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Much like a musical composition follows a specific key, this watercolor-based workshop—also adaptable to oil and pastel—aims to simplify the painting process using color harmony.
Art historian Roland Betancourt illuminates the central role of images in Byzantine culture, focusing on how basic questions about images and their power in the medieval world can inform the ways in which images are thought about today. Covering the crucial years of the Byzantine Empire (roughly 330–1453), Betancourt looks at the art, architecture, and theories of visual culture in the medieval lands of the eastern Mediterranean and in modern-day Türkiye, Greece, Syria, and Russia. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)
In August 1943, at the height of World War II, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt traveled more than 25,000 miles throughout the Pacific Theater, visiting military bases, hospitals, and remote outposts where American troops were stationed. Author Shannon McKenna Schmidt chronicles the first lady’s extraordinary five-week journey as she flew in unheated transport planes and bombers, dined in mess halls, and even trekked through the jungle on a simulated training mission. Schmidt also traces Roosevelt’s transformation from a shy society matron into one of the most consequential first ladies in American history.
Hindus have long wished to see their deities in visible form, and artists have met this desire through sculptures and paintings. In modern India, this desire has also been met by colorful mass-produced “God-prints,” often called calendar prints or bazaar art. Richard Davis, professor emeritus of religion, outlines the history of this genre of commercial religious art, from its origins in colonial Kolkata and Maharashtra through its proliferation in independent India. (World Art History Certificate elective, ½ credit)
Travel the world with the summer edition of Sketching the Smithsonian as you take an artful break and explore the fascinating, vast collections of this extraordinary museum.
Marking the 150th anniversary of pivotal 20th-century Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s birth, speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines an illustrated lecture with live piano demonstrations to examine how de Falla forged his unique, seductive voice with such enchanting stage and concert pieces as El amor brujo, La vida breve, and Noches en los jardines de España.
Mycenaean civilization has long resisted simple interpretation—neither purely the start of Greek culture nor an alien precursor. Classicist and archaeologist Dimitri Nakassis argues that archaeological and textual evidence reveals a diverse, evolving world spanning 1650–1100 B.C.E. across the Aegean and Ionian regions and reveals a complex Late Bronze Age society that defies neat categorization.
Before skyscrapers and industry reshaped the eastern United States, the region teemed with wildlife—elk, bison, wolves, and cougars. Environmental writer Andrew Moore traces this lost landscape and the rapid decline that followed as industrialization and unregulated hunting devastated native species. He follows conservationists and communities restoring these animals—from bison in Illinois to elk in Kentucky and red wolves in North Carolina—and explores what their return means for conservation and coexistence today.
Romania’s 1916 entry into World War I forced all four Central Powers to divert elite troops and vital supplies from other strained fronts. Historian Indy Neidell notes Germany was stretched so thin its leaders even feared Denmark might exploit the situation. Despite major offensives, the Central Powers failed to conquer Romania. As Russia collapsed, Romania remained a crucial Entente asset, helping finally exhaust the Central Powers by 1918.
The rivalry between Protestant Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, was one of the most dramatic political and religious conflicts of the 16th century. Amy Leonard, a Georgetown University professor of history, examines the real relationship between these two powerful yet diametrically opposed rivals, who never met in person but were linked by family ties, gender, and religious and political intrigue.
