CLASS DESCRIPTIONS

Architecture: Redesign in order to Reuse

With Hannah Glatt
Architecture literally surrounds us, new constructions in the suburbs, office spaces downtown and abandoned buildings throughout. What are these buildings’ stories? In this course, you will step into the shoes of a designer and historian in order to reinvent a forgotten space. As a designer, you will start looking at ordinary things in a new way. What are the different elements of a building and how does one create them? But as a historian, you look to the past. How was a previously designed space used and what impact did it have on the people? By combining these two perspectives you will explore the past of forgotten historic structures while creating a new future for them. You will get to redesign a hypothetical existing space in order for it to gain a new purpose and significance. There will be
opportunity to draw and research while letting your imagination take over!

Dimensions of Disadvantage: Investigating Inequality in the Social World Around Us

With Shayne Zaslow
So much of the social world around us dictates how we come to understand people different from us. Why are some groups privileged over others? Why are some groups represented so regularly in the media, while others are almost invisible? If you’ve ever wondered where disadvantage comes from and how it continues to function, this course will give you the opportunity to think deeply about those questions! In this course, students will investigate multiple dimensions of inequality (including but not limited to race, gender, class, and ability) and how they are shown in the world around us. Using sociological frameworks to understand dimensions of disadvantage, students will engage popular media (books, television, films, etc.) to look at how its messages and content can both uphold and sometimes challenge existing ways we think about inequality and difference. No experience necessary, just a genuine curiosity about how social norms work and a desire to think about popular culture critically.

From Hamlet to Black Panther 

With Maayan Ornath
“How many times do I have to teach you: just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved?” Did you
ever apply this rule from Black Panther to the way you consume modern drama (AKA “movies”)? In this course, you
will become playwrights, directors, and actors, as we peel the layers of drama, performance, and script through the
centuries and different mediums. With a focus on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Marvel’s Black Panther, with a little
Disney's Lion King, we will analyze and discuss how the same core story evolves through the ages; and how this evolution changes the way the audience reacts to the story. You will then create relevant performance art projects (e.g., a script, a performance, a video-art piece) and analyze them using the analytical tools we acquired. Join us today to improve your movie-watching skills!

​

Light! Mysteries of the Electromagnetic Spectrum

With Jonathan Skelton
Light, both seen and unseen, is all around us, passing through us, and being absorbed by our skin and our eyes. But … do we really know what light is? We use it to send text messages, listen to the radio, check for broken bones, and heat up our frozen burritos, but very few of us actually know how any of these things really work. In this course, I invite you to be one of the few. In nine short lessons, we will uncover some of the mysteries of light and how light interacts with the world around us. We will conduct experiments that helped great minds such as Newton and Faraday learn about the properties of light and discuss how these properties were harnessed later in many of the technologies we use daily. We will embark on this journey so that you too may one day be a wielder of light.

Periodic Explorations

With Michael Farabaugh
What's your first impression when you see the periodic table: Intimidating? Fascinating? Facts to be memorized for a test? Most chemists will be happy to tell you that the periodic table represents an amazing summary of the building blocks of matter that make up the world around us. In this hands-on course, you will discover a variety of chemical reactions that help us understand various patterns and trends in the periodic table. We will also study the scientists who made important contributions to the table, from Lavoisier and Mendeleev to Seaborg and Hofmann. Both future chemists and non-scientists will find something to capture their interest. You'll go back to "elementary" school in this course as you explore the periodic table!

​

Religions, Rulers, and Riots

With Peter Morris
Why is it so hard to talk about faith and politics without an argument? Why do both of these topics so often lead to conflict, and has that always been the case? In this class, we will consider several turning points in history where religion and politics shaped the world. From the Great Persecution in the Roman Empire to the Reformation to the modern Civil Rights movement, we will ask how religious traditions influenced and shaped the world during pivotal moments. We will approach these historical events through a variety of media, and students will have the chance to role-play different players in important events that have shaped our world. By engaging in a kind of interactive historiography students will approximate the kind of speculative and critical work that goes into analyzing ancient texts and arguments.

(Super) Human Physics

With Elizabeth Larson
Physics is all around us– and even within us! In this course, we will discover and apply basic physical principles to human bodies and the way they interact with the world around us. From there, we will extrapolate to the case of superhumans, asking and answering questions such as “what would it take to leap over buildings?” or “how would the world look with x-ray vision?” Students will have the opportunity to design and implement their own experiments and use physics to quantify their own sprints, jumps, and throws. Topics covered may include motion, forces, energy, light, electricity, and/or magnetism. This course will be best enjoyed by students who have a solid grasp of one to two years of algebra, and some basic familiarity with geometry.