Travel journalist Bill Clevlen draws on his book Presidential Road Trips to guide history-lovers through presidential sites across the country. Explore homes, retreats, and landmarks like Madison’s library, Eisenhower’s living room, Johnson’s desk, Kennedy’s Air Force One, Nixon’s helicopter, and Lincoln’s Springfield home. Fill the tank for the ultimate presidential road trip including mansions, museums, grave sites, memorials, historic landmarks—and plenty more.
Beethoven never made it to the United States, but hundreds of important musicians and composers did. From early touring megastars like Adelina Patti and Paderewski to successful later refugee émigrés such as Rachmaninoff and Kurt Weill, America has long welcomed great artists. In a four-session series filled with musical excerpts, speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin explores the siren call of America to musicians.
The HMS Challenger spent almost four years exploring the world’s oceans in the 1870s. It identified major ocean currents and defining features of the seafloor; measured sea temperatures and chemistry, creating baseline data; and collected nearly 5,000 sea creatures and plants new to science. More than 150 years later, the expedition’s findings are also shining a light on the effects of climate change. Author Gillen D’Arcy Wood looks at the legacy of this scientific odyssey.
Liguria is best known for its idyllic seaside towns along the Italian Riviera, from such famed locales as Portofino and Rapallo to humbler fishing towns like Camogli. Art historian Sophia D’Addio surveys the history of the capital city of the region, Genoa, as one of the major maritime powers of the Italian peninsula during the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. She also celebrates its chief culinary achievement: pesto. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Learn to use a variety of approaches to the medium of embroidery while taking inspiration from the Smithsonian collection. Explore the history of embroidery back to the Middle Ages and together analyze the art form while practicing in a series of guided exercises.
Art historian Sophia D’Addio surveys the cradle of the Renaissance, Tuscany, which boasted Florence's unparalleled artistic wealth alongside Siena, Pisa, and Lucca’s cultural treasures. Renowned for its simple yet flavorful cuisine and its prized wines, the region blends medieval charm, coastal beauty, and enduring culinary and viticultural traditions into Italy’s cultural heart. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Students discover the history, origins, and special characteristics of the Textura style of Blackletter calligraphy, one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Learn the use of proper proportions and construction of minuscule and majuscule letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
A painter can create entire worlds on a flat piece of paper. But where is a composer to start when seeking to represent the natural universe through sound? Over time, composers have fashioned powerful musical vocabularies that guide listeners to see harmony as visual image. In a 4-session course, speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin uses her unique live piano demonstrations and film clips to explore how such masters as Beethoven, Mahler, Wagner, Vivaldi, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Saint-Saëns, and others composed beloved works that conjure the natural world.
