Monday, September 14, 2009

Fall 2009 Program

Twelfth Night or What You Will
Shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, Viola believes her twin brother drowned. She dresses as a boy and goes to work for Duke Orsino. But her brother is alive – and a series of mistakes and accidents involving the beautiful Olivia and her cousin Sir Toby Belch, along with the steward Malvolio and the clown Feste, leads eventually to Viola’s being reunited with her brother and her engagement to the Duke. The Hartt School will perform Shakespeare’s magical and thought-provoking comedy Twelfth Night in October. In this President’s College course Humphrey Tonkin explores the intricacies of the play and, with director Robert Davis, prepares us for the performance. The four-sessions begin on Tuesday, September 15 (4:30-7:00 pm), with a showing of the film version directed by Trevor Nunn (with Helena Bonham Carter, Imogen Stubbs and Ben Kingsley). On the three following Tuesdays, the course will meet from 4:30 to 6:00 pm. The Hartt School’s production of the play will take place on October 15-18 (free admission for course members).
Dates: Tuesdays, September 15, 22, 29; October 6, 2009.
Time: (9/15) 4:30-7:00pm; (9/22, 9/29, 10/6) 4:30-6:00pm.
Location: Woods Family Classroom
Cost: $80 (Fellows $60)
Registration Form

Fridays at the Mortensen
The first “Fridays at the Mortensen” event of the new season, on September 25, will feature novelist (The Dawn of Days), essayist (Flotsam: A Life in Debris) and former Hartford Courant columnist Denis Horgan. Fridays at the Mortensen are a series of lectures held after hours in the Mortensen Library on Friday evenings. The evenings begin with a light dinner. Other programs for the fall: engineering professor Saleh Keshawarz, director of the University’s program to provide advanced education to Afghan university faculty, on Afghanistan (October 16), David Pines on the University of Hartford’s Engineers Without Borders projects in India and Kenya (November 13), and Richard Zeiser and Chuck Colarulli on the mysteries of college admissions (December 4).
Dates: Fridays, September 25; October 16; November 13; December 4, 2009.
Time: 5:45-8:00pm
Location: Mortensen Library
Cost: $45 (Fellows $40), including dinner. Or sign up for the whole series of four for $130 (Fellows $110).
Registration Form

A. S. Byatt to Lecture
The English Department and the University will host British novelist A. S. Byatt, famed author of Possession and Angels and Insects and numerous other works, on the evening of Wednesday, October 7. Her novel The Children’s Book will be released this fall.
Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2009.
Time: 7:30pm Reading (50 minutes) followed by Q&A (20-30 minutes) and book signing.
Location: Lincoln Theater
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Registration Form

Toni Morrison: The Big Three
Jane Barstow, one of the University’s best-loved and most-talented English professors, provides an introduction to Toni Morrison’s novels. As the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Morrison has enjoyed an extraordinary degree of both popular success and critical acclaim. This course will examine closely her three best-known novels: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved in terms of their thematic concerns and artistic style. Jane Barstow will consider how these novels have been received by both amateur and professional readers at home and abroad. And the course will engage in its own debates about Morrison’s long-term impact on American history and literature. Whether you have always wanted to read Morrison but never have, or whether you look forward to delving more deeply into the multiple layers of her wonderful fictions, please join Professor Barstow for new insights and lively discussion.
Dates: Wednesdays, October 21, 28; November 4, 2009.
Time: 1:30-3:00pm
Location: Conferences, Room B
Cost: $65 (Fellows $50).
Registration Form

Digging Through the Bible
Richard Freund, Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and Greenberg Professor of Jewish History at the University, is known for teaching that combines accessibility and erudition. His new book, Digging Through the Bible, was nominated for a Book of the Year Award in Religion and highlights some of the most controversial parts of biblical archaeology. What do we know now that all of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been translated? Have the remains of Jesus and the Holy Family been found in a cave outside Jerusalem? Was there ever an Exodus of millions of Israelites from Egypt? What do we know about the major figures and places of the Bible? In the past quarter century Dr. Freund has been involved in many of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology.
Dates: Wednesdays, September 30; October 7, 14, 2009.
Time: 5:00-7:20pm
Location: Magnet School Agora
Cost: $65 (Fellows $50).
Registration Form

Opera at the Met: Three Previews
Once again, Bob Gruskay will discuss three of the Met’s high-definition performance transmissions at Buckland Hills, with video previews and other guidance that will help bring the performances alive.
Dates: Thursdays, October 8 (Tosca); October 22 (Aida); November 5 (Turandot), 2009.
Time: 2:00-3:30pm.
Location: October 8-Conferences, Room A; October 22; November 5-Woods Family Classroom.
Cost: $20 per session (Fellows $15), $40 for all three (Fellows $30)
Registration Form

Poets of Faith and Doubt: Kathleen McGrory
Literature professor and historian Kathleen McGrory tackles the great question of the relationship between scientific knowledge and belief in God. Did Science kill Faith? A focused study of poetry in English poetry from ages of faith, neo-pagan and postmodern-pagan times can provide some unexpected answers and will undoubtedly raise further questions. While rumors of the death of Faith, as distinct from Religion, are greatly exaggerated, faith and doubt in poetry as in life are most certainly kissing cousins. This course will examine poems of faith and doubt from early British and American traditions through the Romantic and Victorian periods, when modern scientific studies in biology and geology began to change ways of looking at “the problem of God,” and will leave us in the 20th and 21st centuries. Copies of major poems for discussion will be distributed in class. Participants are urged to dust off their own poetry books for summer reading, and to bring to class a favorite poem of faith or doubt for discussion. A few contemporary examples illustrating either side (or both sides) of the question will be provided, with an invitation to participants to provide more.
Dates: Mondays, November 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 2009.
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Woods Family Classroom
Cost: $90 (Fellows $75).
Registration Form

Folklore and the French Revolution
Historian and folklorist David Hopkin of Oxford University will be our guest at a special lunch and discussion on “The Soldier’s Tale: Folklore and the Experience of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,.” topic of his Hertford College Lecture. The lecture follows later in the afternoon. David Hopkin’s teaching focuses on European and in particular French history from the Enlightenment to World War I. By training an historical anthropologist and by inclination a folklorist, he studies the social and cultural life of rural communities, military and maritime institutions, popular and oral culture. His first book, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, was joint winner of the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone prize in 2002. He is now writing a book about oral culture in 19th-century France.
Dates: Monday, October 12, 2009
Time: 12:00 - 2:00pm
Location: Conferences - Room D
Registration Form

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Stevenson, McCaughey, Lankester
Catherine Stevenson’s four-session course on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood promises to be something of a sensation. We have all admired those depictions of gorgeous strong-jawed women with wild hair--rendered in jewel-like colors. Think of Holman Hunt’s luscious “Lady of Shalott” in the Athenaeum. But what were these young, rebellious artists really about? Do their works go beyond being “eye candy”? The course will focus on the writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris but will include two guest lectures – by Patrick McCaughey, art historian formerly of the Yale Center for British Art, on Pre-Raphaelite painting, and Michael Lankester, formerly music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, on the music of the period, including the work of Granville Bantock and Frederick Delius. This one is likely to be a sell-out, so sign up soon! (Note: no meeting on October 20.)
Dates: Tuesdays, October 13, 27; November 3, 10.
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Wilde Auditorium
Cost: $105 (Fellows $90).
Registration Form

Philosophical Problems in the Law
In this course, philosopher Lynn Pasquerella, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at the University, will explore contemporary conundrums in the law. For instance, if society has a general obligation to protect individuals from harm by others, what happens when society fails to observe this obligation? To what extent do the victims have the right to intervene either to protect themselves or to punish the offenders?
And what role does culture play in excusing illegal behavior? Given our track record, should society abandon the ideal of rehabilitating criminals in favor of focusing on making hard time even harder? The course will give particular attention to legal dilemmas related to the role of race, class and gender.
Dates: Tuesdays, December 1, 8, 15, 2009.
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Woods Family Classroom
Cost: $65 (Fellows $50).
Registration Form

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