Over nearly 250 years, the National Mall has evolved as the center stage of the nation’s capital. Carolyn Muraskin of DC Design Tours traces the Mall’s transition from pasture lands to military training grounds and from mud flats to grand monuments, sharing the tumultuous and lesser-known history of our most enduring national landmarks. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

During the American Revolution, the British military took almost as many men prisoner at sea as they did on the battlefield. Most of those captured by Royal Navy were privateers—raiding crews licensed by the Continental Congress to torment British shipping and besiege Britain itself. Historian Richard Bell examines the untold history of America’s privateers and their lives both at sea and then behind bars, using their surviving diaries and journals to illuminate their ordeal.

Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to consider important events that occurred. A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea," examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts. Anne Hyland, the Art Bridges Initiative curatorial coordinator at the American Art Museum, provides an overview of the exhibition. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Situated between India, Persia, and the Greco-Roman world, the region of greater Gandhara (stretching through parts of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan) produced artwork that blended influences and ideas from many cultures. Art historian Robert DeCaroli examines the origins of the region’s material culture, explores the ways imperial and religious power were displayed, and traces the role of trade in the exchange of ideas. (World Art History Certificate core course, 1 credit)

When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the oldest known fossils were trilobites preserved in rocks deposited during the Cambrian Period. Many decades and countless discoveries later, fossils from six continents now extend the animal record backward into the Ediacaran Period, some 50 million years before the first trilobites. Andrew H. Knoll of Harvard University traces the fossil record of Earth’s earliest known animals, asking how these remains illuminate the early evolution of our own kingdom.