For millennia, the olive and its precious oil have been fundamental to the Mediterranean region. This course will begin with the history of olive trees and their symbolic importance in ancient art, culture, and religion. We will explore production methods, the chemical composition, and the biologically active nutraceuticals contained in the oil. Is extra virgin olive oil the healthiest oil one can consume?
Many experts believe that we are now witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history—and that humans are the cause. This crisis has motivated scholars across the humanities and sciences to rethink the relationships between people and other animals. This seminar takes up this urgent inquiry in relation to art history, asking: How has art both reflected and shaped human attitudes toward nonhuman creatures? How have animals appeared in art not only as subjects but also as materials and participants?
This course explores the experience of modernity as exemplified in the literature, film, and art of Russia. Bewildering and liberating, celebrated and reviled, modernity — and such related processes as secularization, industrialization, and technological change — possesses a particularly ambivalent status in Russian cultural history. Beginning with Peter the Great’s decision in the first decade of the eighteenth century to modernize Russia, Russian thinkers and writers have long negotiated between a sense of the country’s belatedness and a wariness towards modernity.
What is body intelligence? In what ways is the body's ability to perceive and know the world equal to that of the mind? What can we learn from the body’s unique experience of the world? Utilizing dance and the performing arts as a framework for our investigations, we will explore embodied exercises to develop kinesthetic awareness and presence, attune ourselves to our bodies’ sensations and feelings, and practice observing the world through the lens of physical experience.
