Courses & Lectures

Monday Afternoon at the Movies: Immigration Stories*
Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH
Mondays, January 27, February 3, 10, 3–4:30 p.m.
Hillyer Hall 303 (Film Projection Room)
$60

Description: Immigration, a hot-button issue here in America, is a headline-grabber in Western Europe, too. Three 21st-century European films jumpstart our discussion of this very current event: one British, one German, and one an international co-production, set in Britain but directed by a Mexican. NOTE: Registrants should view the subject film before each class.

• January 27: Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002) treats Nigerian, Turkish, West Indian and Russian immigrants in London, studiously de-emphasizing the white British presence, hardly seen in the film. The great Chiwetel Ejiofor (Inside Man, 12 Years A Slave, Doctor Strange) stars as Okwe, a Nigerian doctor working illegally in London as a minicab driver and hotel night clerk. He shares a room with Turkish asylum seeker Senay, also working illegally, as a chambermaid. When Okwe finds a human heart in one of the hotel bathrooms, a mystery ensues. Commercial neon of minicab offices, slot machines, and street markets give us a vibrantly colorful story. With Audrey Tautou (Amélie) as Senay.
• February 3: Turkish-German director Fatih Akin sets Gegen die Wand (Head-On) (2004) in the Turkish community of Hamburg. Protagonist Cahit, whose only religious principle is “punk is not dead,” ekes out a bohemian living by collecting empties in a music venue. Enter Sibel, whose traditional-values parents want her to find a nice Turkish boy to marry, but must settle for Cahit. He vies with Sibel in self-destructiveness, though her self-harming in Germany pales in comparison to what awaits her in Turkey, when she returns to Istanbul to live with her cousin. The film’s soundtrack features post-punk, Goth, and Turkish traditional music, with a brief cameo from Maceo Parker, saxophone player with both James Brown and George Clinton.
• February 10: Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), an action thriller based on a P. D. James novel, stars Clive Owen in a futuristic Britain. The world’s women have become infertile, the government issues suicide kits, and non-nationals are rounded up for internment and deportation. Owen’s cynical journalist character has an ex-girlfriend (Julianne Moore) who has become the leader of an underground resistance group. Like most good dystopias, Cuaron’s film is a commentary on the present. It’s also celebrated for both its production design and a long-take camera style with shots running five minutes uninterrupted. An entertaining Michael Caine cameos as an aging liberal.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH was born in London to Irish immigrant parents and was educated at Sussex University and SUNY Buffalo. He co-founded the Cinema Department at the University of Hartford and chaired it for 14 years. He has published widely on film, literature, and theory. His book, Durational Cinema: A Short History of Long Films, appeared from Palgrave Macmillan at the end of 2022. He plans to retire from full-time teaching at the end of the present academic year.

British Eye and American Ear: When David Hockney Met James Sellars*
Instructors: GARY KNOBLE and THOMAS SCHUTTENHELM
Tuesday, March 4, 3:30-5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: What happens when two high-octane artists mash up their ideas, creating a new form? They christen it (Haplomatics), then get a show at the New Britain Museum of American Art (December ’24 – October ‘25), to give you not just the result – a multi-media work – but the process and collaboration. This duo’s synergy combined David Hockney’s 35 xerographic prints and text with narration and innovative musical score from The Hartt School’s James Sellars into an animated film that introduces Haplomes, a genus of abstract beings. Our lecture will discuss the artists, the NBMAA show, and the book that chronicles it all, giving you a deeper glimpse into both their friendship and the whimsical world into which their collaboration leads us.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructors: GARY KNOBLE, a Yale graduate, lives in Hartford. He collects and researches the work of Hartford artists from the 1800s to the present, work he began after retiring from The Hartford Insurance Group as VP of Data Management. He is a Trustee of the New Britain Museum of American Art and chair of the Collections Committee. In 2018 he participated in the Art in Farmington Village show at NBMAA. In 2021 he was contributor and assistant curator for Where Are the Women at the University of St. Joseph and Visionary Voices in Art at the Hartford Town and County Club. Since 2016 he has written 100+ short biographies of 19th- and early-20th century artists who lived or practiced in the Hartford area, and 20+ histories of Hartford area arts organizations. This collection comprises an upcoming book on the history of the Hartford art world, 1800-1950.

THOMAS SCHUTTENHELM is an American composer and guitarist celebrated for his intricate craftsmanship and rich, multifaceted style. His compositions are deeply interwoven with cultural and artistic references, drawing on literary, visual, theatrical, and poetic traditions. Often born out of collaboration with poets, actors, and other musicians, his works explore the rich textures of human experience, blending sound and meaning in ways that resonate with both performer and audience. His recent recording Quincunx (Frameworks Records, 2024) is a chamber cycle and musical exploration of the guitar’s evolving identity, woven through unique instrumental combinations. He has published extensively on contemporary British and American music: three books on Michael Tippett. His monograph Haplomatics, on the collaboration between the artist David Hockney and composer James Sellars, will be published by Hirmer and available in December (2024). He is the current Artistic Director at Network for New Music.

The Silk Road: Music & Art Migrate*
Instructors: JU-YONG HA and FRAN ALTVATER
Thursdays, March 6, 13, 27, 3–4:30 p.m., Shaw Center/Hillyer Hall
$60

Description: Art, culture, material goods and ideas flowed both ways, along several routes collectively dubbed The Silk Road – a storied network that connected East Asia to the Mediterranean for at least three millennia (1500 BCE-1500 CE.) Not only did it move arts and music; but rather, in a kind of streaming globalization, it also spurred their development along its routes. We'll home in on regions of Greece, Persia, Turkey, India, Central and East Asia and Mongolia. There we'll examine sacred and secular art; the design and spread of musical instruments (Persian oud, Chinese pipa); musical traditions (Byzantine chant and Arabic-Persian music); Chinese musical influence on Korean and Japanese court traditions; shamanism and music in ritualistic practices (Siberian, Mongolia and Korea.)  We'll also learn how politics and geography were inevitable influencers.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructors: JU-YONG HA is an ethnomusicologist and composer with a distinguished career in both academia and performance who has introduced traditional and contemporary Korean and Asian music to audiences around the world. An assistant professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Hartford, Ha has lectured widely and taught at Seoul National University and Korea National University of Arts. He has also worked with the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism as a cultural attaché, and published extensively on Korean music and immigrant culture in The World of Music, Asian Music, and Review of Korean Studies. Ha holds a PhD in Composition and Ethnomusicology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).

FRAN ALTVATER (PhD, Boston University) is associate dean of student academic services and an associate professor of art history. Her research focuses on medieval art and architecture, museum studies and issues in collegiate teaching. Her book, Sacramental Theology and Baptismal Fonts: Incarnation, Initiation, and Institution was published in 2017.

Temporary Ruins: How Art Puts Disaster in Perspective*
Instructor: CARRIE CUSHMAN
Friday, March 21, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford)
$20

Description: Natural disasters happen, and with them, the human struggle to process the destruction, not just in the moment, but also years later. How we remember or frame such events – what stories we tell ourselves about them – shapes our ability to grapple with large-scale loss. Carrie Cushman, Edith Dale Monson Curator at the Hartford Art School, takes up the question of how artists – including photographers, architects, and curators – help us memorialize disasters. Her case study?: modern day Japan. In the wake of important anniversaries marking the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami, she’ll discuss how Japanese artists have shifted their artistic approaches to memorializing disaster. The most seismically active country on earth, the Japanese landscape is a crucial barometer for understanding methods for representing disaster in an increasingly fragile world.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: CARRIE CUSHMAN (PhD in Art History, Columbia) is the Edith Dale Monson Gallery Director and Curator at the Hartford Art School and a specialist in postwar and contemporary art and photography from Japan. Prior to joining the University of Hartford, Carrie worked as a curator at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Her recent publications include Komatsu Hiroko: Creative Destruction (2022) and Going Viral: Photography, Performance, and the Everyday (2020). She is also the co-creator of the educational website, Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography.

Music & the Muse: A Composer’s Creative Process*
Instructor: RAMI LEVIN
Friday, April 18, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford) OR Tuesday, May 6, 3:30-5 p.m., Duncaster (off-campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: How do composers do what they do? Is composing “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” as Thomas Edison supposedly described Genius? For the person sitting solo in a studio, what’s the source of that inspiration? How do ideas become sound, and has technology changed the process? Let's delve into this. Composer, musician, and educator Rami Levin discusses her work and plays excerpts from her compositions to demonstrate text setting, storytelling, and the constraints that generate creativity. She’ll reveal, among other things, whether composers must learn to play all the instruments they write for.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: RAMI LEVIN (BA Music, Yale University; MA Composition, University of California San Diego; PhD Composition, University of Chicago) has composed extensively for chamber ensembles, chorus, and orchestra and her works have been performed and recorded internationally. She served as president of American Women Composers, Midwest, and was founding director of the chamber music series Lake Forest Lyrica. While living in Chicago she was chair of the Department of Music, associate dean of faculty, and Composer-in-Residence at Lake Forest College. The recipient of a Fulbright award in 2008, she spent a semester teaching and composing at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. She moved to Brazil in 2010 where she taught and worked as a composer. Back in Connecticut, she headed the Board of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford from 2018-23.

U.S. Pop Music: How Race & Place Shaped the Music You Love*
Instructor: KAREN M. COOK
Thursdays, April 3, 10, 17, 3–4:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Pop (as in “popular”) music is a concept, not a category. Pop music is always fluid, transitory, and often starts local before “all of a sudden” saturating the ether. America’s vastness, wildly divergent geography and exceptional mixture of people birthed dozens of pop music genres in the 20th century. Geography (place), origins/ethnicity (race), and even the space where music is performed – remember “disco,” as in discotheque? – all influence a genre’s spread. So does pressure from fans and promotion by music industry execs. As musicians grow, evolve, change (Bob Dylan goes electric!), their popularity soars or craters. Karen Cook dives into this flow, to tell us how place and race yielded minstrelsy and jazz; how 1950s Latinx immigration popularized the mambo (and “I Love Lucy”); how southeastern bluegrass and “Okie” country music became mainstream, which is to say, popular; and how an individual voice can start something big. Grab your place in this pop parade!

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: KAREN M. COOK is associate professor and chair of Music History at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. She specializes in music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and also in medievalism in contemporary music & media, especially video games. Her book Music Theory in Late Medieval Avignon: Magister Johannes Pipardi was published in 2021 as part of Routledge’s RMA Monographs Series. She is currently co-editing two volumes: Gender, Sexuality, and Video Game Sound, with Michael Austin and Dana Plank for Routledge, and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology, with William Gibbons and Fanny Rebillard for Brepols. She teaches and lectures on popular music topics at Hartt and at various conferences and symposia.

Sounds & Sweet Airs for The Tempest: Creating the Score and Sound Design*
Instructors: ROBERT H. DAVIS and KATHRYN SWANSON
Lecture: Wednesday, April 16, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
Performance: Sunday, April 27, 2 p.m., Handel Performing Arts Center
$30 (includes the lecture and performance ticket)

Description: William Shakespeare's The Tempest is his most musical play. As Caliban says, "the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.” Join Director Robert Davis and composer Kathryn Swanson for their Show and Tell on The Hartt’s School’s production of The Tempest. You'll hear how they developed an original musical score and dramatic sound design – and also about how their crucial collaborative process shaped the production you’ll see.  All registrants also receive an invite to a tech rehearsal.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructors: ROBERT H. DAVIS is professor of Theatre in The Hartt School. As a professional actor and vocal coach, he has worked in New York and at regional theatres across the country. At Hartford Stage he played in A Christmas Carol for 15 years as Bob Cratchit. He received a Connecticut Critics Circle Award for The Exonerated at Theater Works of Hartford and appeared in Show Boat at the Goodspeed Opera House. For The Hartt School Theatre Division, he has directed numerous productions including Nicholas Nickleby, Richard Ill, and On the 20th Century.

KATHRYN SWANSON, PhD, began her working career in Hollywood. Now in Hartford, she has collaborated with area musicians, composed for choir and orchestra, and scored several dance and theater productions. Most recently she has composed for two dance productions: Paper Dolls and Canticle for Innocent Comedians. Kathryn currently teaches courses in film scoring, musicianship, music history, and music theory at The Hartt School.

Health and Harmony: Music to My Ears—and All the Rest of Me*
Instructor: DEE HANSEN
Wednesdays, April 30, May 7, 14, 3:30–5 p.m.
Shaw Center/Hillyer Hall
$60

Description: Music moves us, emotionally, physically, spiritually. How does this mysterious force evoke joy, sadness, excitement, fear, hope? Can our response to music affect our health – or our health affect our response to music? Does music boost brain function? Music educator and musician Dee Hansen will note (pun intended) the impressive and groundbreaking global research on music's influence on well-being. She'll get us talking about insights from music psychology, neuroscience, and music therapy, to prove what we've all been pretty sure of already:  music in one's life is a game-changer. Rhythm and beat, lyrics plus notes, lullabies and operas all impact cognition, mood and creativity. This interactive class reinforces the positive ways music works on us all.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: DEE (DEMARIS) HANSEN is a professor emerita of Music Education and author of 100 Years of Hartt: A Centennial Celebration (Wesleyan University Press, 2020). She served as Director of Hartt Graduate Studies, Chair of Graduate Studies in Music Education, and was Director of The Hartt Summerterm graduate program (2006-2014).  She holds a Master’s Degree in Music History and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in music education. Dr. Hansen specializes in curriculum and assessment development, music and literacy connections, brain research, and learning theory. She is the primary author of The Music and Literacy Connection (2006, 2014 2nd ed., 2025 3rd ed.). She performs with the Entwyned Early Music trio as a Renaissance and Baroque flautist, Celtic harpist, and Baroque guitarist. 

Presidents’ College Conversations: Town & Gown Converse
Instructors: HARTFORD MAYOR ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM and UHART PRESIDENT LAWRENCE P. WARD
Tuesday, February 11, 11:30-1 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
Free for Fellows/$20 for Non-Fellows*

Description: What happens when “Town” talks to “Gown”? We’ll find out when these two smart Hartford leaders meet on the UHart campus to discuss their goals, challenges, and solutions. They’ll ask and answer each other’s questions, such as: How can the City support the University and vice-versa? Are there current or planned shared economic initiatives? Or, what is the perception of the University from the City’s vantage point: is there an “Ivory Tower” complex or perceived resentment? Do other university-civic relationships offer models for what should or shouldn’t happen between UHart and Hartford? These questions are especially timely given the charge new UHart President Larry Ward has for the University: “to demonstrate active leadership in the Greater Hartford community” and to “absolutely… be active co-conspirators at the table” forging a “healthy, vibrant Hartford.” You won’t want to miss this informal but info-rich meet-up, and attendees can ask questions (time permitting).

*Fellows, with a gift of $100 or more, receive benefits including the Presidents’ College Conversations, library privileges, and parking in any non-reserved parking space on campus.

Instructors: LAWRENCE P. WARD became UHart’s seventh president on July 1, 2024. He previously served for ten years as Vice President for Learner Success and Dean of Campus Life at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Prior to that, Ward served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C. He also served as managing director at PRS, Inc., an organizational development consulting firm, and as a health care account executive for Aetna. Ward earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UConn, his master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Michigan, and his doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a faculty appointment in the Graduate School of Education. He has held multiple leadership positions in higher education: on the NCAA Board of Governors, chair of the NCAA Division III Management Council, and trustee at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM, Hartford’s 68th mayor, took office January 1, 2024. Mayor Arulampalam, the son of Sri Lankan refugees, was born in Zimbabwe. He previously served as CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, starting a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become local developers and tackle blight in Hartford. Mayor Arulampalam was formerly Deputy Commissioner of the CT Department of Consumer Protection in the Lamont Administration. He practiced law at the Hartford firm of Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, P.C. He was on the Boards of the Hartford Public Library and the House of Bread and also served on the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. The Mayor earned his BA in International Studies from Emory University and his JD from Quinnipiac University School of Law.

Presidents’ College Conversations: Art with Agency: Why Poetry Matters with CT’s Poet Laureate*
Instructor: ANTOINETTE BRIM-BELL
Monday, March 10, 2–3:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
Free for Fellows/$20 for Non-Fellows**

Description: We walk the world separately, and as individuals come to understand it through the frameworks we have learned. Fortunately, artists are here to challenge whatever singular worldview we have built. Poetry, especially, can energize our self-awareness and jumpstart change. Join Connecticut Poet Laureate Antoinette Brim-Bell in conversation about the power of poetry today: to reveal and criticize oppression; to include voices and stories ignored til now; and in so doing, to enlarge our shared histories and enrich our community. Complexities of race, culture, and identity shape everyone's world, Brim-Bell asserts. But she also knows that poetry evokes empathy, the necessary tool for dismantling barriers and discrediting systems that no longer work for the good of the whole. Poetry changes emotional habits and puts us through new paces. Let’s join her for this endeavor.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

**Fellows, with a gift of $100 or more, receive benefits including the Presidents’ College Conversations, library privileges, and parking in any non-reserved parking space on campus.

Instructor: ANTOINETTE BRIM-BELL, Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections:  These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alumna of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). Her poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, including Villanelles, 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the 44th President of the United States, Not A Muse, Poetry Magazine and Poem-a-Day.  Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous collections. Additionally, Brim-Bell hosted a series of Black History Month TV programs for the OneWorld Progressive Institute. 

American Utopian Communities
Instructor: RICHARD VOIGT
Tuesdays, January 28, February 4, 11, 18, 2-3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$80

Description: Shaker Village in nearby Hancock, Mass, was a Utopian community. So was the Oneida Community, one of several utopias in upstate New York.  And there were many others, including  Amana Colonies, New Harmony, Roycroft, and Buxton. All were – or are – American communities founded to fashion an exemplary world, one apart from society’s ills. Based on idiosyncratic religious doctrines, bold economic theories, visions of social harmony, artistic commitment, or technological innovation, their longevity varied. We may well ask, "What were they thinking?"  Perennially popular Richard Voigt will appraise their successes in creating earthly paradises. Why and how did they rise and fall? And even in failure, did they influence the society they had renounced? This idea of going elsewhere to craft and control one's own world is ever with us. Let's explore it.  

Instructor: RICHARD VOIGT is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Law School of the University of Virginia (“Mr. Jefferson’s University”). He served in the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., before entering private law practice in Connecticut where he became a partner in the firm of McCarter & English, LLC. He also serves as a para-judicial officer for the U.S. District Court for Connecticut, and has been recognized for his work, including in Best Lawyers in America. He frequently lectures on American history and culture.

Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Statesman
Instructor: BRYAN SINCHE
Wednesdays, February 12, 26, 2:30–4 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: Born a slave in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage, fled north, learned to read (a criminal act) and started to write. And did he write! In his tumultuous life Douglass penned three autobiographies and thousands of letters and speeches. He was a riveting orator, founded an abolitionist newspaper, even met with Lincoln in the White House. Many consider him the de facto spokesman for nineteenth-century Black America. Bryan Sinche relates Douglass’s authorial and abolitionist achievements before the Civil War and illuminates his later Civil Rights leadership. How does Douglass’s legacy endure today? Participants are encouraged to read an early Douglass autobiography: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845) OR My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Both are available online at Documenting the American South.

Instructor: BRYAN SINCHE (BA, University of Michigan; MA, PhD, University of North Carolina) is professor and chair of English and Modern Languages at the University of Hartford, where he has taught American and African American literature since 2006. Sinche is a scholar of nineteenth-century African American literature and the author of Published by the Author: Self-Publication and Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). He has written more than twenty essays and reviews for journals including American Literary History, African American Review, ESQ, Legacy, and Biography and for collections published by Basic Books, Cambridge University Press, and the University of Wisconsin Press. He has also edited two books: The Guide for Teachers, a companion to the third edition of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2014), and the first scholarly edition of Appointed: An American Novel (2019, co-edited with Eric Gardner).

Understanding America’s Right Turn
Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE
Thursdays, March 13, April 10, May 8, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m., Shaw Center/Hillyer Hall
$60

Description: Politically savvy Chris Doyle once again does some heavy lifting, raising post-election issues. Why did America elect Donald Trump again? How does historical perspective aid our analysis of President Trump’s second term? Discussions will treat domestic policies like the war on “woke,” mis- and disinformation, and economic reverberations, as well as global impacts including immigration and global migration. All registrants will receive recommended reading to enrich your class appreciation.

Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE teaches at Avon Old Farms School. He holds a doctorate in history from the University of Connecticut, an MA in history from Trinity College, and a BA in history from Western Connecticut State University. His commentary writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant and Education Week. His teaching has been featured in the New York Times.

Babies/Birthrates: Boom. . . or Bust?
Instructor: JANE HORVATH
Wednesdays, April 2, 9, 10–11:30 a.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: Time was – the 1960s, to be specific – ZPG was the trending acronym. Experts believed a "population explosion" (imminent or already underway) would have dire global impact. Zero Population Growth became the objective. The question then was how to approach the problem, and how to avoid the adverse results of overpopulation. Now headlines announce declining birthrates, and experts ponder the implications of this “alarming” trend. Global population grows, birthrates drop – two concurrent demographic trends. Is there a contradiction here, and should we be concerned? About what, exactly? This two-part course looks at the numbers and examines the associated social, political, and economic implications, short-and long-term.

Instructor: JANE HORVATH is associate professor of economics and directs the economics and political economy programs for the College of Arts & Sciences. She is also the founding director of the van Rooy Center for Complexity and Conflict Analysis and serves as the director of the University’s Minor in Complexity. Horvath joined the faculty of the University of Hartford in 1985. She earned a PhD in economics from the University of Connecticut in 1986, with a specialization in economic development. Her research and teaching interests include economic development, economic policy, complexity economics, and network theory.

Writing Women’s Lives: Then and Now
Instructor: ELIZABETH VOZZOLA
Thursdays, January 30, February 13, 27, 10-11:30 a.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Writing a Woman's Life, by Carolyn Heilbrun, broke ground in 1988. From that clearing sprouted a crop of works vividly contrasting women's lived experiences with society's expectations and dominant cultural myths. A cascade of women’s memoirs followed, fomenting controversy over their content and the genre itself. Fast forward 35 years, when no less than four female Ivy League presidents were forced out of their jobs at Harvard, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Brown. Harvard's President Drew Gilpin Faust and Brown's President Ruth Simmons had both published memoirs documenting their rocky roads to the top: Necessary Trouble and Up Home. What do those books validate or contradict in the Heilbrun classic? We'll compare and contrast: the roads and roles of talented women vs. men; black women vs. white; and the significance of memoirs as primary sources and guiding beacons. 

Instructor: ELIZABETH (ELLY) VOZZOLA, PhD, is professor emerita of Psychology and former Honors Program director at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford. Her specialty in moral development has included the study of literature and how it is understood by children, teens and young adults. She has authored two editions of a comprehensive textbook of moral development. Her children, grands, and great-grands provide plenty of real-time, real-life developmental material. 

Architecture Now: Building Inclusivity in Sacred Spaces
Instructor: MICHAEL CROSBIE
Tuesday, February 4, 3:30-5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: “Sacred spaces” are spaces which have the potential to affirm social justice, inclusion, and diversity, as these tenets are understood in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Yet such spaces have often historically been contested, and peoples’ access to them denied on account of their gender, race, religious belief, social standing, sexual preference, physical ability, or marital status. Why should this be? Must it always be? Architect Michael Crosbie, himself a builder of spaces, will present different designers’ concepts of what does/can/could constitute sacred space. Inclusion, if a design goal, repudiates exclusionary practices. The result is diversity both inside the sacred spaces and—surprisingly—outside, too.

Instructor: MICHAEL J. CROSBIE, PhD, FAIA, DPACSA, is professor of Architecture at the University of Hartford; the former associate dean of the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture; and former architecture department chair. He is the sole author, editor, or contributor to more than 75 books on architecture and author of hundreds of articles on architecture, design, practice, and education. Dr. Crosbie contributes frequently to international print and online publications and has lectured widely on architecture here and abroad. He is a registered architect who has practiced with Centerbrook Architects and Steven Winter Associates.

European Literary Excursions
Instructor: HUMPHREY TONKIN
Wednesdays, March 5, 12, 19, 26, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$80

Description: Travel (virtually) to far-flung European destinations without leaving campus. No lost luggage, infuriating delays, or obnoxious seatmates. The cost is modest. Expired passport? Not to worry. Let UHart President Emeritus and Presidents' College founder Humphrey Tonkin be your guide to four locales whose geography, culture and history he knows intimately. His curated tour includes striking visuals, personal anecdotes and quixotic reminiscences. Each exclusive excursion? Priceless.

• Cornwall. Cornwall, famed as a rugged and stunningly beautiful corner of England, has inspired artists as different as J.M.W. Turner and Barbara Hepworth, and writers as diverse as Tennyson, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and John LeCarré. I had the good fortune to be born there and, in the 1950s, to come into possession of a fold-up bicycle, the type used by WW II parachutists. That bicycle transported me to medieval theaters, ancient churches, graveyards, tin and copper mine ruins, and the origins of Methodism, among other curious destinations.
• Poland and the GDR.  Warsaw in 1959, when I first visited, was still emerging from the devastation of World War II. Poland, although firmly linked to Soviet Russia, was nevertheless experimenting artistically and reaching tentatively toward the west. East Germany, by contrast, was tied firmly to Mother Russia's apron strings. Moving around and within these areas in the 1970s and 1980s was truly surreal, a quality later captured in the novels of Jenny Erpenbeck and others.
• Hungary.  Visitors to today's Hungary will struggle to find the Hungary of eighty years ago – during German occupation and the ravages of the Holocaust. I first went in 1963 to interview a writer I knew, and I found myself immersed in a culture seemingly caught in amber – though soon to be torn apart in the Budapest Uprising.  Later, I translated the World War II memoir of Tivadar Soros, the father of George. That gave me a new understanding of modern Hungary's origins and how George Soros became one of the world’s leading financiers.
• Italy.  Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, attracted a curious cast of characters at the end of the nineteenth century: humorist Edward Lear; anarchist Peter Kropotkin; and botanist-archaeologist-poet Clarence Bicknell. Bicknell, the son of wealthy British industrialists, was an Anglican priest who switched his devotion to the work of Charles Darwin. He gained renown as a poet, internationalist, and explorer of prehistoric rock engravings, founding a small museum and library, the Museo Bicknell, in Bordighera. It remains there today, complete with its books and botanical specimens, a moment captured in time. For tennis aficionados, the world’s second tennis club was founded in Bordighera in 1878 – the training ground for Jannik Sinner, winner of the 2023 US Open.

Instructor: HUMPHREY TONKIN was president of the University of Hartford during the decade of the 1990s and was instrumental in the founding of the Presidents’ College. For almost twenty years earlier in his career, he was professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written books and articles on Elizabethan literature, linguistics, and translation. Recent publications include an edited volume on Language and Sustainability (2023), an edition of the poems of Clarence Bicknell (2023), and a translation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus into Esperanto (2023).

Read & Reflect: The Winner of the 2024 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction
Instructor: AMY WEISS
Monday, March 3, 12:30–2 p.m., Greenberg Center/Harry Jack Gray Center
Award Reception with the Winning Author March 12, 7 p.m. (location TBD)
$20

Description: Join an engaging one-time book discussion – about a book to be named in January. That’s when the 2024 winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award will be announced. This gives you plenty of time to read the book that will have just captured one of American Jewish fiction’s most prestigious awards. Edward Lewis Wallant, himself a writer, authored The Human Season and The Pawnbroker.  Past winners of this annual award include authors whom you know and love, among them, Chaim Potok, Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Rosen, Nicole Krauss and Elizabeth Graver. Amy Weiss, assistant professor of Judaic Studies and director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies will lead a discussion of the award-winning book on April 1. You are invited to the Wallant Award presentation itself on March 12, 7 p.m. (details to be announced on the Greenberg Center website).

Instructor: AMY WEISS is an assistant professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Hartford, where she also holds the Maurice Greenberg Chair for Judaic Studies. When she's not writing a book about American Jews, evangelicals, and Israel, she's busy reading about and teaching courses on American Jewish literature. Weiss received a 2023–2024 Greenberg Junior Faculty Research Grant to conduct research for her forthcoming book and has recently published articles in American Jewish History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Israel Studies.

Color My World: The Art & Science of Color*
Instructor: JEREMIAH PATTERSON
Thursdays, January 23, 30, February 6, 13, noon–1:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$80

Description: Children color rainbows. Later on, maybe in 8th-grade General Science, you "met" ROY G BIV.  Today those clothing colors – Red-Orange-Yellow-Green – have morphed into Rouge-Persimmon-Turmeric-Parsley. Yet the mystery of how we recognize and designate any particular color endures. What science enables this extraordinary visual experience? What role does light play in our color perception? How do artists combine and manipulate hues to make their art? How have science and art historically used color to create design harmony or its opposite? We'll see beyond its sheer beauty and decorative properties into the effects color produces. 

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Instructor: JEREMIAH PATTERSON has taught painting and drawing for nearly thirty years as a professor of Foundation at Hartford Art School. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, in numerous one-person and group shows. His work can be found in over 100 museums, private and corporate collections, including Connecticut's Florence Griswold Museum, and his still-life watercolors have been published in WATERCOLOR Magazine, Plein-Air Magazine, and American Watercolor. 

Exercising Your Brain: Never Too Late
Instructors: TINA RIORDAN and BARBARA SANCHEZ
Friday, February 21, 2-3:30, The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford)
$20

Description: Whether a certain white bread “builds strong bodies 8 ways” is debatable. Not up for debate is that exercise builds strong bodies in multiple ways – and strong minds, too. This program explores the exercise-mental health connection. What kinds of exercises alleviate symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress? Are only symptoms lifted, or does exercise diminish underlying causes of these disorders? What do we know about the science at work? Tina Riordan and Barbara Sanchez will identify different exercises and link them to specific mental well-being results. They’ll even guide us in personalizing our own exercise plans – and who knows how that might put a spring in our step for the springtime?

Instructors: TINA RIORDAN, PhD, is an assistant professor of Exercise Science at the University of Hartford. With a BS (Westfield State) in Athletic Training, an MS (West Chester University) in Post-Professional Athletic Training, and a PhD (Springfield College) in Sport and Exercise Psychology, Dr. Riordan uses her blend of athletic trainer experience and a deep interest in psychology to improve the quality of life and work-life balance in helping professions. Passionate about mentoring, she incorporates experiential learning to extend her students' education beyond the classroom.

BARBARA SANCHEZ, PhD, an assistant professor of Exercise Science at the University of Hartford, specializes in kinesiology with a focus on women’s health, resistance training, and exercise physiology. As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with a BS (University of South Florida) in Exercise Science and an MS (The Ohio State University) in Kinesiology, Dr. Sanchez combines her academic expertise with practical experience to advance the understanding of female health and performance across the lifespan. Her research explores the impacts of exercise on health and performance, particularly in challenging environments.

The Beauty of Fractal Geometry (No Math Expertise Required!)
Instructor: PEGGY MITCHELL BEAUREGARD
Tues, February 25, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean (off campus/Simsbury) OR Tuesday, April 1, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: Even if math was your most hated (or feared) subject, your grown-up self will be able to “get” the beauty of fractal geometry. It’s about patterns, ones that repeat infinitely, the smallest part of the whole being structured like the whole itself. Fractal geometry is a tool to describe how shapes in art, science, and nature intersect. It reveals how modern math permeates our world, hiding in plain sight. But the stunning beauty of fractal images can distract from their practical applications: dealing with complex coastlines, the structure of lightning, and the circulatory system’s intricacies. Join seasoned math professor Peggy Beauregard to explore fractals in art and architecture, modern engineering and medicine. She promises you need no math prerequisite. Zero. And she also promises you’ll emerge with a glorious new lens through which to view the world.

Instructor: PEGGY MITCHELL BEAUREGARD (BFA, Printmaking, Hartford Art School, MS Applied Mathematics, Rutgers U) is an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Hartford. She has taught courses in mathematics for elementary teachers, math for non-stem and arts students (discrete topics, finance), precalculus and calculus. She created and teaches the interdisciplinary course "Symmetry and Harmony: Mathematics in Art and Music," which includes applications of fractals, tessellations, Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio. Before teaching at the university level, Peggy taught art and math in inner city and suburban schools. She speaks regularly at national conferences, mostly to teachers and loves combining art and math to teach creative lessons that reach the diverse community of students in her classrooms.

AI’s Evolution and Future in Media
Instructor: ADAM CHIARA
Mondays, April 7, 14, 10:30-noon, Woods Classroom/Harrison Libraries
$40

NOTE: Limited to 32 participants

Description: Artificial Intelligence has changed media forever. This emerging, evolving technology impacts, well, everything. Social media and all the other writing we do – emails, essays, exams – will change, or already has. Over two sessions Adam Chiara checks in on AI developments now in the mediaverse, then tells us where signposts in today’s landscape point. We so want to know what’s ahead! Session 2 includes a hands-on lab experience to make it real for participants. Learn how generative AI works by using it yourself. We’ll use AI tools (like Gemini and ChatGPT) to solve problems and help write creative content. By participating, you’ll better understand how these programs can be used for good or ill. Bring your laptop for the workshop and learn a few practical AI skills while you are at it! 

Instructor: ADAM CHIARA is an applied associate professor in the School of Communication, as well as a multimedia storyteller who teaches courses in social media, public relations, and digital media.  An authority on media-related issues, he educates the public about evolving topics in the field of communication, especially social media. Chiara, an award-winning journalist, has reported for several Hartford area media outlets. He is a former contributor to The Hill, and has worked on public relations for the Yale’s Rudd Center (now UConn Rudd Center), Universal Health Care Foundation, and communication firms. He has a politics and government background from working at the Connecticut General Assembly.

Dam Removal: Connecticut’s Watershed Moment 
Instructors: EMILY HADZOPULOS and AIMEE PETRAS
Tuesday, April 22, 2-3:30 p.m., McLean (off campus/Simsbury) 
$20 

Description: What better way to celebrate Earth Day (and month!) than to learn about the impact of 5,000+ dams in our small state? (Yes, 5,000!) Built in a different era, most no longer serve their original purpose – having become more harmful than helpful. Many old dams block fish and wildlife, who need aquatic paths to access their breeding, feeding, and nursery grounds. When the fish are foiled, other animals lose their own food source. Dams also cause flooding, disrupt water flows, and trap sediments, endangering our remaining coastal marshes. Many dams are vulnerable to extreme weather. (Remember the partial breach of the Yantic River dam last winter?) Dam removal reconnects river systems, unblocks critical habitats, and reduces risk to communities. Who decides on repair or removal? How? And not least, who pays? The Nature Conservancy’s Emily Hadzopulos and Farmington River Watershed Association’s Aimee Petras will spell it out.

Instructors: EMILY HADZOPULOS is the Freshwater Restoration Project Manager for The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut, working alongside partner groups like the Long Island Sound River Restoration Network to advance collaborative stream connectivity and restoration projects across Connecticut. TNC is a global nonprofit with a CT chapter.

AIMEE PETRAS is the Executive Director for the Farmington River Watershed Association, a nonprofit working in Connecticut and Massachusetts to protect and restore the Farmington River and its Watershed through research, education, and advocacy.  The FRWA team is actively working on barrier removals across the Farmington River Watershed to improve connectivity within the watershed and to Long Island Sound.   

Medicine's Top 10: The 20th Century's Greatest Hits
Instructor: MIKE MAGEE
Friday, May 16, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford)
$20

Description: Medical Science has experienced an outsized growth spurt over the past 100 years, generating remarkable discoveries, transformative procedures and "bionic" equipment.  These have combined to lengthen our life-spans by 50%.  We longer-lived humans have also come to view our bodies and our very selves quite differently from previous generations. In 90 brimming minutes, veteran medical historian Dr. Mike Magee tells the whole surprising story. He'll ensure we grasp how far we've come, who brought us, what we left behind, and what may lie ahead. This fascinating odyssey pauses at 10 medical high points to explain each advance and to describe those who achieved the breakthroughs, revolutionizing the art and science of medicine.

Instructor: MIKE MAGEE, MD, is a medical historian and journalist, and the author of Code Blue: Inside the Medical Industrial Complex (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019). He has taught at the Presidents’ College and the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and Jefferson Medical College. He was also an Honorary Master Scholar at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine and the 2008 Distinguished Alumnus award recipient from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He lives in West Hartford, CT, and is the editor of the weekly blog Health Commentary.org.