Spring 2021
Saints and cult sites were central to religious practice in the Christian Middle Ages. This course examines four sites (Qalʿat Simʿān, Constantinople, Conques, and Chartres) to find evolving concepts of sanctity and forms of cultic practice in medieval sociopolitical context. When did new kinds of saints emerge? How did holy people interact with others in […]
This course was originally scheduled for Spring 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19 Have you ever watched in wonder at our gorgeous earth, sea, and sky interacting to provide us with the air we breathe, water we drink, and food we eat? Come hear UA professors of geosciences, hydrology, and atmospheric sciences discuss how […]
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 France (Bastide, Camus, de Beauvoir, Lévi-Strauss, and others). Next, Carine Bourget will lecture on Islam and immigration in […]
This course was originally scheduled for Spring 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19 Since 2004 the University of Arizona has been excavating at the sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion, known as the “Birthplace of Zeus.” High in the Arcadian mountains of Greece, it has yielded remarkable discoveries over the last 15 years. Human […]
This course was originally scheduled for Spring 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19 Many of us are familiar with and may have even visited the seemingly mystical places in the Four Corners of the U.S. Southwest on the Colorado Plateau, including Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and many more. These were the […]
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 sixteen works are spread evenly throughout his early, middle, […]
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 significance of the American art form of tap dance. Tap has evolved through the […]
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 of the first issue of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine, or even Ganesha […]
A lyric poem is a relatively short statement in verse, usually in the first person, and deals with emotionally charged subject matter, such as unrequited love, personal loss, celebration, or even philosophical meditation. This seminar will address itself to lyric poems in English from Shakespeare to Yeats, among others. Each seminar meeting will analyze a […]
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 understanding his artistic development and offer new insights into many aspects of […]
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 self-organized structures abound in biology, whether in nerve cells forming brains, cellular machinery, or ecosystems. […]