Classes

The Heart and Mind of Early Baroque

The world exalts Caravaggio for his dramatic light and intense naturalism whereas Annibale Carracci is little known, for his ideal beauty and energized classicism. Why has one become a towering figure of the Western Canon and the other only appreciated by students and specialists of the Italian Baroque? These two contemporaries approached the reform of painting at the end of the Sixteenth Century from entirely different directions. Discover how the intensity of Caravaggio and the sensuality of Annibale Carracci converged to create and influence all the glories and excesses of the Baroque and discuss how their works remain powerful and relevant today.

Week 1: The Italy of the Counter Reformation and the need for Reform – The Rome of the late Sixteenth Century. What is old is new again. The Bolognese Academy of Painting of Annibale Carracci and the early Career of Caravaggio.

Week 2: The Early Baroque in Rome – Caravaggio in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Maroia Del Monte and the erotics of Faith. The Saint Matthew Cycle in the Contarelli Chapel for the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

Week 3: Annibale Carracci and the Palazzo Farnese – Glorious Classicism and Wondrous Sensualism. The establishment of Baroque Ceiling Painting and the desire for Fame….but with a sense of humor.

Week 4: Rome in 1601 – Drama, drama, and more drama. Annibale and Caravaggio collaborate to create the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. The establishment of an artistic tradition.

Week 5: When Titans Fall – The late careers of Carracci and Caravaggio, still brilliant but falling into melancholia and violence. The profound influence of Annibale and Caravaggio on younger artists and formation of the Baroque ideal.

American Voices

Join Bill Fry for an eight-week exploration of stories and poetry that illustrate the American experience from a variety of vantage points. Starting on a sheep farm in Oregon and moving through Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, New York and more, we’ll read works with a well-developed sense of place as we focus on uniquely American voices in literature.

Week 1: Scottie Jones – Country Grit (2017), a memoir of an experiment with sheep farming in Oregon

Week 2: Theodor Dreiser – Come Into My Parlor (1918), a novella set in Long Island

Week 3: Ernest Hemingway – “Up in Michigan” (1925)

Week 4: Willa Cather – “The Enchanted Bluff” (1909), a short story set in New Mexico

Week 5: Sinclair Lewis – Main Street (1920), a novel set in Minnesota

Week 6: Robert Frost – Selected poetry (1913-1915) set in New England

Week 7: William Dean Howells – “Editha” (1905), a short story set in Ohio

Week 8: O.Henry – “The Cop and the Anthem” and “The Gift of the Magi” (both published in 1906), two stories set in New York City

Perspectives from Archaeology and Paleoanthropology

Paleoanthropologists have tracked the story of human evolution through over 7 million years, by following the archaeological evidence of human development. The story begins with our large bodied Miocene apes in Africa, traces the origins of bipedalism and cognitive expansion, and then follows human expansion out of Africa and into the rest of the world and beyond. We will cover seven major topics in 2-hour meetings, focusing on major discussions within paleoanthropology. Topics include understanding evolution, early hominids and the origin of bipedalism, cooking and anatomy, early migrations, art and cave paintings, the peopling of the Americas, and recent discoveries that are changing how we understand the development of modern humans.

Week 1: Understanding the Evolutionary Process and Origin of Species
Modern Evolutionary Biology – We will cover the basics of Darwinian evolution, and current research that help us understand how evolutionary forces mold species.
DNA – The second hour will focus on DNA studies that are illuminating paleoanthropology. We will briefly look at theory, methods, and findings from this area of paleoanthropological research.

Week 2: Early Hominids and the Origin of Bipedalism
Ardipithecus Group and Early Hominids – We will examine some of the earliest fossils in the hominin lineage, discuss significant changes in the skeletal anatomy, and discuss what this suggests us about the behavior of each species.
Origins of Bipedalism – The second hour will focus on theories on the origin of our unique form of locomotion. We will look closely at the evidence and potential links between past environmental change and hominin evolution.

Week 3: Cooking, Technology, Modern Human Anatomy
The Cooking Ape – Desmond Morris famously dubbed modern humans “the Naked Ape” and since then, others have employed similar labels. Here we will explore a theory that connects human digestive anatomy to cooking and to increases in cognitive ability.
The Archaeology of Food – In this second hour, we will examine how archaeologists and paleoanthropologists learn about past diets. We will discuss several methods employed in the exploration of past food systems and look at some findings from this research.

Week 4: Early Travelers
The Travels of Homo Erectus – We will look at the expansion of hominins from Africa into the rest of the world and discuss some of the theories and important sites associated with this first migration and expansion.
Expansion of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens – In the second hour, we will look at the expansion of modern humans and Neanderthals in the upper Paleolithic, including the timing and evidence of this migration.

Week 5: Development of Artwork and Cave Paintings
The Upper Paleolithic – In the Upper Paleolithic we see an explosion of new technologies as modern humans move into new ecosystems. We’ll focus on these technological developments and discuss ideas about the interaction between hominin species, as modern humans move into inhabited landscapes.
Cave Paintings, Rock Art, and the Creative Human Mind – In the second hour, we will look more closely at the expansion and development of art in the archaeological record. We will spend time with the famous cave sites, Lascaux and Chauvet Cave, and discuss the importance of the development of art.

Week 6: Expansion into the Americas
Clovis First – The peopling of the Americas is a lively topic in Archaeological research. Learn the history of the research and the development of major theories about the timing, route, and source of the first Americans.
Pre-Clovis Research – In the second hour, we will look at the current research on the peopling of the Americas, discuss major findings and new discoveries, and explore how these findings change our understanding of human expansion into the Americas.

Week 7: Recent Developments in Paleoanthropology
New Species – In this final section, we will discuss new findings that are dramatically changing the way we think about human evolution and explore the new species discovered over the past few years.
Stones, Bones, and Wrap Up – In the second hour, we will continue to talk about recent developments and talk about the implications for future research on the origins of modern humans.

American Voices

Join Bill Fry for an eight-week exploration of stories and poetry that illustrate the American experience from a variety of vantage points. Starting on a sheep farm in Oregon and moving through Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, New York and more, we’ll read works with a well-developed sense of place as we focus on uniquely American voices in literature.

Week 1: Scottie Jones – Country Grit (2017), a memoir of an experiment with sheep farming in Oregon

Week 2: Theodor Dreiser – Come Into My Parlor (1918), a novella set in Long Island

Week 3: Ernest Hemingway – “Up in Michigan” (1925)

Week 4: Willa Cather – “The Enchanted Bluff” (1909), a short story set in New Mexico

Week 5: Sinclair Lewis – Main Street (1920), a novel set in Minnesota

Week 6: Robert Frost – Selected poetry (1913-1915) set in New England

Week 7: William Dean Howells – “Editha” (1905), a short story set in Ohio

Week 8: O.Henry – “The Cop and the Anthem” and “The Gift of the Magi” (both published in 1906), two stories set in New York City

The Good Gray Poet at 200!

The bicentennial of Walt Whitman falls only 45 years after the bicentennial of the USA. It seems time to look at Whitman in terms of what he wrote, what he thought, and how his words have remained with us. The poet of democracy, the poet of belief in westward expansion, the poet who said he contained multitudes, the poet who wept openly at the graves of Civil War soldiers. Whitman the free verse proponent whose long lines seem to come out of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Whitman the Romantic elegist who celebrated Abraham Lincoln in a poem of traditional form and meter, Whitman who called for an America that lived up to its initial promise of democracy for all.

In four sessions we will plunge deeply into that “song of myself” which becomes a song of all selves as we discuss this founding poet of American literature.

Week 1: Body & Soul – Overview of the young Whitman
Reading: Biographical Sketch, Starting from Paumanok, Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric

Week 2: Whitman’s Poetry Middle to End
Reading: In Paths Untrodden, I Hear it was Charged against Me, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Song of the Exposition, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, O Captain My Captain, Passage to India, To a Locomotive in Winter

Week 3: He Wrote Prose, Too! – Whitman’s Articulation of Ideas of Freedom, Progress, and Democracy
Reading: Preface to Leaves of Grass, Democratic Vistas, Selections from Specimen Days

Week 4: What We Made of Whitman – Ideas of Whitman from Dickinson, Woolf, Pound, Ginsberg, Creeley, Silliman, Conrad
Readings and quotations from letters, poems, and essays. A survey of Whitman’s reputation from dangerous and dark, to good and gray, to, simply, a classic.