To Goethe, architecture was “frozen music.” For Thomas Jefferson, architecture had a moral purpose, to “improve the taste of my countrymen.” To Frank Lloyd Wright, it was “the mother art” of a nation. This course explores what architecture is, how it shapes our experience of the built environment, and how different cultures over the centuries have defined what makes “good” architecture by focusing on significant buildings and architects from the history of Western architecture. How do architects utilize form, materials, space, light, color, and decoration to define and shape a building’s function, usefulness and beauty, as well as to elicit feelings of awe, calm, exhilaration, or mystery? How can we “read” in buildings the aesthetic, religious, social, and political culture out of which they came? What role did innovations in building materials, technology, and engineering play in architecture’s evolution? Can architecture have moral meaning?

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that he philosophized with a hammer, that is, he sought to smash everything that came before him. Trying to place human existence at the heart of philosophy and life meant destroying everything else that we had tried to put in that place.

We'll explore the bold, genre-bending musicals of the 21st century and where the art form is headed next. This first session compares two standouts: Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell's folk-opera retelling of the Orpheus myth, and Waitress, Sara Bareilles's heartfelt adaptation of the beloved film. Through clips, music, and discussion, led by singer/actor Julie Kurzava, we'll examine their storytelling, scores, and staging. No experience necessary—just a love of great theater.

Why did it take Americans ninety years after first declaring that all men are born equal to abolish racial slavery? Why did it take a Civil War to answer the fundamental questions about liberty and equality that the Revolution had posed? One obstacle was the fact that the Constitution gave white southerners so much power in national politics that Congress itself never did anything very significant to limit slavery. Only with the changes brought about by the communications revolution in the 1820s and 1830s were antislavery activists able to build any sort of organized national movement and even then they met fierce opposition from southern plantation owners who couldn’t imagine a world without slave labor.