Programs

Visit Pittsburgh—a city of smokestacks and steel miraculously reborn as a cultural capital—for a three-day art-filled tour with art journalist Richard Selden that features the 58th Carnegie International exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Other exciting art venues and historic sites are also on the itinerary.

Medical historian Howard Markel traces the careers of two brilliant young doctors—Sigmund Freud, neurologist, and William Halsted, surgeon—showing how their powerful addictions to cocaine shaped their enormous contributions to psychology and medicine. He also examines the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it.

In the early decades of the 20th century, Sears Roebuck & Co. sold more than 70,000 prefabricated Modern Homes kits, offering all Americans the chance to own an up-to-date house. Historian Dakota Springston draws on period and contemporary images to lead a virtual tour through several historic Northern Virginia neighborhoods that boast a wide range of these distinctive houses, followed by a Q&A with a Sears Homes expert.

In many ways, the history of French music is also the history of Western music. But what makes French music French? In a 4-part series, lecturer and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines presentations and piano demonstrations to explore the social, political, religious, and cultural influences that shaped the output of France’s great composers and presents a selection of the greatest works in the literature.

The work of American artists today explores an enormous range of materials, techniques, and styles—a  pluralistic experimentation that encompasses forms from conceptual and super-realist art to environmental and performance art. Art historian Nancy G. Heller surveys the roots and later influences of radical American art from the last five decades. (World Art History Certificate core course, 1 credit)

Explore how some of the greatest philosophers have approached one of the central questions of the Western tradition—how to define and lead a good life—and how the question lives on today. Philosophy professor Michael Gorman examines the precepts of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, as well as the viewpoints of more modern thinkers in an insightful 4-session series.

Architectural movements and styles mark distinct moments in history. By examining four periods in Western architecture, Rocky Ruggiero, an architectural historian and expert in Renaissance art, traces the development of styles, traditions, trends, and forms beginning in the ancient world and continuing through to the present day. (World Art History Certificate core course, 1 credit)

She’s all-daring and all-voice, magnificent and maddening, improbable and irreplaceable. You’ll be saying “Hello, Gorgeous” when you join documentary filmmaker and writer Sara Lukinson, whose commentary and abundant sampling of clips set the stage for a fun night to spend with La Streisand.

One of the most biologically diverse and ecologically significant landmarks in America, the Potomac Gorge, near Washington, D.C., has held an important place in human history since the Ice Age. Naturalist and author Melanie Choukas-Bradley leads a virtual journey along the most dramatic section of the 405-mile-long river: the 15-mile stretch in which it originates at Great Falls in Maryland and Virginia and flows, often through dramatic cliffs and bluffs, to Theodore Roosevelt Island in the District.

Author Ross King reveals why Florentine statesman Niccolò Machiavelli’s writings are more sophisticated than even the most Machiavellian passages of The Prince would seem to suggest. King offers a portrait of a perceptive writer who is far from being an enemy of the human race, and whose lessons on leadership, liberty, virtue, and good government are worth re-examining today.