The study of iconography reveals how symbols and allegories help decode artworks that long puzzled scholars. Art historian Noah Charney examines how medieval viewers recognized saints in paintings despite widespread illiteracy. By identifying attributes tied to martyrdoms, such as Saint Lucy’s eyes on a platter or Saint Peter’s inverted cross, viewers understood each figure’s identity and meaning. Using Crivelli’s Demidoff Altarpiece, Charney shows how to read religious images like clues in a visual investigation. (World Art History Certificate elective,1/2 credit)

William T. Sherman, famed Civil War general, and his brother John Sherman, long-serving U.S. senator, experienced the war as a defining event in their lives. The conflict became a true "brothers’ war" as each relied on the other during some of its darkest moments. Historian Bennett Parten discusses how the two Shermans navigated the Civil War together, with both rising to personal and professional heights.

René Lalique, the daring jeweler of Belle Époque Paris, revolutionized adornment by rejecting gemstone traditions and blending metals with enamel, horn, glass, and semi-precious stones. His nature-inspired creations—dragonflies, orchids, and nymphs—elevated jewelry to fine art, embodying Art Nouveau’s union of art and life. Collaborating with Sarah Bernhardt and elite patrons, Lalique gained acclaim at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Art historian Tosca Ruggieri’s illustrated lecture explores his evolution, techniques, patrons, and rarely seen masterpieces. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

A Constitutional amendment that took effect in 1920 kicked off the decade by prohibiting the consumption of alcohol. This was supposed to solve some of the nation's most pressing social issues but instead uncorked a cultural rebellion and a host of new social problems. Historian Allen Pietrobon delves into how drinking had become such a problem that the U.S. banned “intoxicating beverages,” why trying to outlaw all alcohol backfired spectacularly, and how American society and culture changed throughout the 1920s.

Over nearly 250 years, the National Mall has evolved as the center stage of the nation’s capital. The Founding Fathers saw the District of Columbia as a shining beacon of democracy for a newly independent nation, reflected in the L’Enfant Plan’s vision of the National Mall as its ceremonial core. In the first program of a 2-part series, Carolyn Muraskin, founder 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 complex and lesser-known history of some of the most enduring national landmarks. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

At the start of 1776, few Americans sought independence, grounding their protests instead in the rights of British subjects. By year’s end, independence had become unavoidable. Historian Edward J. Larson chronicles this pivotal year in American history, from the inspiring appeals of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in January; through midsummer, when the Second Continental Congress grounded independence in the “self-evident” truths of human equality and individual rights; to Paine’s urgent pleas of December, when “the times that try men’s souls” required Americans not to “shrink from the service of their country.”

This is a fun, relaxing class that presents facts and trivia about orchids, discusses famous orchids, and explains how 120 million years of evolution have created the family of flowering plants that we know as Orchidaceae.

Rear Adm. Samuel Francis Du Pont, once considered among the Navy’s finest officers, suffered lasting damage to his reputation after the failed 1863 ironclad attack on Charleston. Though praised early in the Civil War for securing a major Union victory, he was later miscast as resistant to innovation. Historian Kevin J. Weddle argues that Du Pont supported technological progress but opposed using ironclads for this mission. Overruled by superiors, he carried out the attack, which ended his career. Weddle restores Du Pont’s overlooked contributions to naval modernization and strategy.