Courses & Lectures

Music as Nourishment: Mind, Memory, Synchrony*
Instructor: DEE HANSEN
Tuesday, September 2, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield) OR Tuesday, November 11, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean (off campus/Simsbury)
$20

Description: Dee Hansen, music educator and musician extraordinaire, conducts a one-session reprise of her popular Spring 2025 course on how music moves us and makes us. Music reinforces positivity, opening neurological and psychological pathways. She’ll focus on mind, memory and social benefits. Learn about recent research and, not least, what synchrony is. Come, listen.

Instructor: DEE (DEMARIS) HANSEN is a professor emerita of Music Education and author of 100 Years of Hartt: A Centennial Celebration (Wesleyan University Press, 2020). She served as director of Hartt graduate studies, chair of graduate studies in music education, and director of the Hartt Summerterm graduate program (2006-2014).  With a master’s in music history and a doctorate of musical arts in music education, Dee Hansen specializes in curriculum and assessment development, music and literacy connections, brain research, and learning theory. She is the primary author of The Music and Literacy Connection (2006, 2014 2nd ed., 2025 3rd ed.). She performs with the Entwyned Early Music trio as a Renaissance and Baroque flautist, Celtic harpist, and Baroque guitarist. 

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Planning the Perfect Crime: Rope at the Hartford Stage*
Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE
Lectures: Mondays, October 13, 20, 11–12:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
Performance: Sunday, October 19, 1 p.m. preview with Melia Bensussen; 2 p.m. performance, The Hartford Stage
$40 lectures only/$65 lectures plus performance

Description: Why does the idea of the “perfect crime” intrigue us? And how do the participants (criminal, detective, and victim) see it, plan it, act on it? There are core ethical and practical issues central to good crime fiction, and we’ll discuss them; read Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (1950) and/or watch the Alfred Hitchcock movie adaptation (1951) before the first session to dive fully into our debate. Have these ethical and practical issues changed since Patricia Highsmith penned her 1950 crime novel, irrevocably altering the genre? The Hartford Stage production of Rope, based on the riveting crime thriller Rope’s End by Philip Hamilton—that also inspired Jimmy Stewart’s first film with Hitchcock in 1948—opens up fruitful ground for our second session. We’ll talk over how (if) the production maintained suspense and whether those ethical, practical issues were successfully handled. Did the adaptation follow or deviate from Highsmith’s model? Did it incorporate tropes referencing classic crime fiction à la Highsmith or Hitchcock? Popular Pamela Bedore will shine a light into murderously dark places.

Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches American Literature, Popular Literature, and Gender Theory. Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and author of Dime Novels and the Roots of Detective Fiction She has published widely on popular genres, including her Great Course, Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature (2017)—available on audible or at your public library—and her most recent book, The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction (2024).

Hartford Stage: MELIA BENSUSSEN is the Artistic Director of Hartford Stage. Former Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Emerson College in Boston, she has directed productions at the Huntington Theater, Merrimack Repertory, Sleeping Weazel and Actors Shakespeare Project. She has also directed at Baltimore Centerstage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, the New York Shakespeare Festival, MCC, Primary Stages, the Long Wharf, ATL, People's Light, San Jose Rep, among others. Raised in Mexico City, Melia is fluent in Spanish and has translated and adapted multiple works, including the Langston Hughes translation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding.  A winner of an OBIE award, she is Chair of the Arts Advisory Board for the Princess Grace Foundation and executive board member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers. 

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Afro-Cuban Jazz: Fascinating Rhythms
Instructors: JAVON JACKSON, MATT DECHAMPLAIN, ZACCAI CURTIS
Wednesdays, October 8, 15, 29, 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
$80

Description: What we call “Afro-Cuban Jazz” dates to the 1940s, but it pulls in age-old African and African-diaspora traditions. Distinctive 5-beat rhythms form the genre’s backbone. Musicians in Brazil and Cuba, especially, first used hardwood sticks (claves) to beat these patterns. This irresistible, propulsive music soon landed stateside. Javon Jackson and Matt DeChamplain are joined by Grammy-award-winning pianist Zaccai Curtis to tell it, show it and play it like it is. They’ll sample an exuberant selection of audio and video recordings. Over three syncopated sessions, you’ll hear the Afro-Cuban jazz of Mario Bauza, Dizzy Gillespie, Machito, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto, and Eddie Palmieri.

Instructors: JAVON JACKSON is professor of jazz and director of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University’s Hartt School. In his career Javon has toured and recorded with artists including Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Charlie Haden, Freddie Hubbard, Joanne Brackeen, Cedar Walton, Donald Byrd, and Curtis Fuller. He has participated in 24 recording projects with still other jazz luminaries, including Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson and Ron Carter. In 2023 he collaborated with African-American poet Nikki Giovanni on a CD and documentary soundtrack, The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni. In 2024 they got together again to record Javon and Nikki Go to the Movies.

MATT DECHAMPLAIN is assistant professor of jazz studies at the University’s Hartt School. He has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Berks Jazz Festival, New York’s JVC Jazz Festival, the Berklee Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and has led or been part of groups that opened for Hank Jones, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Wynton Marsalis Quintet, Michael Wolff, and the Renee Rosnes Quartet. He has also played on Norman Johnson’s album Get It While You Can (2011), Jason Anick’s Tipping Point (2012), and vocal legend Jon Hendricks’s Holiday Wishes II: River of Stars (2013). In 2013 he brought out a solo album, Stride Bop, and in 2015, Matt and his wife, vocalist Atla DeChamplain, released their first collaboration, entitled Pause.

ZACCAI CURTIS is an acclaimed recording artist and producer, recently honored with the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. He leads his own groups, the Zaccai Curtis Quintet and Sonido Solar. His sixth album, Sonoluminescence, debuts in 2025. Zaccai teaches at the Hartt School’s Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz and at Western Connecticut State University. He has authored two instructional books, Art of the Guajeo and Theory of the Common Voicing, for those studying Jazz and Latin Jazz. He produced the Grammy-nominated album Entre Colegas by Andy González (2016). Zaccai and his brother Luques co-founded the record label TRRcollective, a collaborative space for musicians to produce and release their own music.

Beats and Fusion: How World Music Bridges Cultures*
Instructor: MEHMET DEDE
Mondays, October 27, November 3, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: World music is more than sound; it's a bridge between cultures. Soaring above local or national traditions, it collects people globally and forges marvelous unity from the world’s musical diversity. How? Hartt School professor Mehmet Dede introduces global rhythms and traditions from South America to the Balkans, from India to North and West Africa, showing how they promote communication and foster belonging. Dede—artistic director of the Manhattan World Music venue Drom and the curator of the New York Gypsy Festival—will spend Session 1 exploring how World Music builds diverse local communities, and Session 2 looking at how social entrepreneurship at small music and arts venues informs and connects people.

Instructor: MEHMET DEDE is associate professor of music and performing arts management at The Hartt School, and an internationally recognized, award-winning music curator, festival producer and tour promoter with over 20 years of experience producing events that contribute to international music's growing presence in the US. He has collaborated with seminal American institutions such as Lincoln Center, Central Park SummerStage, the Town Hall, the Kennedy Center, and has served for many years as artistic director at the Manhattan World Music venue Drom, and as co-founder and curator of the New York Gypsy Festival. Dede conducts workshops for artists and managers in the US and abroad, and received the 2021 globalFEST Impact Award for his curatorial work. He serves on the board of the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA), and is also an alumnus of Leadership Music in Nashville, a member of the Recording Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Monday Afternoon at the Movies: Lighten Up—with Screwball Comedies*
Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH
Mondays, November 10, 17, December 1, 8; 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center)
$80

Description: Screwball comedies match a livewire female with (and maybe against) a conventional male. Their heyday was in the 1930s and ‘40s, but some are still made today. We’ll pair two Barbara Stanwyck classics with two more recent films for a little levity and a look at how laughter and comedy affect us.

November 10: The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941)

Barbara Stanwyck plays a wicked double role, first as Jean Harrington, a card shark who preys on wealthy seagoing travelers. Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), beer-fortune heir and snake scientist, is her victim. She then morphs into Lady Eve Sidwich, a fake British aristocrat who wreaks havoc at Pike’s Connecticut estate. Elements of slapstick combine with screwballisms, and the whole wacky story offers prime time for Edith Head, the great Hollywood costumer.

November 17: Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Hawks, 1941)

Stanwyck is Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer and gangster’s moll on the lam. She hides out with some pedantic professors working on an encyclopedia. They’ve reached “S,” and Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), is tackling “slang.” He interviews newsboys and garbage men for the meanings of “hunky-dory” and “absotively.” The comedic dialog brims with alliteration and academic-speak and, of course, slang. Hawks made adventure films revering traditional masculinity but also zany comedies like this one, ridiculing or humbling men.

December 1: Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)

Charlie (Jeff Daniels), a Wall Streeter, accepts a ride from Lulu (Melanie Griffith), who takes him on a wild run through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She handcuffs him to a bed, introduces him to her mother, and takes him to her high-school reunion. There he’s confronted by her ex-con husband (a menacing Ray Liotta, in his first movie role). Lulu’s dark bob and clothes pay direct homage to Louise Brooks. Demme’s palpable affection for the Americana of roadside attractions adds authenticity.

December 8: Silver Linings Playbook (dir. David O Russell, 2012)

Bradley Cooper is Pat Solitano, a high school teacher with bipolar disorder who has been institutionalized after beating up his wife’s lover. He leaves the hospital still delusionally convinced that his wife loves him, then crosses paths with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). She is jobless after a wild outburst following her husband’s death in a car accident. Cooper’s decidedly OCD father (Robert de Niro), runs a gambling gig out of his living room. Russell shows authentic screwball behavior as his principal characters struggle with their mental health. He also sends up the screwball tropes of males throwing tantrums and only females recognizing romance.

Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH previously chaired Cinema Departments at Binghamton and University of Hartford, where he co-founded the Cinema major and has taught film studies for 25 years. He has published widely on film, literature, and theory. His recent articles are about the French New Wave director Chris Marker and the issue of adult/adolescent sexuality in Nabokov’s Lolita and Marguerite Duras’ The Lover. His book Durational Cinema: A Short History of Long Films came out in 2022 with Palgrave Macmillan.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Sol LeWitt: A Private Look at a Public Hartford Artist*
Instructor: SHERRY BUCKBERROUGH
Tuesday, December 2, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: Sol LeWitt’s work populates museums. It also adorns building facades, bus stops and NYC subway stations, despite his claim that he never wanted to make “public art.” Yet he did just that. Born in Hartford and raised in New Britain, LeWitt took art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum as a child. New York City’s 1950s and ‘60s art scene assured his avant-garde stance, but he then returned to Connecticut. Here he nurtured young talent and donated large-scale artworks to local museums. LeWitt’s process was radical. He instructed workers how to make his art, but he often had no idea how the finished work would look. He proclaimed, “The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion.” For him, in other words, art is in the artist’s idea, not in the marks he himself makes. We’ll learn how this unconventional concept yielded wall drawings, wall paintings, indoor and outdoor sculptures—some austere, some bright and colorful. Hartford-area works take top billing.

Instructor: SHERRY BUCKBERROUGH is Emerita in Art History at the University of Hartford. She is known internationally for her scholarship on Sonia and Robert Delaunay, including two books and numerous articles and book chapters. She has also curated exhibitions and written on many modernist and contemporary women artists, among them Ana Mendieta and Carolee Schneemann. Following the career of Sol Lewitt from his emergence in the 1960s, she tracked his expanding development more closely after she moved to Hartford and became a peripheral part of his Connecticut art circle.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Backstage with the Award-Winning Wicked*
Instructor: FRANK RIZZO
Thursdays, December 4, 11, 12:30–2 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: Frank Rizzo, longtime reviewer, instructor and font of theater history, orchestrates two sessions on Wicked, the Broadway musical and hit film. And just in time for you to get in the know!: Wicked: Part Two will be released on November 21. The Broadway production outdid itself, winning 3 Tony awards, 7 Drama Desk Awards, and 10 awards from the Outer Critics’ Circle, with the original cast album garnering a Grammy. The first Wicked film has been no less promising, pulling in 10 nominations at the 97th Academy Awards earlier this year. Why has this story so grabbed our culture’s attention? Rizzo will explore this question, sharing backstories from the Broadway production and film, based on multiple interviews with screenwriter Gregory Maguire and composer Stephen Schwartz. Maguire authored the new Oz novels; Schwartz’s remarkable musical career boasts Wicked as just one of his storied accomplishments. Tune in for Frank Rizzo’s thoughts on matters musical and theatrical.

Instructor: FRANK RIZZO has been Variety’s theater critic for 22 years. He has covered the arts in Connecticut for the last 48 years, 33 of them for The Hartford Courant. He is a freelance writer for The New York Times, American Theatre magazine, Connecticut magazine, the Hearst newspapers of Connecticut and other periodicals and platforms. His work is posted on ShowRiz.com. You can follow him on ShowRiz@X (Twitter)

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Presidents’ College Conversation: The Battle Over Higher Education
Instructors: WALTER HARRISON and LAWRENCE P. WARD
Tuesday, October 21, 11:30–12:45 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
Free for Fellows/$20 for Non-Fellows

Description: The battle over higher education is well underway. Early in Donald Trump’s second term, he and his administration issued orders aimed at higher education institutions, beginning with Columbia University and Harvard University. Columbia, to maintain its federal funding, conceded to many of the administration’s conditions. Harvard instead fought back. The Trump administration demanded significant cuts to the University’s research funding, a ban on enrolling international students, and details about its admissions process and response to student protests. Harvard, in turn, filed lawsuits against the U.S. government, claiming that the Trump administration’s orders violated the rights and responsibilities traditionally granted by law to universities. Other threats to higher education come packaged in the federal budget and spending bill—what President Trump called “the big, beautiful bill” that passed the senate and house in early July.

What do the Trump administration’s actions reveal about wider public attitudes about higher education today? How are universities responding to these threats to their usual way of doing business? On the one hand, hundreds of sitting and retired university presidents have signed public statements, friends of the court actions, and appeals to Congress to combat the Trump administration’s actions. On the other, these actions have received considerable support from varied constituencies, many of whom believe the wealthiest and best-known of America’s universities have become arrogant, out of touch with the concerns of average Americans, and far too “left-wing” and “woke” for its citizens.

Join us for this wide-ranging conversation, in which Walter Harrison, the fifth president of the University of Hartford, and Lawrence P. Ward, the University’s seventh and current president, help us answer these questions and understand how these actions will shape the future of higher education in the United States and its place in the world.

Instructors: WALTER HARRISON is President Emeritus of the University of Hartford. He served as president from 1998 until 2017, a period of growth, vitality, and transformation of the University. As the longest-serving president in the University’s history, he oversaw a dramatic improvement in the University’s financial stability, a near tripling of its endowment, and a transformation and re-design of the campus, constructing or renovating 17 different University buildings during his tenure. Most importantly, he oversaw a significant growth in the undergraduate and graduate student population, new professional programs in architecture and the health sciences, and a noticeable improvement in the rigor and quality of the University’s academic offerings. The University’s libraries are now named for him, to recognize his devotion to the life of the mind.

LAWRENCE P. WARD became UHart’s seventh president on July 1, 2024. He previously served for ten years as Vice President for Learner Success and Dean of Campus Life atBabsonn College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In prior years, he served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs at American University’sKogodd School of Business in Washington, D.C., and was also managing director atPRSS, Inc., an organizational development consulting firm, and a health care account executive for Aetna. Ward earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UConn, his master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Michigan, and his doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a faculty appointment in the Graduate School of Education. He has held multiple leadership positions in higher education: as member of the NCAA Board of Governors, chair of the NCAA Division III Management Council, and trustee atAlbertussMagnuss College in New Haven, CT.

Presidents’ College Conversation: What’s Up with Contemporary Art?*
Instructors: ROBERT CALAFIORE and JARED QUINTON
Wednesday, December 10, 11–12:15 p.m., Location to be determined
Free for Fellows/$20 for Non-Fellows

Description: "Contemporary" art means the art of these times. . .of today. Some of it will make a splash, skyrocket in value, endure. Other works, not so much. And by next year "contemporary" will encompass objects and concepts different from today's. Who is deciding what is worthy (or not)? What governs their decisions? In this Presidents' College Conversation Jared Quinton, Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum, and artist Robert Calafiore, Associate Dean of Administration and Finance at the University of Hartford, talk about influential works of the 2000s and their own careers. They'll artfully field questions during this informal program.

Instructors: ROBERT CALAFIORE (BFA Hartford Art School, MFA SUNY at Buffalo) is associate dean of administration and finance at the Hartford Art School, as well as a fine arts photographer who exhibits his work nationally and internationally. Born in New Britain, CT, to Italian immigrants, his first-generation American experience influences his work, which brings together the traditions and visual icons of his past with the imaginative potential of simple tools, and the impact of social media, gaming, digital technologies and augmented realities on our new relationship to the world. He is represented by ClampArt in New York City, and his work has been featured in, among others, Photograph Magazine, Diffusion Annual IX, Fraction Magazine, and Collector Daily. Multiple museums have acquired his work, including Transformer Station, Cleveland; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Albright Knox, Buffalo; and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

JARED QUINTON (BA Williams College; MA Institute of Fine Arts, NYU) is a curator, writer, and the Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT, where he oversees the pioneering MATRIX exhibition series and the museum’s postwar and contemporary collection. A writer for Artforum, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and e-flux, he has also organized exhibitions and programs at, among others, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; The Kitchen, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Abrons Art Center in New York; Gallery 44 in Toronto; and Terremoto La Postal in Mexico City. He also held a Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellowship at the MCA Chicago, and the Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study Program.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Moral Heroes: What Courage Looks Like
Instructor: ELIZABETH VOZZOLA
Mondays, Sept. 15, 29, Oct. 27, 10:30 a.m.–noon, KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: In the darkest of days, there have always been moral heroes who stood up to evil and bigotry, often at great personal cost. Our course begins with an overview of research on lives of sustained moral commitment and then considers the moral heroism of President Abraham Lincoln, anti-lynching crusader Ida Wells-Barnett, fictional character Atticus Finch, and WWII rescuers Andre and Magda Trocme. The two class readings—for the second and third sessions, respectively—are Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (or watch the film) and Phillip Hallie’s Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. We will end with an invitation to nominate contemporary moral heroes and discuss lessons we want to take away about the responsibility to stand up to injustice.

Instructor: ELIZABETH (“Elly”) VOZZOLA, is professor emerita of psychology and former Honors Program director at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford. Her specialty in moral development has included the study of literature and how it is understood by children, teens and young adults. She has authored two editions of a comprehensive textbook: Moral Development, Theory and Applications. Her children, grands, and great-grands provide plenty of real-time, real-life developmental material. 

The Post-World War II Order Is Gone: What Next?
Instructor: JEREMY PRESSMAN
Thursday, September 25, 3:30–5 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
$20

Description: US foreign policy after World War II depended on bipartisan commitment to a rules-based international order. This order shaped US relations with allied and other nations. It rejected acquisition of territory by force, emphasized free trade, and fostered these principles via international organizations and agreements. This bipartisan consensus has broken down. Over the last decade the US has withdrawn from international organizations and agreements, favored acquiring territory by force, and embraced protectionist economics. Many US officials are abandoning multilateralism in favor of bilateral diplomacy. What are the causes and implications of this fundamental foreign policy shift, for this administration and those to follow? Jeremy Pressman predicts a see-saw effect.

Instructor: JEREMY PRESSMAN is professor of political science and director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is also co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of UConn and the Harvard Kennedy School. Pressman specializes in the Arab-Israeli conflict, US foreign policy toward Israel-Palestine, and protests in the United States. He has written three books, including The sword is not enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the limits of military force (2020) and Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in International Politics (2008). He is a former Fulbright fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

Order in the Court: The Supreme Court Round-Up 
Instructor: JILDA ALIOTTA
Mondays, October 6, 13, 20, 27, 4:30–6 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center
$80

Description:The 2024-25 Supreme Court term looks like another blockbuster, this on the heels of a truly historic term just ended. Upcoming are three religion-clause cases that could demolish the church-state wall separating religion and government. Also on the docket: a decision on whether state bans of gender-affirming care for transgender youth violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Jilda Aliotta will wrestle with what these and other cases mean for citizens, for the Supreme Court as an institution, and for the U.S. Constitution.

• Session 1: An overview of US Supreme Court’s 2024–25 term
• Session 2: Significant developments & decisions of the 2024–25 term—Part 1
• Session 3: Significant developments & decisions of the 2024–25 term—Part 2
• Session 4: Looking ahead to the US Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term

Instructor: JILDA ALIOTTA is a popular professor in the University of Hartford’s politics, economics, and international studies department, and is well known among Presidents’ College participants for her thought-provoking commentaries on the US Supreme Court in what has become one of our longest-running courses. She teaches classes in law, American politics, and women in politics.

The Maine Sank; the Navy’s Fortunes Rose
Instructor: JASON W. SMITH
Friday, October 17, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford)
$20

Description: In February 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor, killing 266 American sailors. A short, decisive war with Spain ensued, and America acquired Spain’s empire in the Caribbean and Pacific. The horrific disaster and the crew’s pitiful fate seized the American imagination, generating unprecedented curiosity and pathos. Minstrel shows, motion pictures, consumer products and cocktails proliferated, capitalizing on the Maine “brand.” Collectors sought and bought “genuine” pieces of the ship; more than 1500 memorials were erected nationwide. This singular event was spun into a myth of naval power in the service of American exceptionalism. Jason Smith interprets the signal cultural phenomenon of its day.

Instructor: JASON W. SMITH is associate professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University, where he teaches courses in maritime and military history, the Early Republic and Civil War, nineteenth-century America, the history of technology, and the history of New Haven. He is the author of numerous articles in naval and maritime history as well as the book To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire. His current book project is a cultural history of navalism and its resonance among the American public at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. He lives in Hamden with his wife, daughter, and two mischievous cats.

Hot Topics in Volatile Times
Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE
Thursdays, October 23, November 13, December 11, 5:30–7 p.m., Shaw Center/Hillyer Hall
$60

Description: Not up for debate: American political institutions are under historic stress, testing universities, the judiciary, allies and trading partners. Stock markets yo-yo, deportations rise, unwritten traditions fall. How did we land in this political, social hot water? Are there historical precedents? If so, what can we learn from them? Chris Doyle is passionate about democracy. Using creative analysis and some Socratic questioning, he’ll suggest how history can lead us into the future. He’ll rely on journalism, political science, and forty years teaching experience to frame questions about today’s hot topics, leaving space for your ideas and feedback.

Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE has a doctorate in history. He has taught for 40 years, and is currently at Avon Old Farms School. He publishes works on history, education, and the uses of the past in contemporary America. His teaching has been featured in stories in the New York Times and National Public Radio.

The “Fiction of the Year” Book Club
Instructor: MICHELE TROY
Tuesdays, September 16, October 14, November 11, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Curious Readers! Let’s sample myriad “best book” lists. On September 16: Playground (2024) by Pulitzer-winner Richard Powers, “a grand old oak of American letters: a towering, sturdy figure often overlooked for flashier species” (New York Times). Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and—closer to home, for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award for 2025—Playground weaves together four characters’ lives on a tiny atoll in a majestic ocean to get us thinking about technology, the environment, and “our shared humanity” (book jacket). “The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive,” notes Percival Everett, author of James, which claimed the 2024 Pulitzer (and stands head-to-head with Playground on the 2025 Mark Twain longlist). For October 14, wend your way into Guggenheim-winner Amity Gaige’s hot-off-the-press novel, Heartwood. This “terrifically moving and tense thriller” (Washington Post) sets us on the Appalachian Trail with two women searching for a missing hiker. “Heartwood never takes the obvious road,” notes the Wall Street Journal; the novel “generates real and satisfying suspense by leaving us to wonder whether, and how, all three women will emerge from their metaphorical woods,” adds the New York Times, which named Heartwood a “Best Book of the Year So Far” in two genres. And finally, on November 11, one book from the tantalizing 2025 Booker Prize Longlist: Endling, the debut novel from Ukrainian-born Canadian author, Maria Reva, a tale of power and powerlessness which sends three women and “one extremely endangered snail” through contemporary Ukraine as Putin invades. What the judges say: “Endling shouldn’t be funny, but it is – very. . . .Structurally wild and playful, Endling is also heart-rending and angry.” As always, the true pleasure lies in our debate, all the more spirited, good-natured, and thoughtful because of your insights.

Instructor: MICHELE K. TROY is Presidents’ College Director and professor of English at Hillyer College, where she has taught since 2001. Her book, Strange Bird: The Albatross Press and the Third Reich, appeared with Yale University Press in 2017, followed by a German translation in 2022. In 2019, she received a Fulbright to Germany to pursue two other projects which explore Anglo-American books abroad:  an in-depth look at the German book trade under the American Occupation, 1945-1949, with the University of Mainz; and research into Seven Seas Books, which produced English-language paperbacks out of East Berlin in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sirens’ Call: Why Homer’s Odyssey Still Speaks to Us
Instructor: TOM LEE
Thursdays, September 18, 25, October 16, 12:30–2 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey has captured listeners for nearly three millennia. Centuries ago ancient storytellers, the rhapsodes, mesmerized audiences with the spoken story. Later it was written down; today new translations still win new readers. What is the draw? Professional storyteller Tom Lee invigorates The Odyssey’s evocative, dramatic language. He pulls us in, so characters and landscapes ignite our imaginations and engage our empathy. The Odyssey’s themes—the pull of family, finding your way, seeking home—are constant, universal, and so very human. He’ll excerpt specific passages, showing how they have been translated, performed and expressed in art through centuries. This isn’t a conventional study of the entire work. And enrollees don’t need to read it in advance. (But afterward, you may want to!)

Instructor: TOM LEE has told stories internationally for thirty-five years. He has performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Yale Center for British Art, The Morgan Library, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, and as artist-in-residence at the International Storytelling Center. Tom currently teaches “Creativity: The Artistic Process” at the University of Hartford.

Jane Austen: Sabotaging the Status Quo
Instructor: CATHERINE STEVENSON
Thursdays, October 30, November 6, 13, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Jane Austen may be 250 this year, but that doesn’t make her old. Read her novels closely today. You’ll discover a subversive writer wittily skewering class and gender assumptions, hardly a conservative defender of social and political status quo. We’ll first parse the social satire in several works, then home in on Mansfield Park, her most puzzling, controversial novel. Its heroine, so different from Emma or Elizabeth Bennet, offers a not-so-veiled critique of aristocratic slaveholders, familial patriarchy, even the Church of England. Via her subversive literary works, Austen stirred a pot that was already simmering.

Instructor: CATHERINE STEVENSON, former academic dean for International and Honors Programs at the University of Hartford, is the author of Victorian Women Travel Writers in Africa (1982) and many scholarly articles on English literature, theater, and women’s studies. In her 30 years at the University of Hartford, she served as a department chair, associate dean, assistant provost and dean of the faculty, and the Harry Jack Gray Distinguished Teaching Humanist. She received the University’s Outstanding Teacher Award and the Trachtenberg Award for Service to the University.

The Great Gatsby at 100: What Can Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick Still Teach Us?
Instructor: WILLIAM MAJOR
Tuesday, November 4, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield)
$20

Description: Join us for a lively lecture-discussion celebrating the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. We’ll dive into the Jazz Age, flappers, and speakeasies—while exploring the deeper themes from the novel that still resonate: the pursuit of the American Dream, the illusion of wealth, the heartbreak of lost love. Reread the novel, if you feel so inspired; if not, we’ll have a passage or two on hand to explore. Chime in or listen in, as you wish. We’ll connect past and present by asking whether Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick have anything to teach us a century later.

Instructor: WILLIAM MAJOR is Chair of English in Hillyer College of the University of Hartford. He teaches several of the department's classes, including English Composition and Literature, American Literature, and American Environmental Literature. He is the author of the book, Grounded Vision: New Agrarianism and the Academy, as well as numerous essays and articles.

Extreme Weather: The New Normal?
Instructor: CHRISTOPH GEISS
Tuesday, September 16, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean (off campus/Simsbury) OR Friday, November 21, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford)
$20

Description: Weather extremes nationally and globally are wreaking havoc, causing unprecedented human and property loss. Why now? Changes in atmospheric circulation and moisture have led, paradoxically, to both drought and wildfires and to devastating floods. What underlies these changes and where is weather headed? Umbrellas optional.

Instructor: CHRISTOPH GEISS, professor of physics and environmental science at Trinity College, teaches courses on geology, (geo)physics, soil science, and the earth’s climate. He also volunteers for the Appalachian Mountain Club as a naturalist and maintains two miles of the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut.

Eight Glasses a Day? Hydration Demystified 
Instructor: COLLEEN MUÑOZ 
Friday, September 19, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off campus/West Hartford) 
$20 

Description: Adequate water intake is a lifesaver, yet our body’s ideal daily requirement isn’t settled science. Scarce and underfunded research means that unscientific advice and unproven hydration products abound. Colleen Muñoz presents recent evidence connecting our hydration practices to our health outcomes, and proving how adequate hydration can lessen burdens on our healthcare system. She’ll explain hydration’s impact on physical and cognitive performance, how best to monitor daily hydration, and where hydration science is headed. 

Instructor: COLLEEN MUÑOZ is professor of health sciences at the University of Hartford and the 2022 recipient of the University’s prestigious Ribicoff Endowed Professorship. Her research focuses on hydration, exercise, and stress physiology, investigating the effects of chronic low water intake and acute water loss on hydration physiology, biomarkers, perceptual responses, and associated health outcomes. Muñoz’s contributions to the field have earned international recognition, including the 2016 Hydration for Health Initiative’s Young Researcher Award. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the Hydration Health Center at the University of Hartford—a unique research, education, and advocacy hub committed to advancing healthy hydration behaviors through science and outreach. 

Far Out: 6,000 (!) More Planets 
Instructor: MICHAEL ROBINSON 
Tuesday, October 7, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off campus/Bloomfield) 
$20 
 
Description: Is Pluto a planet? That whole debate is so last-century. Today astronomers know that countless suns in other solar systems pull thousands of exoplanets into their orbits. Some of these extraterrestrial planets lie within a “habitable zone.” Can they—do they—support life? Exoplanet research has boomed in recent years, as scientists from myriad disciplines join the tantalizing quest. Michael Robinson says ramped-up pressure to publish findings raises the risk of false-positive discoveries. He’ll explain how physics, astrobiology, climatology, and the social sciences are all in the scrum, attracted by this century’s far-out need to know. 

Instructor: MICHAEL ROBINSON is professor of history at the University of Hartford. His research examines exploration and its place within the cultural imagination. He is the author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (University of Chicago Press), winner of the 2008 Book Award for the History of Science in America, and The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent (Oxford University Press), winner of the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize. He is working on a book about exoplanet scientists and their quest to find life on other planets and hosts the history of exploration podcast, Time to Eat the Dogs. 

Cryptocurrency: Suddenly Everywhere All At Once
Instructor: VIVEK SHARMA
Wednesdays, October 8, 15, 10:30 a.m.–noon
KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: Cryptocurrency, already disrupting the established financial world, is poised to take us. . . where, exactly? Is this a forward flight to fiscal evolution, revolution or dissolution? Join crypto-skeptic Vivek Sharma to first learn the vocabulary (Bitcoin, blockchain technology, mining, the Hash algorithm, ICOs, NFTs, Decentralized Finance and Web 3.0.), and then to discuss the economic implications, macro- and micro-. Is Bitcoin “real” money or a Ponzi scheme? Will Blockchain technology reshape the world? How will cryptocurrencies reshape our existing assumptions about finance? You’ll have questions, and Professor Sharma will have answers.

Instructor: VIVEK SHARMA (BSc Economics, Presidency College; MS Quantitative Economics, Indian Statistical Institute; PhD Finance, University of Memphis, CFP) has worked as an investment banker and a hedge fund analyst prior to his current role in academia. His research is in investments and asset pricing. At the University of Hartford, he oversees the student-managed Barney Investment Club and is part of the core team developing the Fintech major. He has also launched new courses in alternative investments, cryptocurrencies, and personal finance.

Roundabouts: Safer Driving, Fewer Emissions?
Instructor: CLARA FANG
Friday, October 24, 10:30–noon, KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$20

Description: Roundabouts offer a brilliant alternative to dangers posed by traditional traffic intersections. This simple concept reduces traffic accidents; improves traffic flow; creates safer bicycling and pedestrian crossing experiences. It may even improve air quality. Supported by a research grant from Connecticut DOT and the Federal Highway Administration, Clara Fang is studying the air quality premise now. Her project explores how roundabouts affect driver behavior and vehicle emissions, with the goal of deriving new insights about roundabouts as a sustainable alternative to the status quo. Connecticut roads incorporate 30+ roundabouts now, with more pending. Using drone footage and advanced microsimulation modeling, Clara Fang and her team (including undergrad researchers) collect traffic pattern data, vehicle speeds, and driver decision-making info. Their findings will influence transportation policy, urban planning and, ultimately, your daily drive.

Instructor: CLARA FANG is professor of civil, environmental, and biomedical engineering, and chair of her department in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture at the University of Hartford. A recognized expert in infrastructure modeling, she focuses on simulation and computational intelligence and sustainable transportation systems. She has led multiple state- and federally-funded research projects, including a notable study utilizing AI to assess and predict the condition of more than 5,000 Connecticut bridges. She is passionate about engaging students in hands-on research that tackles real-world challenges and fosters meaningful learning experiences.

20th Century Medical Discoveries: Small Steps Behind Radical Change 
MIKE MAGEE 
Wednesdays, November 5, 12, 19, 1–2:30 p.m. Session 1 at 1877 Club/Harry Jack Gray Center, Sessions 2 and 3 at Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center 
$60 
 
Description: Scientific discoveries, proactive public health policies and "bionic" equipment forged the winning trifecta that revolutionized 20th-century medicine. Just one example: today we live 70% longer than in 1900.  Veteran medical historian Mike Magee dissects this three-pronged success story over three sessions. 

• Session 1: Medical discoveries aren’t often “light bulb” moments. They require multiple actors, time and—not least—money. Penicillin is a perfect example: in 1940 Sir Howard Florey of Oxford built on Sir Alexander Fleming’s 1929 work in London. 
• Session 2: Public health advances dramatically extended lifespans by preventing and arresting disease and injuries. Millions of children once died from infectious diseases; motorists from lack of seatbelts; smokers from cigarettes. Yet vested interests always opposed the new policies with disinformation and court challenges. 
• Session 3: High-tech machinery and medical devices at first assisted, then partnered with, physicians. Thermometers, stethoscopes and hypodermic needles were marvelous aids—now taken for granted. Defibrillators, scanners, robotic tools, and an array of artificial body parts dazzle us today. AI empowers prosthetic technology and diagnostics. DNA discoveries upended scientific, forensic and ancestral research. Dr. Mike concludes this catalog with informed projections, surveying possible scenarios ten years hence.

Instructor: MIKE MAGEE, MD, is a medical historian and journalist, and the author of Code Blue: Inside the Medical Industrial Complex (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019). He has taught at the Presidents’ College and the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and Jefferson Medical College. He was also an Honorary Master Scholar at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine and the 2008 Distinguished Alumnus award recipient from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He lives in West Hartford, CT, and is editor of the weekly blog HealthCommentary.org. 

Gatsby in Connecticut
Instructors: ROBERT STEVEN WILLIAMS and WILLIAM MAJOR
Tuesday, September 30, 4–6 p.m., Wilde Auditorium
Free for Presidents’ College Fellows

Note: This is a joint program with AARP.

Description: Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald blazed a path through the Jazz Age, leaving behind star-crossed Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and West Egg. But what if Long Island’s West Egg really stands in for Connecticut’s Westport? Robert Steven Williams, an author and documentary filmmaker, researched Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda, and Westport, where they lived as newlyweds. Williams concluded that Westport’s place and people inspired The Great Gatsby.

Come join us as we watch Williams’s 70-minute documentary, Gatsby in Connecticut, and sit in on a conversation between Williams and UHart English Professor William Major. You’ll learn how this Connecticut town shaped the Fitzgeralds and the iconic novel that celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year.

No advance preparation is required, but consider rereading the book or watching the 1974 film starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, and Bruce Dern. Waterston is interviewed in Stevens’ documentary.

Instructors: ROBERT STEVEN WILLIAMS is an author, documentary filmmaker, singer-songwriter, and musician. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and authored The World’s Largest Market (nonfiction) and My Year as a Clown (fiction). The founder of Against the Grain Communications and a native of Westport, Connecticut, Williams meticulously researched Scott and Zelda’s time in Westport, co-producing and directing the documentary, Gatsby in Connecticut. He was also a contributor to Robert Webb Jr.’s book, Boats Against the Current, on Scott and Zelda’s time in Connecticut.

WILLIAM MAJOR is Chair of English in Hillyer College of the University of Hartford. He teaches several of the department's classes, including English Composition and Literature, American Literature, and American Environmental Literature. He is the author of the book, Grounded Vision: New Agrarianism and the Academy, as well as numerous essays and articles.