When classicist Michael Ventris deciphered the Linear B script in 1952, he shed light on our understanding of the politics, economy, society, and religion of the world of Late Bronze Age Greece, sometimes referred to as "Mycenaean." Classicist and archaeologist Dimitri Nakassis examines what this writing system and a second still-undeciphered “Minoan” script, Linear A, can tell us about life in the Aegean during the second millennium B.C.E.
Bletchley Park was Britain’s nexus of top-secret work during World War II, where under the cloak of secrecy, agents worked furiously around the clock to decode Germany’s secret messages, notably those encrypted with the Enigma machine. Alan Turing, Joan Clarke, and Dilly Knox were among the recruits. Sir Dermot Turing, Turing's nephew and author of The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, shares the story of this unusual group of people whose mission was to save the world from destruction.
Historian Clay Jenkinson has chosen 10 magnificent images to explore how great photographs epitomize a moment or an era, capture an extraordinary event, provide a window into the human condition, or make us ache with appreciation and wonder. Jenkinson tells the backstory of each photograph, covering who took it, when, under what circumstances, what has happened in the aftermath, and what influence the image has had on the world. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo used the most universal artistic language available—the human body in all its configurations. From the spark of life given to Adam and Eve to the Last Judgment, his frescoes blazed a path toward secularism despite the chapel’s religious themes. Art historian Liz Lev examines the evolution of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a work so astounding it changed the course of Western art. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
After teenagers responded with wild enthusiasm to hearing “Rock Around the Clock” in Blackboard Jungle in 1955, Hollywood began to recognize the power of the teen audience. A flood of films featuring musicians performing rock and R&B hits and plots about rebellious high schoolers, daredevil hot-rodders, and antics-prone college students followed. Media historian Brian Rose looks at rock movies’ first decade and how Hollywood benefited from the power of the music and its target audience.
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are three influential philosophers whose ideas have significantly shaped political theory and the understanding of the social contract. In a fall series, join Georgetown professor Joseph Hartman as he explores these thinkers who offered distinct perspectives on the nature of human beings, the origins of political authority, and the formation of societies. This session focuses on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Poet William Butler Yeats was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival, the cultural movement that preceded the country’s political independence from Britain. Lucy Collins, editor of the Irish University Review and an associate professor at University College Dublin, explores the cultural politics of early 20th-century Ireland as the crucible within which Yeats’ work was formed and examines how the political and the personal combine in some of his greatest poems.
Our understanding of dinosaur behavior has long been hampered by the inevitable lack of evidence from animals that went extinct more than 65 million years ago. But with the discovery of new specimens and the development of cutting-edge techniques, paleontologists are making huge advances in reconstructing how dinosaurs acted. Paleontologist David Hone provides a look at the fundamentals of dinosaur biology and evolution and describes feeding, communication, and social behavior.
