Courses: Summer   

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

**Note that this class will not meet on June 19 as the University recognizes Juneteenth, nor July 3rd for the 4th of July holiday.**

Documentaries are as creative, moving, and carefully constructed as any Hollywood film. Arguably, they require even more skill to do and do well, since they draw directly from real life and tell us something specific about it. We’ll explore six recent documentaries – All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, All Light Everywhere, Sr., Notturno, Dick Johnson is Dead, and Iris – to think about how documentary filmmakers, in very different ways, share important insights about life and the world.  

 

SFSU luminary Bill Nichols identified six approaches to documentary filmmaking, which we’ll use to structure each week’s discussions. We’ll begin with a short introduction to the approach the film demonstrates and then we’ll talk about the film. Our conversations will be supported with questions and clips that illustrate the approach, how it works, and why it’s effective.   

THIS CLASS IS FULL. Please click the "Add to Waitlist" button below.

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

**Note that this class will not meet on June 19 as the University recognizes Juneteenth, nor July 3rd for the 4th of July holiday.**

Looking back on turning points, highlights and lowlights of our lives can be both pleasurable and illuminating for anyone, and the process can result in arresting, evocative, publishable pieces. Our class will focus on flash memoir, brief true stories under 2,000 words. Each week we’ll examine the story-telling building blocks vital for memoir: vivid characters and settings, careful narrative pacing, lucid language, insightful musing. We’ll read and discuss a variety of published memoirs from across the lifespan and each week we’ll embark on writing a new flash piece of our own. We’ll also discuss publication opportunities and best practices for submitting.

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

**Note that this course will not meet on 4th of July**

Joseph Haydn occupies a pivotal place in the history of European classical music.  He began his career in the world of aristocratic patronage. Later, he launched himself  as a composer available to the concert-going public. His productivity was unabated  throughout the turbulence of the French Revolution. He nearly single-handedly  developed both the symphony and the string quartet. He was deeply connected with  Mozart and Beethoven and helped form their style and that of many generations to  come. In this course we will revel in the wit, charm, depth, and variety of the music he  composed over five decades. 

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

**Note that this course will not meet on 4th of July**

After the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, chairman Mao Zedong rallied women to join the labor force, saying, “Whatever men comrades can accomplish, women comrades can too”, and proclaiming that “Women hold up half the sky”.  The reality is that the achievement of equality in status, rights and opportunities for women and girls remains elusive despite the strong evidence of benefits that would accrue  not just to women but to their families, communities, countries,  and  the entire world.  Focusing primarily but not exclusively on low income countries, this course will examine how to unleash the potential of three billion women and girls and the impact that this will have on us all.

The challenges faced by women and girls are daunting. For example, according to the United Nations, one third of women in low income countries were married before they were 15 years old, more than one third of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, over 2.7 billion women worldwide are legally restricted from the job options available to men, and women are sorely under-represented in positions at all levels of political power.

In this course, we will review the current status of women and girls in  the areas of health, education, the economy and political voice, and examine the evidence about  how improvements  will contribute to  poverty alleviation, democracy, and even climate change mitigation.  The goal of the course is to have a better understanding of a. the situations faced by women and girls in their quest for a better life,   b.  the steps that have proven successful in overcoming the challenges women and girls face, and c. the impact of enhanced life options for women and girls on the lives of men and boys.

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

**Please note that this class will begin one week late on June 14 and run until July 19.**

This course will examine the history of portraiture and self-portraiture in both art and  photography. We'll examine why portraits began, what were their meanings, what roles did they  play in society and the home, and how those roles may have changed over time. We'll explore  what we can find out about the person or persons that are depicted. We'll look at different  techniques that artists have used, and how rules were established and then broken. We'll see why portraits interest us, or if they don't, why not? 

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

The recent introduction of ChatGPT has resulted in an explosion in the discussion of Artificial Intelligence(AI) and its creative, legal, and ethical implications. Hardly a day passes when there is not a news story about a new application of this software. Some pundits see AI (and its latest incarnation in ChatGPT) as a highwater mark in technology, others see it as a viable threat to humanity. This course will examine the roots of ChatGPT with a broad view of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotics from their history in myth and literature, to their actual implementation and to the social and ethical issues they might bring to the present and future. 

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

A central irony of our historical moment is that, just as we are making real advances in understanding core aspects of what makes human beings the kind of creatures we are, we are also transforming fundamental aspects of our nature in potentially profound ways. The first part of this course starts by surveying recent efforts to extend classical approaches to thinking about human nature and then moves into profound recent advances in the human sciences (psychology, psychiatry, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive and brain sciences), including new ideas about the typical limitations of human cognition as such, the relation of language to thought and the brain, the relationship between body and mind/brain especially in the cases of the emotions and trauma, and the roots in the brain, cognition and culture of more complex psychological dispositions like empathy, morality, the appreciation of beauty and wellbeing. The second part of the course turns to a consideration of whether we stand on the cusp of an era in which we will increasingly reengineer human nature with profoundly unpredictable consequences. Until recently the stuff of science fiction, the possibility of a “posthuman future” grows ever more realistic in light of our advancing understanding of the brain, our growing capacity to integrate machines and technology into our bodies and minds, the rapidly evolving possibilities for reengineering genetics and, with it, evolution, and ever accelerating technological developments. 

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

Confucius calls age “a good and pleasant thing” while for playwright Tom Stoppard, “Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” Great writers have long explored the double-edged sword of aging with all its attendant joys and sorrows—as wisdom battles regret, loss brings reassessment, and youthful aspirations give way to acceptance. In this seminar we will read and discuss short stories by an array of international writers—from Alice Munro to I.B. Singer, Anita Desai to Ray Bradbury, and many more—exploring how they tackle many aspects of aging, both personal and societal, with insight, pathos, and even humor.

Students will be sent stories to read in advance of class sessions, then engage in lively discussions about their themes and interconnections.

**This class will be taught on Zoom**

This set of lectures will examine one of the most defining eras in US history, the years from 1929 to 1941.  In those years, we saw wrenching events such as the Stock Market crash, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the global catastrophe leading up to World War II.  We will also be exploring the career and politics of America’s 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as the development and evolution of the “New Deal” and his larger response to perhaps the greatest economic crisis ever faced by any president.

**This class will be taught on Zoom.**

**Please note that this class will not meet on July 7.**

Seen through American eyes, July 4, 1776 marks a triumphant moment: the birth of a bold new nation committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Through British eyes, the American Revolution looked quite different. This course will examine America’s through the lens of Britain’s Empire. Topics include the imperial dimensions of the Boston Tea Party, British views of the America war, Irish participation on both sides in the war, the fate of empire on Britain’s Caribbean islands, the ordeal of white loyalists and Black refugees, and the search for a site for a new penal colony that resulted in the rise of Australia after 1788.