In-Person Courses   

Climate change and related environmental issues look like issues of technology and science. That technology, however, is shaped by economic and political systems, which, in turn, are rooted in industrial civilization founded upon the cheap power made possible by burning fossil fuels. We will examine all these aspects of climate change and fossil fuel use to gain an understanding of this most critical issue of our time.

This course is a detailed investigation of Homer's Iliad. We will give attention to oral-poetic aspects of the epic, including epithets, formulaic language, type-scenes, and ancient performance practices. The main thrust of the course, however, is to look at the "arcs" of the major characters, the structure of the plot, and the use of divine intervention. The goal is to base an interpretation of the work on the observations that can be made in these areas. While this is officially a lecture course, classroom discussion is encouraged and welcomed.

This course will use Rembrandt van Rijn's painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr.Tulp as a point of departure to explore the Dutch Golden Age in art, letters, science, medicine, and commerce. Historical figures discussed will include philosopher René Descartes, artist Johannes Vermeer, physician and naturalist Herman Boerhaave, and rebel aristocrat William of Orange. From the rise of middle-class domestic art to the frenzied economic bubble of the Tulip Mania, from philosophy to piracy, from coffee to cannabis, we will discover a tiny nation that in many senses invented modernity and launched the European enlightenment.

 

This course guides members on a deep dive into some particular sets of propaganda practices by different regimes throughout history. In particular we will focus on Imperial Japan, North Korea, Post-Soviet Russia, and the United States. Members will gain a basic familiarity with the tools and practices of propaganda and specific knowledge about the character of propaganda activities of those four regimes.

Black children and adults are greatly over-represented in traffic and pedestrian stops, frisks, searches, uses of force, and arrests by police in urban areas. This course will give a brief history of the problem of racial disparities and discrimination in Pittsburgh and other cities, provide current data, and analyze causes, effects, and solutions. Many sources will be used, including a RAND study in 2023, reports by Dr. Bangs in 2024-2025, and investigations by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Note: This course will be hybrid, meeting in the Community Engagement Center in Homewood and on Zoom.

This course, appropriate for members of any level, begins by teaching the basic figures used in English country dancing and practices them in the context of beautiful historic and modern dance compositions. Members will explore the grace, elegance, and playfulness of this dance form (think of Pride & Prejudice). No partner or experience necessary. Participants will regularly switch partners in our dance sessions. Be prepared for physical, mental, and social stimulation! The focus will be on dancing and enjoying moving with the music.

This course will be held at the Allegheny Observatory in Riverview Park. Each class will include both a presentation and discussion about a person or a discovery at the observatory and a short tour of a portion of the building. At the end of the five classes, we will have explored the entire building and looked at how John and Phoebe Brashear, Samuel Langley, and James Keeler impacted both the field of astronomy and the city of Pittsburgh. We will use the 13" telescope to view sunspots and the moon (weather permitting).

Please Note: This historic building is only partially handicapped accessible. Some of the tours will require steps. Parking is free.

Members will read and discuss two to three poems each week, taken from the anthology You are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limon, U.S. Poet Laureate. Poems will be provided for students. We will look at the myriad ways poets write about nature, how language evokes imagery and mood, as well as the craft of writing, i.e., line breaks, rhyme, and form. The instructor will provide optional writing prompts each week for members. Members will also be given a list of books written by the poets read in class.

This course aims to engage participants in an in-depth exploration of Jennifer Egan's innovative narrative techniques, complex character development, and thematic explorations in A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House. Through the lens of these two interconnected novels, particpants will examine how Egan uses non-linear storytelling, multiple perspectives, and experimental forms to capture the complexities of human experience in the digital age. The course will focus on key themes such as memory, identity, technology, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world.

Most often associated as an element of the ancient and medieval worlds, the concept of martyrdom became shockingly present in the modern world on September 11, 2001. This course will examine the origins of the concept of martyrdom, or the willingness to die for one’s religious beliefs, in the Western religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The dual nature of martyrdom promotes both dying in God’s cause but also justifies killing in God's name.

The Second Indochina War, known in the United States as the Vietnam War, lasted from 1955 to 1975. During that period, nearly three million Americans served, 58,000 died, and thousands more were scarred for life. Public support for the war peaked in the mid-1960s but collapsed after the Tet Offensive in 1968. This course will examine how Hollywood's treatment of the war and its participants changed over time, reflecting America's gradual disillusionment with a conflict thousands of miles from its shores.

This course will continue the “Baseball Movie Club” started last summer. Each week we will screen and discuss a film about baseball. This summer will focus on films about how Black, Latino, and Asian players have affected the game—and our larger culture. Included will be two documentaries: The League, about the Negro Leagues, with a strong focus on Pittsburgh, and Ballplayer: Pelotero, about present-day Dominican training camps. We will also view three fictional films: 42, about Jackie Robinson, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, about a barnstorming group of Negro League players in the 1940s, and Baseball Girl, a recent drama about a young South Korean woman who hopes to pitch in the big leagues. Join us for some good movies and good conversation!

From colonial times to the present, America has benefited from visionary women and men in law, politics, music, literature, journalism, medicine, science, religion, and social reform. From a list of more than a thousand people, the course presents one hundred profiles of both well-known and lesser-known heroes such as Jonas Salk, Clara Barton, Alice Hamilton, Mary Bickerdyke, Molly Ivins, Edward R. Murrow, Mary Heaton Vorse, and William Trotter.

If you have been writing or always wanted to write, this course will help you with certain basics: how to craft exciting dialogue, how to describe a place or a person, how to engage in a summary of action that you do not need to detail, how to use place and setting, and how to conceive of a plot. The basic goal will be to write a short story. Many stories take years to write, so this might be a first and second draft, or if you are lucky, it might be very advanced. The same skills are useful in longer works.

Technological advances, political volatility, and geopolitical unrest have made navigating the stock market and our own personal portfolios both incredibly challenging and also extremely rewarding. We will examine how individual investors can survive and even thrive in volatile environments. We will also examine the global economy, United States politics and its impact on stocks, and even the future of technology as we try to make sense of the broader market and our own finances.

A native of Pittsburgh and graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Gene Kelly had one of the most successful careers in motion pictures. He was a dancer, singer, actor, choreographer, and director – often more than one at a single time. His screen persona was often of the ‘good guy’, but he also played against type, such as his dramatic performance in Inherit the Wind. He was influential not just as a performer in classics such as Singing in the Rain and An American in Paris but on the art of filmmaking itself.

Movie-goers who think Eastwood's 60-year career relies solely on his dynamic screen presence may need to think again. Besides acting in 60 films, Clint Eastwood has directed 40, winning 4 Academy Awards and earning 11 Oscar nominations. Consider his films' dazzling smorgasbord of genres, too, and if you are not a fan already, you will likely become one as we explore this Hollywood legend's work. Films include: Two Mules for Sister Sara, Pale Rider, The Bridges of Madison County, Million Dollar Baby, and Gran Torino.

This course will first look at the history of environmental law in the United States, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its mandate to regulate and enforce the standards sought by Congress, and the relevant case law to date. The relationship between the environment and the economy will be explored, with an emphasis on the environmental legacy of heavy manufacturing (such as steel in the Mon Valley) and its impact on the local economy. Finally, we will look at international environmental litigation in the Hague and what the cases in the International Court of Justice say regarding environmental justice.

Society has many systems for detaining individuals depending on the motives for imposing detention: deterrence, isolation, rehabilitation, or retribution. We will compare the various systems of detention including adult criminal, juvenile, civil commitment of the mentally ill, and pretrial detention. We will try to find out how the best features of various systems can be used to achieve society's goals. News accounts of recent cases will serve to frame our discussion.

This course is designed to give lifelong learners a better understanding of the forces that saw Pittsburgh’s transformation from a resource-rich wilderness into an industrial powerhouse whose people and innovations helped build America. This course will present Pittsburgh’s history to the start of World War II as more than two-dimensional, grayscale ideas about rivers, coal, and steel. Rather, the city’s history is presented in a vibrant way that not only tells the stories of the names we know—Braddock, Forbes, Carnegie, Rooney—but digs deeper to pull from the margins the voices whose stories we haven’t yet heard.

This course will introduce members to the genre of self-taught art and the artists who create it. Formerly called "outsider art," these artists paint, sculpt, sew, and decorate spaces with minimal to no influences from outside sources. Their materials are commonly what is at hand: found objects for sculpture, cardboard for canvases, and cast-off scrap for garden churches. We will look at the lives and work of a number of artists, many of whom had little to no education and lived in economically and socially challenging environments. The artists include Bill Traylor, the Quilters of Gee's Bend, Howard Finster, Nellie Mae Brown, and Australian aboriginal and Inuit artists, among others.

This course will be an exploration of the history of fossil energy use and how fossil fuel combustion products are contributing to changing climates. We will examine climate science and will discuss the politics of climate denial. Practical, achievable solutions will be presented to stabilize climate, such as the decarbonization of the electric power and transportation sectors of the economy and the removal of excess greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Climate change affects us all, and informed citizens are critical for addressing this crisis.

The Industrial Age experienced in America brought numerous challenges to the companies that emerged and ultimately to the workers. This course will trace aspects of industrialization, the emergence of unions, and the immigration that occurred throughout the 1860s into the early 1920s. Most specifically, this course focuses on the coal industry. How did immigration solve the need for workers in mulitple industries? What factors contributed to the Industrial Age's tremendous growth? What stalled the unionization movement throughout the Industrial Age and beyond? These questions and others will be discussed.

The Korean War has long been called the forgotten war, but recent events have rekindled interest in learning something about the first war that America did not win. The course will look at the political and diplomatic events that led to the conflict, the geography of the war, and some of the key personalities involved and how they influenced the progress of the war. It also will look at the key campaigns and the eventual outcome.

This course introduces 31 Nationality Rooms of the University of Pittsburgh. The rooms were designed to represent the cultures of various ethnic groups that settled in Allegheny County but are also in use as functional classrooms. As Wesley Posvar, former Pitt Chancellor, said, "More than any other single asset, the Nationality Rooms epitomize the University of Pittsburgh character by melding culture, beauty, and learning. In their diversity, the rooms preserve and honor our ethnic identities. Collectively, they symbolize our national unity."

Cognition and culture will be explored in animals, using evolutionary theory as the framework for this course. Topics include animal learning, the accelerated process of domestication, and an examination into our companion animals' behavior. However, the majority of the course will be dedicated to the culture of wild animal populations and their cultural behavior that includes hunting, foraging and thieving behavior—to name just a few. Short videos will be shown in class, and readings are available upon request.

Our democracy relies upon a vigorous and independent media, as our founders realized when they added the First Amendment to the Constitution. But mass media has changed over the years and has become much less a force in the conduct of our national affairs. This course offers an insight into the development of media from Gutenberg to the internet. How and why consolidation has lessened the number of media voices and the effect that has had on our democratic institutions will be subjects of discussion in this course.

Diligent savers enter the second half of retirement with little insight into the complex tax and distribution planning dangers that can wipe away the sacrifice made during their working years. This course is designed to educate participants about how to keep more of their retirement savings by effective use of planning opportunities available under current tax laws. This course is updated annually to reflect new legislative developments and tax planning opportunities.

Soccer is the most played sport in the world with over 240 million participants around the globe. It is also the fastest growing sport in the United States. Although the history of the sport in the United States, in both an amateur and professional capacity, dates back decades, it is still not fully understood and appreciated. Many viewers do not understand the complexities, strategies, and rules of the beautiful game. With the next FIFA World Cup set to be co-hosted by the United States in 2026, this course will help members appreciate the sport before the international spotlight arrives on our shores.

This year will be the 50th anniversary of such iconic movies as Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nashville, Night Moves, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This course will look back at these and other popular films that captivated audiences in 1975. We will place these films in the cultural contexts of American life in the 1970s as well as the artistic contexts in the New Hollywood Cinema and the rise of blockbuster filmmaking. We will discuss how and why they have resonated with viewers then and now, and we will come away with a new understanding of what it means for a movie to be a classic.

We will explore how healthcare is distributed in the United States. Who gets what? From whom? Who pays for it? Why? How did we get to this uncomfortable, inefficient, and unjust place? Can our bewilderingly complicated and widely criticized system be reformed to deliver high-quality care ethically, effectively, and economically?

Until the Holocaust, a large majority of European Jews lived in the eastern part of the continent. Ashkenazi Jews were welcomed in Poland when they were expelled from England, France, and German lands in the Middle Ages. Sephardic Jews were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire when they fled the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. But as western Jews were gradually emancipated beginning in the 18th century, east European states like Romania and Russia resisted. Antisemitism emerged. Its most violent forms before the Holocaust were the pogroms in the Russian Empire.

This course will explore films where people live in oppressive contexts. Some films will be viewed in class while others will be watched by individuals on their own. We will cover broad concepts: national socialism and antisemitism, slavery and Jim Crow, life behind the Iron Curtain, immigration, anti-immigration perspectives, and totalitarian personality cults. The movies we will watch are cinematically excellent, and may include: The Shop on Main Street (1965), Aferim! (2015), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), The Lives of Others (2006), and A Better Life (2011).