Courses: Summer   

**This class is a Hybrid. This portion of the class will be taught In-Person. See the separate Zoom class listed below this one in the catalog**

**This class will not be meeting July 8th and will end on July 15th. A recording will be available.** 

It’s been said that “If Mozart was possible, then the word ‘impossible’ should be eliminated from our vocabulary.’”  San Francisco Opera’s Dramaturg (Scholar in Residence) Emeritus Kip Cranna will guide you through the full spectrum of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s operatic genius, with video and audio examples (with English subtitles).  We’ll explore the literary and historical backgrounds of the operas, including early works by this famous child prodigy. We’ll examine his all-too-short career, and. delve into his most famous works, including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute. No previous opera background required.  Just watch, listen, and enjoy.

**This class is a Hybrid. This portion of the class will be taught Zoom**

**This class will not be meeting July 8th and will end on July 15th. A recording will be available.** 

It’s been said that “If Mozart was possible, then the word ‘impossible’ should be eliminated from our vocabulary.’”  San Francisco Opera’s Dramaturg (Scholar in Residence) Emeritus Kip Cranna will guide you through the full spectrum of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s operatic genius, with video and audio examples (with English subtitles).  We’ll explore the literary and historical backgrounds of the operas, including early works by this famous child prodigy. We’ll examine his all-too-short career, and. delve into his most famous works, including The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute. No previous opera background required.  Just watch, listen, and enjoy.

**This class will be taught In-Person**

The art of ‘exotic’ and ‘primitive’ cultures assumed a new importance for European artists in the closing decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. The search for new ways of representing the world coincided with the decline of the academic art system and the sense of living as an alien in an increasingly controlled and mechanistic society. Non-European art forms seemed to offer a path out of this dilemma and into a brave new visual world unshackled from crippling precedent and open to a new freedom of expression appropriate to the expanding horizons of modernity.

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will skip July 8 and end on July 15. HOWEVER, Dr. Bell will be in San Francisco on July 8th and will offer an in-person Mini Course, 3:00 - 5:00 on Alexander Hamilton. That class is listed with the July Mini Courses.**

How do you slay a many-headed monster? How do you destroy an entrenched special interest that profits from treating people like property? In the decades between 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived, and 1787, when delegates in Philadelphia drafted the new federal constitution, men and women committed to opposing the spread of slavery in North America grappled with these questions. This six-week course offers you the opportunity to meet a large and often unfamiliar cast of characters—both Black and white, enslaved and free—who developed a range of tools and tactics, means and methods to escape slavery or try to resist it.

**This class will be taught In-Person**

Emily Dickinson wrote famously of putting away “My labor and my leisure too” to take a slow carriage ride “toward Eternity.” In our six weeks together this summer we’ll read and write poems on working and playing—striving and achieving in various careers as well as relaxing and replenishing in that precious and necessary “time off.”

We’ll look at poems that grow out of professions such as science and health care, law and business, education and social work, and we’ll also consider poems about fun & games, traveling, goofing around, and resting.

At each class we’ll read and discuss a handful of published poems, then enjoy ample time for drafting new ones of our own. Sharing a draft is always optional. We’ll listen appreciatively and encouragingly, tuned-in to poetic tools such as diction, imagery, musicality and finding the sweet spot on the continuum between mystery and clarity.

All are welcome, new and seasoned poets alike.

**This class will be taught In-Person**

**Note that this class will not meet on June 18th, and will end on July 16th.**

In this class we’ll take a look at six women who left their indelible mark on Hollywood and the millions of fans who flocked to theaters to see them on the big screen.

We’ll discuss the highlights and low points, lives and careers, triumphs and tragedies,  of Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and Ida Lupino. Films will include Red Dust (1932); Baby Face (1933), Alice Adams (1935); My Man Godfrey (1936); Jezebel (1938), and Woman in Hiding (1949).

**This class will take place on Zoom**

**This course is open to members and non-members**

This 6-week yoga series will focus on realigning your body’s optimum posture using a stable chair.
Through the Iyengar Yoga method, the postures involve lengthening and strengthening of muscles that will strengthen the body, create more mobility and flexibility of the joints and support a healthy back. In addition to the chair, please have these yoga props available: strap, blocks and a blanket. (In lieu of a metal yoga chair, a sturdy dining/desk chair with no wheels will suffice; a belt/scarf for a yoga strap, thick books instead of blocks and a small bedroom blanket/throw. It will also be helpful to set up your Zoom space with the chair in front of a blank wall or tall, bar-height table.) All/no experience welcome.

**This class is a Hybrid. This portion of class will be taught In-Person. See the separate Zoom class listed below this one in the catalog.**

**Note that this class will skip June 19th as SFSU is closed for Juneteenth.**

More than any other record company, Motown represented a sound and a style, helping to define soul  music with hundreds of hits in the 1960s and 1970s. Using both common and rare recordings and video  clips, this course lays out the label's history from its beginnings in Detroit in the late 1950s to its growth to  the most successful independent record label of all time. Many legends of soul music will be seen, heard,  and discussed all the way, including the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Mary Wells,  Martha & the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson Five. 

**This class is a Hybrid. This portion of class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will skip June 19 as SFSU is closed for Juneteenth.**

More than any other record company, Motown represented a sound and a style, helping to define soul  music with hundreds of hits in the 1960s and 1970s. Using both common and rare recordings and video  clips, this course lays out the label's history from its beginnings in Detroit in the late 1950s to its growth to  the most successful independent record label of all time. Many legends of soul music will be seen, heard,  and discussed all the way, including the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Mary Wells,  Martha & the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson Five. 

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will skip July 4 and end on July 18.**

Media, Technology, and Culture explores communication technologies and how they frame human consciousness and influence society and culture.  We begin with speech and writing, then move up the evolutionary ladder to discuss the influence on culture of mass media (books, magazines, radio, television, and film), and finish with a focus on modern digital technologies, (computers, the Internet, social media, video games, AI) and their possible impact on the future. 

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will skip July 4 and end on July 18.**

In this richly illustrated course, we’ll delve into several Biblical narratives to see how modern research has clarified, enhanced, or contradicted the ancient texts. Topic areas will include: Creation and the Garden of Eden; the Exodus; The Jerusalem Temple and Its Altar; Did God Have a Wife; Famous and Infamous Israelite Royal Couples; When Jerusalem Fell: The Narratives of Jeremiah and Josephus. For each topic, we’ll integrate historical introductions, archaeological discoveries, and compare related ancient Near Eastern texts as we find new insights for some of the most important stories from our Biblical heritage.

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will skip July 5 and end on July 19.**

William Blake is an emblem of the Romantic movement: the Imagination was his world. An engraver, illustrator, painter, writer, and myth-maker, he spoke with angels and saw visions, all under poverty’s duress. His was an iconoclastic life shared with a beloved (and patient) wife. Unsuccessful in his own time, Blake’s influence has been great, from Aldous Huxley to the Beats and Van Morrison. Discover Blake’s visual art, writings, and legacy. Learn to see the world in a grain of sand.

**This class will be taught In-Person**

**Note that this class will skip July 5 and end on July 19.**

Each week brings a vast array of important and complex political and social developments. Analysis and coverage by print, social, and mass media sometimes clarify but often obscure what is really going on and why. It is hard to navigate through this maze.  The stakes are particularly high during a presidential election year.

After positive feedback from when this class was last given pre-covid, OLLI is offering a six-week facilitated discussion of important issues facing us as citizens. The goal is to select the most critical international, national and local topic(s) in each of the above weeks and to discuss these in-depth.

Participants will be expected to be up on the latest major issues covered by the media during the weeks of the course. If participants have a specific topic in the news that they would like to discuss, they will be expected to let the instructors know by email to OLLI at least four days before the next meeting. The facilitators will work with the results of these selections to choose the topics, identify discussion questions, and to facilitate the analysis of the class. 

There are two ground rules:
1. Any topic in the week’s news may be suggested; and
2. In the discussions, all opinions need to be respected.

While we may and should disagree, we must not become disagreeable!