The boldly passionate musical and dance form of flamenco casts it spell over aficionados around the world. But new fans might find some of its distinctive features puzzling. Flamenco scholar Nancy G. Heller introduces the basic elements and vocabulary of traditional flamenco music and dance, demystifying and enhancing the experience for audiences. She also traces the innovations explored by its avant-garde performers in the 21st century.
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.
Less famous than their Tudor cousins, the Stuart monarchs survived a plot to blow up the government and the only governmental execution of an anointed king in English history to restructure the nature of the monarchy and eventually join England and Scotland into a new nation. Historian Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger examines how four generations of Stuart monarchs—from James I to Queen Anne—led the country from the personal monarchy of the Tudors into the constitutional monarchy and the establishment of Great Britain.
Discover how visual art can inspire creative writing and how writing can offer a powerful way to experience art. Join Mary Hall Surface, the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s popular Writing Salon, for five online workshops that explore essential elements of writing and styles through close looking, word-sketching, and imaginative response to prompts. This writing session is inspired by Welsh artist Gwen John’s A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris.
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 John Locke.
Begun in 1337, the ground floor of Orsanmichele church in Florence, Italy, was originally a loggia-style market. When it was transformed, the inside was decorated with paintings of saints and the outside with statues by artists such as Donatello, Ghiberti, and Verrocchio. Today, the upper floor of Orsanmichele is a museum where all but one of the original sculptures are on display. Renaissance art expert Rocky Ruggiero highlights this museum and its treasures. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
The Arts and Crafts Movement was a dominant influence in visual and decorative arts and architecture in the decades leading up to and after the turn of the 20th century, offering an artistic and philosophical reaction to the florid, overdecorated, and industrialized designs of the high-Victorian era. Art historian Bonita Billman explores the rich flowering of the movement in Britian and America, as well as its enduring legacy. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)
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.