Tuesday Session 2   

This course will examine the life, work, and enduring legacy of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, both during their time in the White House and beyond. We will delve into their political careers, post-presidential humanitarian efforts, and impact on American society and the world. Through readings and critical analysis, we will explore the complexities of their legacy and their contributions to issues such as human rights, democracy, and public health.

This course will provide insight into the mental processes used to create an aesthetic experience. The course begins with defining art appreciation. Next, the theories of the early 20th century psychologists Freud and Jung on art and the unconscious are covered. The course will discuss contemporary scientific research on the conscious and unconscious mental processes used during art appreciation. Finally, personality variables and contextual factors that affect preference for certain types of art will be examined. The course ends with a discussion of art appreciation in the future.

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.

Lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories are used to deny reality and promote authoritarian interests in America today. This course identifies the anti-democratic truth-killers, examines how they create and amplify disinformation and manipulate the population, and discusses how to win the war on truth. We will rely on the book, On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy (McIntyre, 2023), and other sources.

This course will explore a wide range of Medieval and Renaissance art in the collections of museums around the world. Members will learn about medieval manuscript illuminations and discuss Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Vermeer. Of particular note are the paintings in the New York Metropolitan Museum's recent exhibition about the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, Siena: The Rise of Painting, (1300-1350). Understanding art in its cultural/historical context is centered in this course. Half of the course content is repeated from the prior course.

This course considers Cardiovascular Organ Replacements (CVOR). The basic physiology of four organ systems will be reviewed (heart, lung, blood vessel, blood) and the medical, engineering, and societal considerations for CVOR systems discussed. The plusses and minuses of commercially available CVOR will be considered leading to discussion as to possible improvements of existing CVOR. The health inequities and disparities faced by underrepresented and underserved patients will be discussed along with challenges patients with CVOR and their families face daily. The business and economics of CVOR will also be discussed within the context of spiraling health care costs.

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.