Spring 2016 Drew Mini-Course Registration begins on January 5th, 2016.
Spring 2016 Registration form
THE ART MUSEUMS OF WASHINGTON
Instructor: Barbara Tomlinson
Five Mondays: Jan. 25; Feb. 1, 8, 15, 22; 10:00 am-12-pm
This series will investigate the state of the arts in the nation’s capital. A virtual visit to the city’s most important museums will explain their origins and review their collections.
Weeks 1 &2: The Corcoran, Smithsonian, and Freer
Weeks 3 & 4: The Phillips and the National Gallery
Week 5: National Museum of Women in the Arts and a stop in Baltimore on the way home.
Barbara Tomlinson was the course coordinator of the humanities component of Kean University’s General Education Program before retirement. She is well known throughout New Jersey for her lectures on art and is one of our most popular teachers.
THE SELF AND THE ILLUSION OF SELF
Instructor: Erik Anderson
Five Wednesdays: Jan. 27; Feb. 3, 10, 17, 24; 10 am – 12 pm
If I traded bodies with someone else, would I still be the same person? Would I continue to be the same person if my brain were transplanted into another human body or into the body of an android? Would a human being or an android with copies of my thoughts be me? These are vexing philosophical questions that are apt to give rise to widespread disagreement. In this course we will investigate the nature of the self and personal identity. Our approach will be both historical and analytical, and will address recent skepticism about the existence of enduring, substantive selves.
Erik Anderson is National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Professor at Drew in the Philosophy Department. He taught very popular minicourses for us in the Spring and Fall terms last year.
AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
Instructor: Frank Occhiogrosso
Five Thursdays: Jan. 28; Feb. 4, 11, 18, 25; 1:30 – 3:30 PM (This is a change from previous publications.)
This course is a broad survey of the world of poetry.
Week 1: The language of poetry‑‑‑Nemerov, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickinson
Week 2: Metaphor and Meaning‑‑‑Shakespeare, Frost, Bryant, MacLeish
Week 3: Prosody and Scansion‑‑‑Marvell. Poe, Byron, and Shakespeare
Week 4: The Sonnet‑‑‑Petrarch, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth, Frost
Week 5: A contemporary poet‑‑‑Billy Collins
Frank Occhiogrosso is Emeritus Professor of English at Drew where he specialized in the works of Shakespeare. He has also taught several very popular courses for us on the American musical theater.
KEY ISSUES FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY- Fully Enrolled – Registration is Closed for this Course.
Instructor: Douglas Simon
Five Mondays: March 14, 21, 28; April 4, 11; 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
This mini-course will explore several current and future concerns for American foreign policy.
Week 1: Does the United States Have a Coherent Foreign Policy?
Week 2: Confronting Terrorism
Week 3: Climate Change as a Threat to National Security
Week 4: Genocide and American Foreign Policy
Week 5: The Threat of Cyber War
MUSIC IN THE MODERN ERA 1900-1920
Instructor: Robert Butts
Five Wednesdays: March 16, 23, 30; April 6, 13; 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
The first decades of the twentieth century saw music move in many directions, both in the classical and the popular worlds. Ragtime developed into dixieland then into jazz. Broadway became the entertainment center with personalities like Florenz Ziegfeld and George M. Cohan.
Opera was dominated by Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss. Songwriters like Jerome Kern and Irving Belin created the first standards in what would come to be called The Great American Songbook. Recording‑radio‑film grew from novelty entertainments to major industries.
Composers working in the concert world included Debussy, Ravel, Ives, Prokofiev, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, and Mahler. The music world reached a modernist landmark with the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Musical celebrities became international recording stars in both popular and opera worlds ‑ led by Toscanini, Caruso and Al Jolson.
Dr. Robert W. Butts is a widely noted conductor, composer and teacher whose lectures on music history have been a mainstay of the minicourse program for many years. He is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Drew.