decisions. The upcoming term will have […]
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, and fight over sacred places. This class introduces students to the study of religion […]
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 the Ocean whose setting (1904) depicts the diaspora after the slaves […]
In life we search for God, spirituality, meaning, or identity. In medieval Italian literature Dante did this best in his Divina Commedia. In medieval German literature Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival did the same. This course examines his monumental Grail romance and probes what Wolfram said about human existence in material and spiritual terms. Studying Parzival […]
This class examines some of the award-winning films of the Spanish filmmaker Iciar Bollaín, who is among those who began their careers in the mid-1990s. Their work appears against the backdrop of the huge shadow cast by two important and very different sets of circumstances: the rise to international superstardom of Pedro Almodóvar and the […]
We will step back from the relentless polls and punditry to reflect on the historic challenges of the upcoming elections. Our politics have gone viral as we have entered a postfactual era in which liberal democracy has been reduced to a partisan punchline. We will examine the history of presidential politics to reflect on the […]
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. Though there is a rich tradition of writings in German by Jewish authors leading […]
Since the end of the Cold War the US has been widely viewed as an imperial power–one having a truly global level of influence with no peer. Instead of colonies the US has hundreds of military bases throughout the world. The “imperial” characterization is now accepted by both supporters and critics of official policy. This […]
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 often on personal devices much smaller and far more mobile […]
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 1950s. Focus then shifts to the resurgence of Mexican American literature that […]