Arts & Humanities   

Alfred Hitchcock loved San Francisco and used its elegance, beauty, and mystery to great effect in many of his films. In this virtual tour, you’ll see brief scenes from Vertigo, The Birds and other Hitchcock classics filmed on location in the San Francisco Bay Area. You’ll hear great stories about how Hitchcock chose those locations and how he filmed them. And you’ll learn why San Francisco was the perfect setting for Hitchcock’s favorite themes: danger, deception, and obsession. It’s a treat for Hitchcock fans and lovers of the City by the Bay.

Discuss the brilliant coming-of-age story by Ray Bradbury.  Enter his sensory imagination as he takes us on a stroll through the summer of 1928. Meet some unforgettable characters such as Bill Forrester, Helen Loomis, Colonel Freeleigh and the Lonely One. Please read  Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury ISBN 0-553-27753-7 by the first class.

The beloved children’s book The Little Prince, by the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), was actually written in the New York City area in 1942 while the author was in exile in the United States early in World War II. This newly-expanded courseexplores how the book not only reflects the life of the author, an air mail pilot in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but also was created in a wartime and American environment which caused the author to write what has been called a “spiritual journey disguised as a children’s story” with its moral “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; the essential is invisible to the eye.” Required reading for this course includes The Little Prince by Antione de Saint-Exupery and Saint-Exupery: A Biography by Stacy Schiff.