All upcoming Seminars

Turkey possesses one of the world’s most fascinating histories and richest cultural heritages. It is at once both Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, Christian and Islamic, sensual and austere. A seminar led by independent scholar Nigel McGilchrist pays tribute to this complexity, celebrating the dramatic beauty of Turkey’s landscapes and its wealth of historic monuments and archaeological treasures. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)

Written nearly 2,000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations remains one of the most profound, practical guides to living with integrity, resilience, and perspective and cultivating one’s self. Philosopher Samir Chopra leads an exploration of this foundational text of Stoicism through a historically embedded reading of passages, with a view to developing a practice of Stoic principles.

The Declaration of Independence is a peculiar document: a literary masterpiece that was written jointly by a committee of five people. In a full-day seminar, historian Richard Bell, a specialist in the American Revolutionary era, explores its origins, creators, purpose, and global influence. He examines how contemporaries perceived it, what transformations it triggered, and why it continues to hold significance.

Soaring spires, glittering stained-glass windows, and sculpted figures that seem to breathe with life—these are the hallmarks of Gothic art, a style that transformed cathedrals, churches, and civic spaces across medieval Europe. Art historian Janetta Rebold Benton, author of Art of the Middle Ages, explores this extraordinary period. Through architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts, Benton reveals the unrivaled richness and refinement of the Gothic era. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)

The English painters, poets, and critics who gave birth to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 sought to reform art by rejecting what they called the melodramatic style of High Renaissance artists like Raphael. In a full-day seminar, art historian Bonita Billman traces this fascinating movement from its origins to flowering conclusion and also examines its influence on the Arts and Crafts movement and its legacy of beauty. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)

Joseph Luzzi, professor of literature at Bard College, explores the literary elements of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and then considers its afterlife in two major literary works: John Milton’s brilliant epic, Paradise Lost, and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, a modern-day classic. Luzzi explains the rhetorical structures of the Bible and provides a sense of how its brilliant storytelling techniques shaped the development of modern literature.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews lived in various diaspora communities, in foreign lands under both Muslim and Christian rule. Biblical scholar and historian Gary A. Rendsburg explores such communities in Egypt, Italy, England, and Spain. At times, Jews flourished in these foreign lands, though at other times anti-Jewish fervor resulted in massacres, expulsions, and ghettoization. In a full-day seminar, Rendsburg surveys the highs and the lows in his examination of Jewish life in the medieval era.

Galvanized by the post-World War II decolonization of African nations and the civil rights, Black power, anti-war, and feminist and womanist movements, African-descendant cultural producers in the United States began claiming a Black aesthetic that emerged from the lived experience of Black people. The Black Arts Movement permeated rural and urban areas, drawing on blues, jazz, Black folk culture, and Black idiomatic expressions. Spend a day with Michele L. Simms-Burton, scholar of African American and Africana studies, to explore the Black aesthetics and Black pride that define this arts movement and examine its producers of everything from music to literature to art. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

The year 1900 found three of Europe’s greatest cities entering defining eras in their historical and cultural development. In a richly illustrated program, cultural historian George Scheper explores how the alignment of creative forces shaped a trio of highly distinctive urban milieus—each nourished by the energy and excitement of new ideas and each witnessing the birth of modernism in the coming century. (World Art History Certificate elective,1 credit)