Summer 2021
Hemingway is one of the great American writers of the Twentieth Century, famous for his innovative prose style as well as his insights into the human condition. A problem arises in any study of Hemingway because the popular myths surrounding him too often obscure the importance of his writing. Hemingway the big game hunter, Hemingway […]
THIS COURSE WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED IN THE SPRING BUT WAS POSTPONED TO SUMMER 2021 In 399 BCE Socrates was tried in Athens, the first trial in Western history to indict, convict, and condemn to death someone for impiety. In Plato’s Apology Socrates says that the indictment was based on two charges: first, that he was […]
Did you know that the Olympic rings logo—designed by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin—includes at least one color from every national flag in the world? Or that three countries—Sweden, Austria, and Japan—have all selected athletes in their 70s to represent them in past Olympic games? Or that this year’s Olympic medals have been manufactured from more […]
“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life,” quipped George Bernard Shaw. To be sure there is truth in this observation, but it’s hardly the whole story. For millennia, human beings have been fermenting and distilling spirits and putting them to the widest possible range of uses, from topical antiseptics and […]
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was both a beloved and rejected painter of the Baroque era. His paintings, which often included realistic figures, theatrical lighting, and dark, obscure settings activated a deep sense of spiritual contemplation for many. Yet he was also critiqued for depicting shocking subjects and eschewing traditional painting standards. Much has been […]
Please Note: This course is one of two parts, however, neither part requires the other as a prerequisite. Students may enroll in both courses or select just one without missing materials needed to enjoy the course’s content. This course explores world renowned drama of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by recipients of […]
How come a retired pediatrician, as far from a geriatrician as you can get, wrote a book on aging? This retired pediatrician became a nonagenarian! What does this book cover? It is a travel guide to the land of Geriatrica where us aging folks live with maps drawn by the esteemed cartoonist Davis Fitzsimmons. There […]
When Charles Dickens published Bleak House in the early 1850’s, London was the world’s wealthiest and most powerful city. It was also among the most crowded, polluted, and poverty-stricken places on the planet, where rich and poor lived separate but intertwined lives very much next to one another. Bleak House, with its themes of disease, […]
Please Note: This course is one of two parts, however, neither part requires the other as a prerequisite. Students may enroll in both courses or select just one without missing materials needed to enjoy the course’s content. This course explores world renowned drama of the early and mid-twentieth century by recipients of the Nobel […]
Plants represent an important and extraordinarily diverse group of organisms. Photosynthesis in plants and algae contributes the energy supporting life in nearly all of the Earth’s ecosystems. Oxygen, produced by photosynthesis, has also radically changed the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and all life dependent on it. We are most familiar with flowering plants, which […]
The Christian religion is inextricably bound up with contemporary culture not only in America but also around the globe. Yet, even after centuries of scholarly inquiry, numerous questions regarding its historical origins remain contested and unanswered. The Christian movement developed into a religion about Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. From a historical […]