AUDIO BOOKS COMING SOON!
SELECT YOUR COURSES AND REGISTER
- Dates: Mondays, October 5, 19, 26 & November 2
- Time: 1:00 - 2:30PM ET
- This set of lectures explores one of the most turbulent, daring, and creative eras in Hollywood history: the 1970s. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the mid-1980s, Hollywood was shaken by an extraordinary series of changes that transformed not only the movies Americans watched, but the people who made them. Directing, acting, screenwriting, cinematography, marketing, and even the definition of a movie star were suddenly up for grabs. Just as remarkably, many of the filmmakers and performers leading this revolution were people who might never have been given a chance under the old studio system. Movies became more experimental, controversial, political, violent, sexually frank, and unpredictable, frequently challenging the conventions that had governed Hollywood storytelling for decades. A remarkable generation of directors—including Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Hal Ashby, Michael Cimino, Peter Bogdanovich, and Sam Peckinpah—pushed American filmmaking in startling new directions. They were joined by actors who often looked, sounded, and performed nothing like the carefully manufactured stars of Hollywood's past: Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, George C. Scott, Meryl Streep, Gene Hackman, Maggie Smith, Richard Dreyfuss, Glenda Jackson, and many others. Together they broke long-standing taboos, discarded familiar formulas, and produced a decade of movies remarkable for their originality and willingness to take risks. Audiences responded just as passionately. In Hollywood and across America, millions of moviegoers came to love—and sometimes hate—the revolution taking place on the screen.
- Dates: Mondays, October 5, 19, 26 and Nov 2
- Time: 10:30 - Noon ET
- This set of four lectures examines the extraordinary transformation of the American economy from the Civil War through the Gilded Age. At the center of this transformation were some of the most famous—and controversial—business figures in American history. Whether remembered as robber barons or captains of industry, men such as John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and many others accumulated enormous fortunes while building railroads, steel mills, oil companies, banks, trading empires and industrial corporations on an unprecedented scale. Their economic, cultural, and political influence sometimes seemed to rival that of governments themselves. These lectures will explore how they created and consolidated the modern American corporation, transformed the experience of industrial workers, generated enormous new concentrations of wealth and inequality, and helped turn the United States into the world’s leading industrial economy by the early twentieth century. Along the way, we will consider the costs as well as the achievements of this economic revolution—and how industrial power helped propel the US toward a new role as a global and imperial power.
- Dates: Thursdays, October 8, 15, 22 and 29
- Time: 10:30-Noon ET
- This set of four lectures will examine the profound crisis America is facing over immigration and the enforcement of its immigration laws. Since the failure of comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush in 2006–07, the issue has exploded as Americans link immigrants to crime, drugs, loss of jobs, cultural erosion, political corruption and election fraud. Since 2016, the federal gov’t has taken increasingly harsh measures to stop immigrants at the border, intern them in make-shift prisons, attack them on the high seas, force them underground, deport them to other countries, and use enhanced mandates directed against US citizens – all under questionable legal cover. Repeated surges of migrants at the southern border, pressures on the asylum system, and Congress’s inability to enact comprehensive reform have increasingly shifted responsibility toward executive action and administrative enforcement. Since 2016, federal policies have generated disputes over presidential authority, due process, detention conditions, asylum rights, federal enforcement powers, and constitutional protections. We will examine arguments for tougher enforcement—including national sovereignty, border security, crime prevention, and enforcement of existing law—as well as allegations of abuse, neglect, profiling, inadequate detention conditions, mistaken detention, and insufficient legal protections. Ultimately, the course asks how America can reconcile border control and immigration enforcement with constitutional limits, due process, humanitarian obligations, and its long history as a nation shaped by immigration.
- Dates: Fridays, October 9, 16, 23 and 30
- Time: 10:30 - Noon ET
- This set of four lectures examines the apex of European imperialism in the late 19th century leading up to World War One. We will focus especially on the competition between Britain and France, the two great established imperial powers, as well as the rise of a second tier of ambitious new imperial states, including Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the United States. Imperial rivalries dramatically increased international tensions both in Europe and around the world while accelerating the Industrial Revolution’s impact across the globe. Vast regions—including India, China, Africa, and Latin America—became more deeply integrated into an expanding world economy. These changes placed profound pressure on traditional political, social, and cultural institutions everywhere. Imperial rule produced resistance, rebellion, collaboration, migration, and dramatic social change as peoples throughout Africa and Asia confronted expanding European power. Finally, we will explore how these multiple tensions contributed to the catastrophe of World War One and helped set the stage for many of the fundamental regional, cultural, economic, and geostrategic problems that would beset much of the 20th century. Imperialism did not simply redraw the map of the world; it created a more tightly interconnected global system whose conflicts and contradictions would continue long after the great European empires began to disappear.
- Dates: Fridays: Oct 9, 16, 23 and 30
- Time: 1:00-2:30pm ET
- This set of four lectures examines the complex and often hostile relationship between the United States and Iran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. We will focus on the fundamental national, economic, and strategic interests that have repeatedly brought the two countries into conflict—from the hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq War to sanctions, covert operations, and struggles for influence across the Middle East. Particular attention will be given to the most contentious issues: Iran’s nuclear program, its rivalry with the Persian Gulf states, its confrontation with Israel, and its support for armed groups such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. At the same time, we will examine America’s changing role in the Persian Gulf as presidents from George W. Bush through Donald Trump have sought, in different ways, to reduce long-term American commitments while continuing to protect vital interests, regional allies, and the flow of global energy. Finally, we will explore how decades of confrontation culminated in direct U.S. military operations against Iran in 2026, and how the resulting conflict has demonstrated both the formidable reach and the limits of American military and economic power in the region.