Archive of Past Courses
Spring 2024
- The Bard Embodied: Shakespeare Alive!
- How to Study Birds: CT’s forests, farm fields, & freshwater wetland
- Digital Photography: An introduction to 35mm basics
- Due Process of Law: Interpreting the 14th Amendment
- Place Settings: What we build tells stories about what we value
- Rococo & Revolution: French painting in the 18th and early 19th century
- Salmagundi: A miscellany of the trivial & fascinating
- Sibling relationships: Exploring a unique family bond
- Written in Stone, Painted in Fire: Geology’s influence on 19th-c. New England Writers & Artists
- Writing Workshop: If Not Now…
Spring 2023
- A Classic Power Struggle: Maria Stuart or Mary, Queen of Scots?
- Stories of Lost Worlds
- The Art and Science of Listening
- Improvisation as structure in work, life, and creative pursuits
- "People don't do such things!"— Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler"
- The Ins and Ouches of Metal Pollution: Heavy metal isn’t just a kind of music
- Entangled & Ingested: Taking action against plastic pollution in our oceans
- Eat the Planet: Discovering good health & nutrition in our own backyards
- Climate Restoration: A practical reality in the 21st century
- Baroque Art: An imperfect pearl by any other name
Fall 2023
- Mark Twain (Part 2): Fresh Perspectives on his Late 19th-Century World
- Say Their Names: Reclaiming Lives from the Era of Connecticut Slavery
- “POW!” American Pop Artists in Mid-20th Century
- Garden Revolution: Landscape as Environmental Renewal
- Seminar on CT’s History: In Search of Our Collective Memory
- Flash Nonfiction: The Micro Personal Essay
- How to Study Birds
- Baroque Goes North: Dutch, Flemish, French, and English Art in the 17th century
- Rise of Autocracy: Creative Expression in Times of Extremism
Spring 2022
- Whale, Ho! The 19th-century whaling industry comes to life
- Song of Roland: A tale of valor, treason, honor, and death
- “What Beauty Is”: The 15th-century northern European artistic renaissance
- Post-Civil War Reconstruction: A second American founding and its legacies
- The Moon, Stars, and Tides: A sailor’s guide to the universe
- Speaking in Colors & Shapes: American modernist painters
- Moby-Dick: A whaling yarn, Shakespearian tragedy, or both?
- Attacking the Sakoku Zombie: Feudal isolationism and early modern Japan
- The Unlikely Origins of Connecticut Impressionist Painting: Visual Art Revolutionized
- “Funny You Should Say That”: It’s all about comedy!
2022 Fall
- Pen to Paper: Writing for your life
- Unblinking Eyes: Two artists look at war and life
- Mark Twain, A rare American voice
- Music of the Spheres: A multi-sensory look at five great poems “for the ages”
- An Artisanal Legacy: Early New England functional design
- Beguiling Performances on the Connecticut River
- Composing Your Photographs: Learn the rules, then break them
- A Wing and a Prayer: Techniques of bird rescue and rehabilitation
- A Sad Tale's Best for Winter
- A Humanist Impulse: Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael and the genius of 16th-century Italian painting
Spring 2021
- WWII Day-Long Event: Envisioning peace- former allies jockey in a postwar world
- Tristan: A love story for the ages
- Hiding in Plain Sight: New England’s complicity in the Atlantic world slave economy
- Regenerative Farming: Sustainable agriculture and its ties to global well-being
- Fiction Writing Workshop: Engaging the great outdoors
- Mary Cassatt: American artist, modern woman
- “Hope! Not optimism, Hope"
- Guilford Architectural & History Tour: At a crossroads in time
- Shining a Light on the ‘Dark’ Ages: Uncovering early European culture & history
- A River Runs through It: Exploring the many facets of the Connecticut River & environs
Fall 2021
- . . . Three, Two, One: A Journey to the Stars (and Back)
- Taking a Bow
- Reality, Mortality, Murder, and Madness
- Art of the Early Italian Renaissance
- Inventing America
- Human Duplicity
- How Does Your Garden Grow?
- Writing Flash Nonfiction
- Connecticut's Jurassic Park
- The Connecticut River Valley
- Art and the American Spirit
Spring 2020 - CANCELED Due to COVID-19
- Up from the Smoke and Ash of War: Examining the Sequel to Global Conflict, 1944–1956
- The Great Migration: Seasonal Birds Arrive in New England
- Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Poems for Every Time, Place, and Season
- Reality, Morality & Madness: Psychological Perspectives on Hamlet
- Read All about It! Literature that Changed the World
- Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival or the Quest for the Grail
- “Once Upon a Time”: Timeless Fairy Tales Retold
- When the Story Is Yours: Reading and Writing the Memoir Essay
- Majestic Repose: Classical Antiquity and Renaissance Sculpture at Connecticut's Slater Memorial Museum
- Click - Digital Photography for Beginners
Fall 2020
- Visual Magicians: The Power of American Realist Painters
- Up from the Smoke and Ash of War: Examining the Sequel to Global Conflict, 1944–1956
- Read All about It! The Search for Utopia
- A Hero’s Journey: Parzival or the Quest for the Grail
- Mirrors, Masks, Lies, and Secrets: The Psychology of Human Predictability
- Majestic Repose: Classical Antiquity and Renaissance Sculpture at Connecticut's Slater Memorial Museum
- Henry David Thoreau: Listening to a Different Drummer
- Reality, Mortality, & Madness: Psychological Perspectives on Hamlet
- Ego Integrity: Self-Actualization in a Disarrayed World
Spring 2019
- Your Turn at the Wheel, Introduction to the Ceramic Arts
- The Sound of Music, Birding by Ear
- The Frick Collection, An American Industrialists Money Meets European Masters
- Stem Cells, From Bench to Bedside
- Romancing the Throne
- Njals Saga, Life, Love and Feuds in Medieval Icelandic Society
- Lights, Camera, Action, There's a Monster in the House
- Henrik Ibsen and the Theater of Modernism
- At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- Buried Alive, The Poetry, Prose, and Essays of Edgar Allan Poe
Fall 2019
- The World of Spirits
- The Book of Job: Exploring the Human Condition through the Eyes of the Divine
- Read All about It! Books that Changed the Course of History
- Raptors Ahead: Avian Hunters in New England Skies
- Raising the Roof: 1950's Architecture and the Postwar Housing Boom
- No Conflict, No Drama: Shaw's Way with a Play
- Listening to the Parables of Jesus- Anew: Ancient Stories for Contemporary Times
- DUCK: Water Fowl in New England Ponds and Marshes
- Dark and Stormy Nights: Monsters and Machines in Modernist Art, Literature and Music
- Code of Silence: Voices of the African Enslaved in 19th Century Connecticut
- A Passion for Dance: Goodspeed Opera House's Billy Elliot
Spring 2018
- Russian Theater on the Eve of Revolution
- Romantic Landscapes of Constable and Turner: Common Goals, Contrasting Outcomes
- Once Upon a Time: Short Stories in Pairs
- Meet me at Les Deux Magots: The Lost Generation in 1920's Paris
- Maybe it's My Imagination: Writing Memoir and Fiction
- Masterminds and Martyrs: Women in Ancient Greek Drama
- Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
- Be Amused by the Muse of Classic American Humor
- A Shakespearean Romance, The Winter's Tale
Fall 2018
- When the Story is Yours, Reading and Writing the Memoir Essay
- Waka, Haiku, and Tanka, Japanese Aesthetics through Poetry
- The play’s the thing, Drama and Psychological Depth
- Shooting From The Heart, Finding Passion and Purpose in Your Life and Relationships
- Civil Rights, Civil Wrongs, Minorities and the American Dream, 1935-1968)
- Birds of a Feather
- Are you an aspiring oenophile
- A Tour of the Universe and How We Got Here
Spring 2017
- Three Places in New England
- The Clown and the Camera
- Passing by the Dragon II
- Odysseus, the Trickster Hero
- Mythmaker: The Poetry of William Butler Yeats
- Dante: Commedia
- Connecticut House
- How Did Base Ball Become Baseball?
- A Tour of the Universe and How We Got Here
Fall 2017
- Understanding Islam, Introduction to a Misunderstood Faith
- Ukulele Workshop with Jumpin' Jim Beloff
- Rise of the Right
- New York City in the 1940's
- Inside the Criminal Justice System, Law and Order and Your Constitutional Rights
- From Saint Domingue to Haiti, The Revolution that Shook the Atlantic World, 1791 to 1804
- Exploring the Experience of Commoners through the Lens of Woodblock Prints in the Edo Period of Japan
- Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Edsel Ford: Two Communists and a Titan of Capitalism Confront the Realities of the Modern Industrial Workplace and Make Great Art
- American Material Culture
Spring 2016
- Three Great Myths: Oedipus, Persephone, and Dionysus
- Thomas Jefferson: Integrity in the Individual Life adn the Meaning of "Greatness"
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- Knowing and Enjoying the Connecticut River
- Geologic Resources and the Evolution of Societies in Western Europe
- From Freud to Facebook: 100 Years of Psychotherapy in America
- Birth of the Modern: Paris, New York and the Age of Abstraction (1848-1948)
Fall 2016
- The Science and Art of Meditation
- The Great War to End all Wars
- The Enduring Book: From Medieval Manuscripts to Artists’ Books
- Revolutionaries in 19th-Century Paris: Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists
- Ode on an Oyster: A Cultural Odyssey
- Murder with Malice in Mind
- In the Belly of the Whale and Other True Stories: A Writers’ Workshop
- Emily Dickinson and the Poetry of Presence
- Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories
Spring 2015
- Psyche and Science: Conversations about Parallel Roads to the Mysteries of Life, Time, and the Cosmos
- A Perfect Omelet
- Inventing America: How Art and Literature Shaped American Identity
- The Sewing Machine and the Typewriter: A Very Short History of Work in America
- Happily Ever After
- Three Operatic Femmes Fatales: Carmen, Dalila, Salome
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust, Parts I and II
- Due Process of Law
- All Aboard! The Romance of Trains
Fall 2015
- Notes from the Field: A Writer's Workshop
- Waka, Haiku, and Tanka: Japan’s Minimalist Poetry, Old and New
- Picasso and Truth
- The Mystery Novel: A Captivating Read
- The Science and Art of Meditation
- Connecticut Impressionism, Florence Griswold Museum
- Passing by the Dragon: Four Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Spring 2014
- Exploring the Natural History of the Lower Connecticut River
- Return Journeys: Second-Generation Americans Explore "Home" and Identity
- Retirement as Reinvention
- The Poetry of Memory: A Reading and Writing Workshop
- The Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs) of Love and Death and Heroes
- Clarifying the Mysteries of the Self
- How to Get Into Print and Get the Most Out of It: A Freelancer's Guide to Publishing
- Parsing Camille, the Heroine Harlot, from Life to Stage, Song and Film
Fall 2014
- Travel with a Geologist: Hephaestus' Realm, Poseidon's Trench, and Apollo's Temple
- Exploring the Challenges of Personal Finance
- "Painting for the People": Lithography in France in the 19th Century
- Hyphenated Americans: Contemporary Stories of Lives Lived Between Two Cultures
- Henri Matisse: From Fauve to Modernist Art
- Keeping your Nerve: A Fiction-Writing Course
- Epidemics: Past and Present
- Crime and Punishment: A Mystery Tour
- All About Food: Healthy Cooking
Spring 2013
- Adventures in Opinion Writing
- The Issue of Succession: Shakespeare's History Plays-Kingship under Elizabeth I
- Exploring the Challenges of Personal Finance
- The Housatonic Valley
- The Cycle of Life - A Rite de Passage for the Elder Passage
- Middletown's Architectural Heritage
Fall 2013
- Appreciating and Writing Travel Literature
- Science and the Currents of Modernism
- Mystery Thursdays: Five Characters in Search of a Culprit
- The First Amendment
- Film Studies at Wesleyan: Definition and Demonstration
- Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec
- The Art and Science of Meditation
- From Abstraction to Post-Modernism: American Prints, 1950's -1980's
- All About Food: Ethnic Cuisine
Spring 2012
- The Book of Job
- The Saturday Institute for Lifelong Learning: Rolling on the Connecticut River
- Machiavelli Revisited: Arch Villian, Immoral Politician, Father of Political Science?
- Legacies in Words: An Introduction to Memoir Writing
- Happily Ever After
- Germs Are Us
- Exploring the Challenges of Personal Finance
Fall 2012
- The Paintings of Paul Cezanne 1839-1906: Classicism Rejected and Renewed
- Taiwan: The Crisis of Identity and Ownership
- Positive Psychology
- Picturing America: Highlights of 20th-Century Photography
- Murder Under the Midnight Sun
- King Lear
- All About Food: Enlightened Eating
Spring 2011
- Positive Psychology
- Life's Great Transitions and Four Essential Dialogues
- Life Is But a Dream
- Legacies in Words: An Introduction to Memoir Writing
- Germs Are Us
- Exploring the Mysteries of Finance
- Brownstone Stories: Quarries and Dinosaurs
Fall 2011
- The Paintings of Vincent van Gogh: Images for Life
- Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, Egypt’s Harlot Queen?
- " People don't do such things!"-Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
- I Love a Mystery
- Dürer, Rembrandt, Picasso: Reconsidering the Masters at the Davison Art Center
- Civil War Narratives Come Alive
- Art and Geology of Old Volcanic Massifs in Connecticut