The first three sessions of this course will explore the political history of Boston--past, present, and future. The group leader will make references to available texts for those who might want to review them and will share thoughts given his active participation in the life of the city for over 50 years. Although there will not be any assigned reading, relevant books of interest will be suggested to class participants. For each of the three lecture classes, Larry will deliver prepared remarks augmented by stories and recollections. Then…

July 4, 2026! A momentous national birthday. Fireworks and parades for sure. But it is also an important time to step back and reflect on our nation. How durable are the ties that bind us? Do we share core ideas, expectations, and concerns that sustain enough solidarity for us to govern effectively at a national level? As we look back to our founding, can we find ways to celebrate it that resonate more fully with who we the people are today? Can we somehow generate a greater sense…

For more than five thousand years, Mexico has provided a wealth of insights into the human experience, beginning from extraordinary ancient civilizations, to the age of conquest and the Spanish Empire, to epic initiatives to create a nation and ensure its survival. This course considers critical moments in the country’s history and its problematic relationship with the United States—forming ancient civilizations; participating in empire; contesting institutions and sovereignty; creating a nation; fostering revolution and stability—and how they were (or were not) resolved. It will conclude with a discussion…

Over the past 4,000 years or so of “recorded” history, there have been numerous references to cataclysmic events affecting humankind. In addition to earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions, there are descriptions of both recognizable and unknown diseases affecting humans and animals. From the beginning, these diseases—along with earthquakes and other natural disasters ---were associated with supernatural events. In both animist and theistic societies, the causes were ascribed to human behaviors that displeased one or more deities. Attempts to otherwise characterize diseases (and other significant occurrences affecting human life)…

Sustainability is perhaps the greatest challenge that we and our grandchildren’s generations will face. Yet governments and businesses are pulling back from their sustainability commitments even as the challenges become more evident with catastrophic climatic events, climate-induced conflict and migration, increasing inequality, biodiversity loss, and emerging issues associated with new technologies. This will not be a course to “teach” sustainability, though it will describe the key issues and concepts. Rather, we will combine our collective experience and knowledge to explore the role of sustainability in a “just” society.…

America’s First Ladies have often been regarded as “paper-doll” supports for the presidents. They were long expected to be accessories, who could, as Bess Truman put it, “sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight.” A closer look reveals, however, that the women who assumed this unelected role shaped it from their own singular perspectives in their time and place. Each session will focus on two of ten amazing women who did it their way. Northern First Ladies with Boston ties are…

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was respected as a writer, a critic, and a musician. His marriage to one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century, Clara Wieck, could easily be the basis of a modern love story. While having written some of the greatest masterpieces in all genres, oftentimes his music and influence are underestimated. Frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries, not only did he absorb the influences of previous composers, but his compositions influenced many who came after him, beginning with Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky. Schumann’s…

This course will explore the evolution and culture of the human diet from the hunter/gatherer to the gourmet with selected readings and images of art. How did fire change the human diet? What is the role of religion and belief in our diet? How do colonization, conquest, and cultural exchange influence what we choose to consume?

The focus of this seminar will be the artist Christo and the public art works created with his wife Jeanne-Claude over the course of 60 years. It is largely based on the group leader’s personal experience, together with her husband Mitko, Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s consulting engineer. The course also relies on articles, books, and interviews with the Christos. The course will begin with the early lives of Christo and Mitko, including when they each left Bulgaria, how Christo met Jeanne-Claude, and how they later became friends and teammates…

Why would almost one thousand years of European History -- from the beginning of the Fifth Century CE to the end of the Fourteenth -- matter to us? Why would a period of history ravaged by invaders, lacking in institutions to provide law and order, influenced profoundly by Christianity and its dogmas; an age of superstition, lonely monasteries, pilgrimages and Crusades; an age of knights errant who made war their profession and chivalry their escape from brutality; an age of feudalism fed on servitude and economic disaster, which…

The monuments created in the Civil War’s wake tell different stories about this conflict. Some celebrate Union victory and the coming of Emancipation; others, such as those that celebrate the Confederacy, glorify famous generals and the common soldier. Hundreds of Civil War monuments have been removed in towns and cities across the country since 2015. This course will explore the history of these monuments going back to 1865 and how they illuminate the often conflicting ways in which Americans have chosen to remember and commemorate the Civil War.…

“Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys after he sacked Troy’s sacred city. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.” So begins the Odyssey, the extraordinary and monumental epic of the long-suffering, shrewd Odysseus who, ten years after the fall of Troy, longs to return home where his wife is fending off suitors…

This course will step back in time to look at some British and Irish poets of the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries: the Romantics, Pre-Raphaelites, Victorians, and early Modernists and Seamus Heaney. Because the group leader will choose some of her favorite works, as she hass done in previous courses, this will not be a comprehensive view of the selected poets. It is up to class participants to go deeper, and this will be encouraged. The selected verses cover a wide range of subjects and styles…

Seven Painters who Changed the Course of Art History, a book by Brian Thom McQuade (2012), will serve as an introduction to a course about the British satirical artist William Hogarth (1697-1764). Known as the “father of British art as well as the political cartoon,” Hogarth pioneered what we now know as the Conversation Piece. He started Britain’s first public art gallery. The course will examine the profound effect that Hogarth had on successive British painters, from his own time to the modern artists who have copied his…

“Shakespeare's comic genius was just as good as his tragic.” This seminar will test that claim with a famous early comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. The battle of the sexes between Kate and Petruchio will entertain you, especially in performance. The resolution, where Shakespeare flips and contrasts his two plot lines, may surprise you. The Norton Critical Edition will place The Shrew in its early-modern contexts of folklore and patriarchal ideology. Then the class will sample some adaptations, read some essays, and get the feminist response. Lastly,…