Vietnam veteran characters have been a mainstay on American television over the last fifty years. Following the end of the Vietnam War, they were portrayed most commonly as mentally dangerous criminals and unstable drug addicts. This characterization changed in the decade that followed, when veterans of the war were depicted on television in the form of more heroic characters like Magnum P.I. and the A-Team. Donnie Summerlin will bring that transition to life through the use of videos clips that reflect how the nation came to terms with the war through television media in the late twentieth century.

Thomas Cole, the so-called father of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting, was born in England's industrialized Lancashire and immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 18. Essentially self-taught, he would transform landscape painting into what he called "a higher sort" that combined scenic specificity with history, literary and allegorical meaning. We will examine how specific terrain like the Catskills intersected with his growing concerns about environmental degradation and the Jacksonian greed for things, not thoughts. In addition, we will analyze his epic masterpiece, The Course of Empire of 1834-36.