Spring 2013
Beginning with the German cinema of the 1920s and ending with contemporary films, this course provides a historical overview of influential German movies, major periods, and key filmmakers. In the 1920s German cinema was one of Hollywood’s fiercest competitors, and the Ufa, Germany’s premier film studio, produced a body of innovative films that would become […]
In 2013 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Perhaps no other composer so changed the course of music history through the way he reconceived the nature of opera and the way he stretched the boundaries of tonality. Many composers who followed found themselves swept up in these new approaches […]
The Renaissance begins in Italy and is an invention of the Florentines. This seminar is an examination of the art, architecture, sculpture, literature, and history of the republic of Florence during its period of greatest importance to world history. From the mid-14th to the late 15th century, Florence was the center of a cultural movement […]
This course will cover the rich and seminal history and literature of fifth-century Greece; the most creative and productive period in all human history. Our course will particularly focus on Athens, the world’s first democracy, from which most of the liberal arts trace their origins. These amazing developments began with the Battle of Marathon in […]
Poetry is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos. –I. A. Richards Words for music perhaps. –W. B. Yeats Very likely the earliest form of literary expression, the lyric poem is a relatively short statement in verse, usually in the first person, and deals with emotionally charged subject matter, […]
Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! will explore the creation of the American musical theater and trace the influence of minstrelsy, vaudeville, burlesque, revue, and operetta in the evolution of this unique American form of lyric theater. From Stephen Foster to Stephen Sondheim, the course will chart the development of America’s great, original gift to the world: […]