Courses & Lectures

Thrills, Chills & Silent Film Music: Lon Chaney & The Unknown (1927)*
Instructor: PATRICK MILLER
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster
$20

Description: Lon Chaney, the renowned silent film actor, mesmerized audiences of the 1920s as the lead in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925/29.) Chaney’s early years, lived in a family with disabilities, honed his astute awareness of human limitations and frailties. He brought pathos and empathy to his roles portraying tortured, grotesque characters, earning him the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Faces.” Learn about Chaney's fascinating life (1883-1930) and notable career, and about film music before “the talkies.” Patrick Miller will discuss this remarkable actor and provide piano accompaniment for the screening of Chaney’s thrilling 1927 masterpiece, The Unknown, co-starring a young Joan Crawford.

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

Note to silent film enthusiasts: The Hartt School will screen Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925/1929), the first film based on the 1910 novel by French author Gaston Leroux. That book inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical – which recently closed after a 35-year run. Patrick Miller will present this screen gem with his new accompaniments. Saturday, September 21, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Theater, University of Hartford. Free Admission.

Instructor: PATRICK MILLER is Professor Emeritus of music theory at The Hartt School, University of Hartford. A music theoretician and concert pianist, he completed his academic training at the University of Kansas (BMus, MMus) and the University of Michigan (PhD). Miller then taught for 40 years at Hartt, including a course on music in the American narrative sound film. Since 1982 he has performed his symphonic-style piano accompaniments for silent film screenings at colleges and universities throughout New England. He has studied silent film music at the George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress and has accompanied the masterworks of American and international silent cinema.

Celebrate Impressionism (1874-2024): Lasting Light*
Instructor: ANNA SWINBOURNE
Wednesday, September 11, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean OR Wednesday, Dec. 11, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster
$20

Description: Impressionism, the light-filtering art movement we know from Manet, Monet, Degas and Cassatt, swept in 150 years ago, and it’s still very much with us. Farmington’s Hill-Stead Museum is marking this milestone in an unusual (and practical) way—with professional conservation of masterworks in their own collection. Don’t we all need tidying and TLC after a century and a half? Edgar Degas’s “Dancers in Pink,” Édouard Manet’s “Toreadors,” and Claude Monet’s “Fishing Boats at Sea” were treated onsite this summer by world-renowned conservators. This process occurred in a fishbowl: visitors could watch as the conservators removed dust and grime from the canvases, in a process funded by the Bank of America’s continuing Art Conservation Project. Dr. Anna Swinbourne will share discoveries the cleaning yielded (there are always some!) and will walk us through the impact, development, and import of this once-shocking art movement.

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

Instructor: ANNA SWINBOURNE (PhD) is Executive Director and CEO of Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut, as well as an independent art historian, curator, and art advisor engaged in publication, exhibition and art-market endeavors. From 1999 to 2009, Dr. Swinbourne was on the curatorial staff of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she created a two-volume catalogue on the unparalleled Niarchos Collection, and curated – either independently, or with Chief Curators, Kirk Varnedoe and John Elderfield – major exhibitions on Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Édouard Manet, and James Ensor, the last two of which were awarded First Prize for Best Historical Show of the year by the International Art Critics Association (AICA). Prior to joining MoMA, Anna was an Assistant Vice President in the Impressionist and Modern Art Department of Sotheby’s, New York. Trained at the École du Louvre in Paris, Tufts University (B.A.), and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University (M.A.; Ph.D.), she is a Trustee of Hill-Stead Museum as well as member of the Board of Managers of Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University and the Art Advisory Committee of King Baudouin Foundation United States.

Connie Converse at 100: The Legacy of a Vanished Singer-Songwriter*
Instructor: HOWARD FISHMAN
Wednesday, September 25, 5–6:20 p.m., Bliss Music Room/Fuller Hall
$20

Description: When the music of the previously unknown Connie Converse was released in 2009, decades after she deliberately disappeared in 1974 (never to be heard from again), it created a new reference point in American music, and a need to rewrite the music history books. In early 1950s New York, more than ten years before Bob Dylan & Co. was dubbed a "singer-songwriter," Converse wrote and performed witty, introspective, literary songs for voice and guitar, while also composing a brilliant catalog of operatic art song music. Howard Fishman, author of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (a finalist for the Plutarch Award) will discuss Converse's relationship to American song, and he’ll play excerpts from pioneering recordings that feature her haunting melodies.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and offered in partnership with Gilda Lyons and the Composer’s Seminar at The Hartt School.

Instructor: HOWARD FISHMAN is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where he has published essays on music, film, theater, literature, travel, and culture. His bylines have also appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Artforum, San Francisco Chronicle, Mojo, The Village Voice, Jazziz, and Salmagundi. His play, A Star Has Burnt My Eye, was a New York Times “Critics Pick.” As a performing songwriter and bandleader, Fishman has toured internationally as a headlining artist for over two decades. He has released eleven albums to date and is the producer of the album Connie’s Piano Songs: The Art Songs of Elizabeth “Connie” Converse. He is based in Brooklyn, NY.

How to Be a Modern-Day Curator*
Instructor: CARRIE CUSHMAN
Mondays, September 23, 30, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description: Curators care for art and artefacts by researching their past, exhibiting them in the present, and preserving them for the future.  In fact, “curator” comes from the Latin, meaning “to take care of.” But a 21st-century art curator stretches the role further. Curating today includes conversations beyond the art world, to gain outside support and participation, and to bring the local community into the museum. Why expand these relationships and stretch? If you’re curious, step behind the canvas with Hartford Art School (HAS) Galleries Director Dr. Carrie Cushman to glimpse a curator’s work – the research, exhibition design and educational programming. In Session 1, learn how to mount that buzz-generating exhibition, despite real-world roadblocks. In Session 2, take a private tour of Pathways: The Hartford Art School Faculty Show in the Joseloff Gallery on campus to learn how HAS Art History student interns helped curate the artistic array in the show.

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

Save the Date: Join us for the free opening reception of Pathways: The Hartford Art School Faculty Show on Thursday, September 12, 5–7 p.m. at the Joseloff Gallery on campus.

Instructor: CARRIE CUSHMAN (PhD in Art History, Columbia) is the Edith Dale Monson Gallery Director and Curator at the Hartford Art School and a specialist in postwar and contemporary art and photography from Japan. Before joining the University of Hartford, Carrie worked as a curator at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Her recent publications include Komatsu Hiroko: Creative Destruction (2022) and Going Viral: Photography, Performance, and the Everyday (2020). She is also the co-creator of the educational website, Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography.

All That Jazz! Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and More Great Women Artists*
Instructors: JAVON JACKSON and MATT DeCHAMPLAIN
Wednesdays, Oct. 9, 16, 23, 3:20–4:50 p.m., Bliss Hall/Fuller Hall
$80

Description: Women have always written, played and sung Jazz, that most American art form.  But they haven't always gotten their due. You likely know Billie Holiday's voice, Sarah Vaughan's, and Lady Ella's. But have you encountered pianists and arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Lil Hardin Armstrong, and Marian McPartland? In this 3-session exploration, Javon Jackson and Matt DeChamplain make time for – and keep time with – these jazz creators, influencers and unforgettable performers.  Audio, video and live performances put these jazzy women in the spotlight, center stage.

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

Instructors: JAVON JACKSON is Professor of Jazz and Director of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the University’s Hartt School. As leader or co-leader, Mr. Jackson has participated in 22 recording projects that have included such renowned artists as Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson, Ron Carter, and Les McCann. Javon’s most recent project, “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni,” was nominated for a 2023 NAACP Image Award. During his career, Javon Jackson has toured and recorded with artists including Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Charlie Haden, and Freddie Hubbard.

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 album “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.”

The Mysteries of Identity: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Page to (Hartford) Stage* - Lectures Only
Instructors: CATHERINE STEVENSON and MELIA BENSUSSEN 
Lectures only: Tuesday, October 22 and 29, 2–3:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium
$40 for lectures only

Description: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) tells more than one tale.  A Gothic detective story, a Victorian cautionary tale, and a philosophical exploration of the “double” (a shadow lurking within us all) foment a novelistic perfect storm. Catherine Stevenson (no relation to RLS!) explores this psychological thriller and the Hartford Stage’s “spine-chilling” adaptation, and you’ll get more from both “page” and “stage” with our pre- and post-play discussions. First learn about the novel’s literary antecedents and a few of its 80+ cinematic and theatrical treatments. Then attend the performance, introduced by the Stage’s Artistic Director Melia Bensussen. Wrap it up discussing how the production dramatizes Jekyll and his Doppelgänger’s cat-and-mouse game.  No fewer than four actors will embody aspects of “evil” Mr. Hyde. “To what lengths will we go to hide our true selves?” asks Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation.  To what lengths, indeed? Join us and find out.

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

Instructor: CATHERINE STEVENSON, former academic dean for International and Honors Programs at the University, 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 Mysteries of Identity: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Page to (Hartford) Stage* - Lectures + Performance
Instructors: CATHERINE STEVENSON and MELIA BENSUSSEN 
Lectures only: Tuesday, October 22 and 29, 2–3:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium
Performance: Sunday, October 27, 1 p.m. introduction by Melia Bensussen, 2 p.m. performance at Hartford Stage 
$75 for lectures + performance 

Description: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) tells more than one tale.  A Gothic detective story, a Victorian cautionary tale, and a philosophical exploration of the “double” (a shadow lurking within us all) foment a novelistic perfect storm. Catherine Stevenson (no relation to RLS!) explores this psychological thriller and the Hartford Stage’s “spine-chilling” adaptation, and you’ll get more from both “page” and “stage” with our pre- and post-play discussions. First learn about the novel’s literary antecedents and a few of its 80+ cinematic and theatrical treatments. Then attend the performance, introduced by the Stage’s Artistic Director Melia Bensussen. Wrap it up discussing how the production dramatizes Jekyll and his Doppelgänger’s cat-and-mouse game.  No fewer than four actors will embody aspects of “evil” Mr. Hyde. “To what lengths will we go to hide our true selves?” asks Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation.  To what lengths, indeed? Join us and find out.

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

Instructor: CATHERINE STEVENSON, former academic dean for International and Honors Programs at the University, 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.

Monday Afternoon at the Movies: Femmes Fatales*
Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH
Mondays, November 4, 11, 18, December 2, 3–4:30 p.m., Hillyer Hall 303 (Film Projection Room)
$80

Description: The femme fatale, that cinematic female trope, raised the sexual stakes the moment she first lured a sap to his sad undoing. This deadly woman (literally, from the French) projects her own wily strength, and she embodies a projection of male fears. We’ll start with an up-close-and-personal look at 1940s femmes fatales who filled the post-WWII screen as film noir emerged. (Noir is a classic Hollywood genre of gritty, fallible characters caught on the wrong side of the American dream.) Then we see how femmes and noirs alike have shown impressive staying power: witness today’s neo-noirs. These stories play out in California, Texas, Florida, and New Hampshire, where scheming females and misguided men steam their way into trouble.

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

• Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947): “Build my gallows high, baby.” One of the great noirs, showcasing one of the most fatale of femmes. Robert Mitchum, a former private eye, now owns a country gas station. He gets caught in a web of intrigue involving a gambler (Kirk Douglas) and a woman (Jane Greer) with whom the two men share a past. The “shadow worlds of Jacques Tourneur” include the Sierras, Acapulco, and San Francisco. This noir was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1991.
• Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981): “You aren’t too smart, are you? I like that in a man.” Kasdan’s first feature is a Florida neo-noir starring William Hurt, a small-town divorce lawyer, and a smoldering Kathleen Turner, his rich, dangerous client. It unfolds during a heat wave, intertwining professional transgression melodrama (attorney-client sexual liaison) with the classic noir trope of murder, targeting the client’s husband. It also features Mickey Rourke and Ted Danson.
• Blood Simple (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1984): “He was alive when I buried him.” The Coens’ first feature is a classic of American independent cinema with a James M. Cain-style storyline about a sleazy bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who suspects his wife (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him. He hires a private eye (M. Emmet Walsh) to investigate. Set in Texas, it inaugurates the Coen brothers’ lively camera style and a darkly comic view of a distinctly American landscape.
• To Die For (Gus Van Sant, 1995): “Suzanne used to say you’re not really anybody in America unless you’re on TV.” Here’s a defining performance from Nicole Kidman in Van Sant’s satire of a New Hampshire restaurant owner’s wife who will stop at nothing in her determination to become a television anchorwoman. The femme fatale enters the age of image culture. Written by Buck Henry, it features Joaquin Phoenix, Matt Dillon, Casey Affleck, and Illeana Douglas.

'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime: An Early Music Christmas*
Instructors: DEE HANSEN, ERIC HANSEN and NEAL HUMPHREYS
Tuesday, December 3, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster OR Friday, December 13, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley
$20

Description: Many treasured Christmas carols were composed centuries ago, among them, the haunting “What Child is This” (16th century).  Entwyned will perform ancient seasonal carols from around the world that are still beloved and regularly sung and played today. In so doing, they’ll transport us from the 13th through the 17th centuries, playing beautiful lesser-known pieces, including many evocative ancient Celtic carols. Entwyned performers will teach us about the songs’ origins, exquisitely expressing the magic and mystery of the season, and their own remarkable historical instruments.

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

Instructors: DEE HANSEN is Professor Emerita of Music Education, author of the book 100 Years of Hartt: A Centennial Celebration (2020) and primary author of The Music and Literacy Connection (2004, 2014 2nded.). Dee is a nationally active clinician, author, and arts consultant who publishes and specializes in curriculum and assessment development, music and literacy connections, and practical applications of learning theory.  Dr. Hansen holds a master’s degree in music history and Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education degree.

ERIC HANSEN retired in 2019 from the Connecticut State Library as Electronic Resources Coordinator. He holds a master’s degree in music history and completed post graduate work in musicology at the University of Chicago with the late Howard Mayer Brown. He performed as a professional bassist and lutenist in concerts and on recordings with nationally known musicians including Mannheim Steamroller. Over the years Eric played the lute on two gold albums and two multi-platinum albums. 

NEAL HUMPHREYS is an Administrator and Graduate Advisor for The Hartt School. Neal graduated from The Hartt School with his bachelor's and master's degrees in Cello Performance with an emphasis in chamber music. His vast ensemble experience includes work with composers Tan Dun and Frank Ticheli, a tour of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Border Politics: Handling Immigration Humanely 
Instructors: KAREN TEJADA-PEÑA and OSCAR GUERRA  
Monday, September 30, 11:20–12:35, Greenberg Center/Harry Jack Gray Center 
Free for Fellows/$25 for Non-Fellows* 
 
Description: “The border remains a contested zone—we can’t look away, and we can’t agree on what we see there,” claimed Rachel Monroe of The New Yorker recently. The numbers of migrants crossing the southern border is rising. Whereas they once came to escape poverty, many now make the risky journey to flee violence – only to find themselves “more vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and death.” In this election year, immigration is a hot-button issue confounding both parties. Only 28% of the country supports President Biden’s immigration policy; Trump paints immigration as “country-wrecking.” Yet the roughly 10.5 million undocumented immigrants (Pew Center) remain essential to the American economy. When immigrants are politicized or demonized for the agendas of political parties, it is easy to lose sight of the human fates behind the numbers. Who really benefits from immigration? Why does enforcement not work? How can we better reform policies to make immigration more humane? 

*Fellows, with a gift of $100 or more, receive benefits including the Presidents’ College Conversations, library privileges and parking in any non-reserved parking space on campus.

Instructors: KAREN TEJADA-PEÑA, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hartford, is a first-generation scholar and proud alumna of UC Santa Barbara and SUNY-Albany. Dr. Tejada's publications examine political habits, gender, transnationalism, and most recently, crimmigration studies (that is, the criminalization of immigration). Her book project, Putting them on ICE: Policing Salvadoran Communities in Long Island, spans three years of ethnographic work on Salvadorans in Nassau and Suffolk counties and was supported by a Russell Sage Foundation grant. In Hillyer College she teaches introduction to sociology, alongside courses on immigration, the criminal justice system, and Ethnic Studies. A member of Latino Sociology section of the American Sociological Association, she embraces activist scholarship and is working on issues related to language access rights on Long Island. 

OSCAR GUERRA is an Emmy® award-winning director, researcher, and educator. Associate Professor of Film and Video at the University of Connecticut and a producer at PBS FRONTLINE, Dr. Guerra’s focus is storytelling that promotes critical thinking and social investment. He aims to produce media that provides a way for underrepresented groups to share and disseminate counterstories, contradict dominant and potentially stereotypical narratives, and strengthen their voices and identities. Dr. Guerra’s career spans the spectrum of television environments, music, multimedia production, documentaries for social change, promotional video, immersive media, and vast international experience. Dr. Guerra has taught at San Francisco State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Tec de Monterrey University in Mexico City. 

On Lying and Politics: Hannah Arendt and George Orwell as Guides for Our Times 
Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE 
Tuesday, November 12, 5:30–7 p.m., Wilde Auditorium
Free for Fellows/$20 for Non-Fellows* 

Description: This conversation about language, truth, lies, and political discourse in contemporary America will take place in the aftermath of a Presidential election in which a leading candidate asserts he will only accept the results if he wins. That candidate continues to deny his defeat in the last election, and, according to the Washington Post, set a blistering record of over 30,000 lies while President. Such lies resulted in a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that killed five, injured over 100 police officers, and resulted in the arrests of more than 1,400 people. 

Big lies, doubts about election integrity, and violent assaults on democratic institutions are characteristics of authoritarian states. To wrestle more thoughtfully with our democracy’s brush with these tendencies, we will hearken back to two writers who made deep studies of classic authoritarianism: Hannah Arendt and George Orwell. A German Jew, Arendt fled Nazi Germany at age 27 and devoted her career to studying how democracies succumb to autocracy; Orwell wrote out of his experience with British colonialism, Soviet Communism, the Spanish Civil War, Nazism, and World War Two about how the political distortion of truth lames societies. What can we learn from these great minds who lived through democratic crises and authoritarian regimes to better understand our own moment? Join us, and find out! 

Please note: reading is not required to take part in this conversation; however, you may find your experience enriched by these two suggested texts:  

• Hannah Arendt, “On Lying and Politics,” which she published in 1971 in the wake of The Pentagon Papers and revelations about the Nixon administration’s secret bombing of Cambodia.  
• Adam Hochschild, Orwell on Truth (2017), gives us a primer for Orwell, framing his essays and novels as parables about the political uses of language, propaganda, political violence and terror, and the distortion of truth by opportunistic politicians.  

*Fellows, with a gift of $100 or more, receive benefits including the Presidents’ College Conversations, library privileges and parking in any non-reserved parking space on campus.

Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE teaches at Avon Old Farms School. He holds a doctorate in history and has published scholarship on slavery, politics, race, and on the teaching of history. His teaching has been featured in stories in the New York Times and National Public Radio, and he was recently interviewed on Colin McEnroe’s The Wheelhouse on the topic of political violence. 

Pathways to Peace? Palestine and Israel
Co-Sponsored by the Presidents’ College at the University of Hartford and Hartford International University for Religion and Peace (HIU)
Thursdays, noon–1:15 p.m.
$125

• Session 1–September 26 (UHart, Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center)
• Session 2–October 10 (HIU, 77 Sherman St., Hartford, Meeting Room)
• Session 3–October 31 (HIU, 77 Sherman St., Hartford, Meeting Room)
• Session 4–November 14 (UHart, Wilde Auditorium, Harry Jack Gray Center

Description: The world of peacebuilding offers this insight: peace can begin when people see themselves as partners with a shared problem. We find this wisdom promising. What can we learn about possibilities for peace in a situation fraught with violence and loss? Registrants are invited to reframe the conversation around the conflict in Gaza by listening to perspectives about peace. We’ll learn from local, national, and international experts about actual work toward peace–past, present, and future. We’ll see how the media promotes polarization and antagonism that hobble peacebuilding efforts. This series will model difficult, nuanced conversations around obstacles to, and possibilities for, peace. The conversations may provoke strong feelings or state positions registrants disagree with. The goal is to present and share new perspectives, not to argue the case for one side vs. another.

Please note: The course is limited to 125 advance registrants. All attendees will sign a communication agreement that commits them to active listening and learning. We will have a security presence.

Session 1 (Sept. 26): The Past: What Can We Learn about Possibilities for Peace from Past Negotiations?

JEREMY PRESSMAN, Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut

Jeremy Pressman is a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and a non-resident fellow at the Nonviolent Action Lab of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School. He co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium. His most recent book is The sword is not enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the limits of military force (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020). In Spring, 2019, Pressman was a Fulbright Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Pressman received his PhD from MIT.

Session 2 (Oct. 10): The Present: What Is the Present Conversation About Peace?

Moderator: AVINOAM J. PATT, Inaugural Director of NYU's Center for Study of Antisemitism and Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies  

Avinoam J. Patt is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at New York University. Dr. Patt previously held the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut, where he served as Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. From 2007-2019 he was the Philip D. Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Hartford, where he served as director of the Museum of Jewish Civilization. He is the author of multiple books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust. 

Via Zoom: ALI AL AWAR is a research associate at the Forum for Regional Thinking

Ali Al Awar, PhD, is a professor, researcher and political activist who specializes in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Palestinian-Israeli relations, and who has served as a longtime member of Palestinian and Israeli associations advocating for peace. A research associate at the Forum for Regional Thinking, he is a prolific writer addressing Israeli affairs in the Palestinian media and is a member of the Palestinian Outreach Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society. He has taught and lectured at various institutions including Tel Aviv University, Ankara University, the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University, and many others. Dr. Al Awar received his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

Via Zoom: LIHI BEN SHITRIT, Associate Professor of Israel Studies at NYU and Author of The Gates of Gaza: Critical Voices [Palestinian and Israeli] from Israel on October 7 and the War with Hamas (2024)

Lihi Ben Shitrit is the director of the Taub Center for Israel Studies and the Henry Taub Professor of Israel Studies at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, religion, and politics in the Middle East. Her most recent book, The Gates of Gaza: Critical Voices from Israel on October 7 and the War with Hamas (DeGruyter, 2024) gathers reactions by Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals and scholars who are deeply grieving and affected following the horrific attack on October 7, but who unite in their criticism of Israeli government policies. This chronicle of unfolding events, written within months of the Hamas attack, track an emerging discourse in Israel that seeks to hold both Palestinian and Israeli pain and aspirations not as mutually exclusive, but as an impetus for creating a better and more equitable future for all who inhabit the land.   

Via Zoom: DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN, journalist, public opinion expert, international political and strategic consultant and Author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023)

Dahlia Scheindlin is a political scientist, a public opinion expert and a political consultant. She has advised nine national election campaigns in Israel since 1999 and has worked in fifteen other countries as well. In Israel, her research focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, foreign policy, democracy, human rights and civil rights, political analysis, and comparative conflict analysis. Dr. Scheindlin has regional expertise in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, post-conflict societies and transitional democracies. She holds a PhD from Tel Aviv University; she is a policy fellow at The Century Foundation, a regular columnist at Haaretz (English), and a foreign affairs analyst on the BBC television program, Context; she is among the founders of +972 Magazine and has co-hosted several podcasts including the Tel Aviv Review of Books and Election Overdose. She lives in Tel Aviv. 

Session 3 (Oct. 31): How does the Media Shape Perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

Moderator: MARIE SHANAHAN, Head of UCONN Department of Journalism

Marie K. Shanahan is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut and head of the Department of Journalism. Her academic research and teaching focus on the intersection of journalism and digital communication technology. Prof. Shanahan studies trends in digital discourse — particularly, online commenting on news sites and social media, news literacy, misinformation and local news engagement. 

ANNAFI WAHED, Founder and CEO of The Flip Side, an online news aggregator intent on bridging the gap between liberals and conservatives

Annafi Wahed has a broad array of experience spanning the federal government, non-profit, political, and private sectors. In 2016, she left her role as a Senior Consultant at Ernst & Young to join the Democratic campaign. Walking door to door, she saw firsthand how next-door neighbors could be completely isolated from one another by the media they consume. Annafi launched The Flip Side as a passion project in 2017 and has since spearheaded each new stage of the venture. 

AMY MITCHELL, Executive Director, Center for News, Technology & Innovation, former Director of Journalism Research at the Pew Research Center

Amy S. Mitchell is the founding Executive Director of the Center for News, Technology & Innovation. Prior to her role at CNTI, Mitchell served as Managing Director of news and Information Research at the Pew Research Center. In her 25 years with Pew Research, Mitchell helped launch the journalism research program and served as managing director since 2010, responsible for the Center’s research related to news and information, including how the public accesses, engages with and creates news, what news organizations are providing, and the evolving role of technology in the flow of news and information. 

Jewish and Muslim faculty at HIU will share and compare newsfeeds as part of this session.

Session 4 (Nov. 14): The Future: Can We Hold Open a Space for Peace?

Moderator: JOEL LOHR, President of Hartford International University for Religion and Peace

Joel N. Lohr, PhD, is the President of Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, a leading graduate school of religion in Hartford, Connecticut. Also serving as Professor of Bible and Interreligious Dialogue, Lohr is an award-winning author, scholar of religion, and passionate leader in interreligious relations and higher education. His teaching and research focus on the scriptural interpretation, Jewish-Christian relations, and dialogue. He has published numerous articles and eleven books. His most recent book is co-authored with Steve Brallier and Lynn Beck, titled Mitka’s Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust.

Via Zoom: OMAR DAJANI, Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, legal advisor to Palestinian delegation in 1999 peace talks

Omar Dajani is professor of law at the University of the Pacific and co-director of the law school’s Global Center for Business & Development. Recognized as a leading expert on legal aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in 1999, Professor Dajani was recruited to serve as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel, ultimately participating in the summits at Camp David and Taba. He then joined the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), where he worked on peacebuilding initiatives and played a lead role in marshaling and organizing international efforts to support Palestinian legal and political reforms. His current research focuses on what’s next for the states of the Middle East. He is exploring the status and protection of ethnic and religious minorities and considering the extent to which federalism and other forms of decentralization offer solutions to ethno-national conflicts in the region. 

Via Zoom: MIRA SUCHAROV, Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations

Mira Sucharov is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, where she has developed courses in Israeli-Palestinian relations, op-ed writing and social media engagement, graphic novels and political identity, and Netflix and politics. She is currently writing a dual travel-memoir with Omar M. Dajani on space, place and emotion in Israel/Palestine, and they are developing a podcast on the past and future of Jaffa, called “The Vacant Lot.” She is also a frequent media commentator, having appeared on CBC, CTV, Global News, Agence-France Press, and NPR affiliate KDNK; and having been quoted in Vox, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, The Globe and Mail, The National Post and Al Jazeera. In 2019, she won the Faculty of Public Affairs award for Excellence in Public Commentary. Dr. Sucharov is a nine-time teaching award winner, including having won the highest university teaching award in Ontario and the founding co-chair of the Jewish Politics Division at the Association for Jewish Studies, and is immediate past co-editor of AJS Perspectives. 

Supreme Court Round-Up: The 2023-2024 Term  
Instructor: JILDA ALIOTTA 
Mondays, October 7, 14, 21, 4:30–6 p.m., Greenberg Center, and October 28, 4:30–6 p.m., Gengras Student Union, room 331/333
$80   

Description: With once-in-a-generation decisions on presidential immunity and the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as well as the usual array of other controversial cases including freedom of expression in cyberspace, abortion and gun rights, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023-24 term has been one for the record books.  What are the implications of these and other decisions? Where is the Court as an institution headed? Is the U.S. Supreme Court still, as Alexander Hamilton predicted in 1788, “the least dangerous branch” of the national government? 

• Session 1: An overview of U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023–24 Term   
• Session 2: Significant Developments & Decisions of the 2023–24 Term—Part 1   
• Session 3: Significant Developments & Decisions of the 2023–24 Term—Part 2   
• Session 4: Looking Ahead to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024-25 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 U.S. Supreme Court, in what has become one of our longest-running courses. She teaches classes in law, American politics, and women in politics.   

HOT, Hot Topics in an Election Year  
Instructor: WARREN GOLDSTEIN 
Tuesday, Oct. 29 and Wednesdays, Nov. 20 and Dec. 4, noon-1:30 p.m., Shaw Center 
$60 

Description: Do you feel this election year has lasted slightly less than forever? Join the (very big) crowd. Fortunately for us, Presidents’ College Professor Warren Goldstein isn’t out campaigning. He’s doing what he says suits him better —commentating, teaching, probing, worrying, and cheerleading. He may be just the guide to lead us through this contest. His classroom will provide the forum for your questions, hopes, and fears. Professor Goldstein brings his trademark backstories and draws from the sweep of US political, cultural, and social history to set up context for discussions about current political happenings. As always, he keys discussion topics to your interests, to significant political news, and to his unflagging passions: voting rights, racial justice, and democratic politics. He’ll suggest readings to inform our debates.   

Instructor: WARREN GOLDSTEIN (PhD, Yale) is a prize-winning historian, essayist, and commentator. Former Chair of the History & Philosophy Department at the University of Hartford and the University’s Harry Jack Gray/ NEH Distinguished Teaching Humanist, he is author or coauthor of six books. Currently a speechwriter for the American Federation of Teachers, his essays on history, higher education, race, religion, politics, crime, and sports have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, Boston Globe, Newsday, Miami Herald, The Nation, Christian Century, Commonweal, Tikkun, the Yale Alumni Magazine, and The Huffington Post. The 2006 recipient of the James E and Frances W. Bent Award for Scholarly Creativity, Goldstein has also received major fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the NEH, and the Louisville Institute. 

Tribal Sovereignty: How Much Authority Do Tribes Have?  
Instructor: STEPHEN PEVAR 
Tuesday, November 5, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster OR Friday, November 15, 2–3:30 p.m., McAuley 
$20 

Description:  Native American Indian tribes were sovereign governments before Europeans arrived. Today there are 574 federally-recognized Native American Indian tribes, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently confirmed their ongoing, vast sovereignty. Because they are sovereign, tribes have a right to hunt, fish, gather water and minerals, and engage in gaming (since 1987) on their reservations. Yet their sovereignty beyond these basic rights is incompletely or inaccurately understood and interpreted. What powers do tribes in fact retain? And what powers, according to the Federal government, have been limited or negated? Learn about the rights and authority they have, and those for which they are still fighting. 

Save the Date: To honor Native American Heritage Month, Stephen Pevar will also offer a free lecture on major Supreme Court decisions that have shaped tribal rights. Sponsored by Amplifying Indigenous Voices and the University of Hartford’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement. Wednesday, November 6, 12:45–1:45 p.m., location to be announced on the Diversity Office website. 

Instructor: STEPHEN PEVAR (BA Princeton University, JD University of Virginia School of Law) began his legal career from 1971 to 1974 as a Legal Aid attorney on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He then worked for 45 years on the National Staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, litigating more than 175 civil rights cases, focusing on Indigenous rights, freedom of speech, and the rights of prisoners. In addition, Mr. Pevar taught Federal Indian Law for 16 years at the University of Denver School of Law, for 5 years at NYU Law School, and currently teaches Advanced Federal Indian Law at Yale Law School. He has lectured extensively on Indigenous justice issues and is the author of The Rights of Indians and Tribes. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and children.

Read and Reflect: What Defines America? 
Instructor: WALTER HARRISON 
Tuesday, October 8, 11–12:15 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries 
$20 

Description: In the past three years both the North and South Carolina state legislatures passed bills requiring all students--in order to graduate from any state public college or university—to take a course studying these documents:

• U.S. Constitution 
• Declaration of Independence 
• Federalist Papers (5 essays) 
• Emancipation Proclamation 
• Gettysburg Address 
• Letter from Birmingham Jail 

The legislators worried that other required courses like “Power, Difference, and Inequality” and “Global Understanding” do not include a balanced view of American history.

In this discussion we’ll consider what these 6 documents tell us—or don’t—about our country’s past, present and future. Participants should read some or all of them and come to offer their thoughts on the values, statements, viewpoints, and arguments in the documents. What essential messages do they include? What isn’t there and should be? And why?

Instructor: 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 the University’s endowment, and a transformation and re-design of the University’s 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. 

Modern Detective Fiction
Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE
Fridays, September 27, October 25, November 22, 12:30–2 p.m, KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$60

Description: Good detective fiction needs brains more than it needs brawn—brainy writers, characters and readers. Sure, there are the heavies, but are they the masterminds? Look elsewhere, maybe to that unassuming figure over there. It’s clear the pandemic boosted this ever-popular genre: readers sought escape, or control, or definite answers. But are these answers always definite? What is truth or not-truth? Who (or what) is good or evil? More scholars are researching detective fiction now, revealing just how complicated, influential and brainy this genre is.

Join Pamela Bedore, our academic gumshoe, as she pairs up strange bedfellows in this 3-part course. How strange?:

1. Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926) vs Edmund Wilson (Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, 1945). Detective Formulae, then Innovations.
2. Edgar Allan Poe (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841) vs Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye, 2006). A 21st-Century rewrite of Poe’s Gothic tale. Successful?
3. Ursula K. Le Guin (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1973) vs Louise Penny (Still Life, 2005). Utopia Menaced vs Canada’s Three Pines.

Each session treats a detective novel, then an essay or short story that compliments, contradicts or complicates the picture. If a homicide happens and you’re not around to discuss it. . . hmmm. . . what then?

Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches courses in 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).

The Abrahamic Religions: Islam, Judaism, Christianity  
Instructor: AYELET BRINN 
Tuesdays, November 19, December 3, 10, 11:30–1 p.m., Greenberg Center/Harry Jack Gray Center 
$60 

Description: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three of the world’s major religions. What is unique to each, defining its individuality and differentiating it from the others? And, in today’s world, is it more relevant and useful to ask what among them is similar? Over three sessions we’ll examine histories, beliefs, religious texts and practices, looking for the different and the similar. Have similarities increased over time due to advances in communication, visibility, education and mutual influencing? Do the answers each religion offers to lofty (and mundane) questions still satisfy? Or do they contribute to tensions among the three, shaping the contours of today’s world? Comparisons aren’t always odious; sometimes they’re positively illuminating.   

Instructor: AYELET BRINN is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Hartford, where she holds the Philip D. Feltman Professorship in Modern Jewish History. Her first book, A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press, was published by New York University Press in 2023. She recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities stipend to conduct research for her forthcoming book on censorship and American Jewish culture.  

Commercial Supersonic Flight: Faster than the Speed of Sound
Instructor: PAUL SLABOCH
Tuesdays, September 17, 24, 1:30–3 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
$40

Description:  

Description: Supersonic flight, exceeding the speed of sound, began in 1947 when U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager blasted a new plane, the Bell X-1, right through the sound barrier. That feat grew out of sound-wave science discovered by 19th-century Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. Two decades after Yeager’s breakthrough, Concorde wowed the world; now NASA's X-59 QUESST demonstrator is in flight tests. Our determination to go from A to B as fast as possible has spurred startling, incredible transportation innovations. Learn the how (the technical challenges of supersonic flight) and the why (the thinking that propelled it.) Paul Slaboch says that, despite its difficulties, the promise of renewed commercial supersonic flight will be fulfilled within the decade.

Instructor: PAUL SLABOCH (PhD Aerospace Engineering, Notre Dame) is a licensed Engineer and Associate Professor and Chair of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Acoustical Engineering at the University of Hartford. The author or co-author of over 25 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, he has presented talks all over the US and abroad. He was awarded two Faculty Fellowships at NASA’s John Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, OH, where he spent two summers in the Acoustics Division studying aircraft engine noise. His research has also been funded by NASA and the NASA CT Space Grant Consortium. Before joining the University, he worked for the USDOT Volpe Center and the FAA studying Aircraft Wake Vortices and vortex mitigation strategies for air traffic control. He has commented on aerospace-related questions on local NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX stations, as well as in the Hartford Courant.

Blue Jeans: Fashion Statement or Environmental Faux Pas?
Instructor: LAURA PENCE
Tuesday, October 15, 12:30–2 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries OR Thursday, November 7, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean
$20

Description: No doubt about it: what we wear sends wordless messages—and often, that’s the point. Our clothes show our seriousness, our sassiness, even our political leanings. Yet aside from its momentary message, its fashion statement, or its utility, what do we know of our garment’s origin? Like our food, it isn’t born in the store where we buy it. Blue jeans, for example, have a life cycle as predictable as tadpoles: starting when the fiber is created, ending when the garment is recycled or trashed.  Professor Pence has researched this most ubiquitous of garments and will take us with her, tracking a pair of jeans. She’ll reveal how cotton cultivation impacts the environment (hint: not positively); the water resources needed for dye-baths (hint: indigo doesn’t even start out blue); the challenges of recycling. Finally, we’ll learn how washing our clothes further affects the environment. 

Instructor: LAURA PENCE (BS Lebanon Valley College, PhD Michigan State University, Postdoctoral NIH Fellow at MIT) is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hartford with expertise in environmental chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and chemical education. For her work on environmental and sustainability issues, Pence was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2011 and spent 2012-2013 as a Congressional Science Policy Fellow in the office of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), where she especially focused on energy, water and forestry. She also holds a joint appointment as a Research Scientist in the National Security Directorate of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Twice ranked among the top 25 professors nationally on RateMyProfessor.com in both 2014 and 2017, Pence won the University of Hartford’s Roy E. Larsen Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006 and the Oscar and Shoshona Trachtenberg Award for outstanding service in 2023.

The Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio: Patterns in Math, Nature, and the Arts
Instructor: PEGGY BEAUREGARD
Friday, October 18, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley
$20

Description: Mathematics can be unserious, even playful. Whoa. . . really? Yes, when you look for patterns: patterns in numbers, but also in tree branches, musical sequences, flower petals and human anatomy. First, you’ll meet Fibonacci. Not an opera extra, but a starring numerical sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. This pattern, discovered by Mr. F, reflects and actually explains the patterns of branches, petals, and other natural objects. Then meet the Golden Ratio, recognized by Euclid in 300 BCE, the name given to a particular proportion or relationship. It, too, appears in the structure of natural objects, such as nautilus shells. This Ratio is often found in human-made art and architecture, because it enhances their visual appeal: they seem balanced or “right” to our eyes. The Ratio infuses our entire built environment. Architects and artists (Le Corbusier, Dali) relied on it, but so do product logo designers and marketers. This visually-rich presentation will change the way you see the world.

Instructor: PEGGY MITCHELL BEAUREGARD (BFA, Printmaking, Hartford Art School, MS Applied Mathematics, Rutgers U) is an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Hartford. She has taught courses in mathematics for elementary teachers, math for non-stem and arts students (discrete topics, finance), precalculus and calculus. She created and teaches the interdisciplinary course "Symmetry and Harmony: Mathematics in Art and Music," which includes applications of fractals, tessellations, Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio. Before teaching at the university level, Peggy taught art and math in inner city and suburban schools. She speaks regularly at national conferences, mostly to teachers and loves combining art and math to teach creative lessons that reach the diverse community of students in her classrooms.

A.I. and The Future of American Medicine
Instructor: MIKE MAGEE
Wednesdays, November 6 and 20, 2–3:30 p.m.,1877 Club in the Harry Jack Gray Center
Wednesday, November 13, 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium in the Harry Jack Gray Center
$60

Description: By 2030 advanced machine learning will change every aspect of Medicine. Generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) can already sense, comprehend, act, direct, discover and learn continuously. Will technology really improve health outcomes and increase lifespans? What can go wrong? Dr. Mike Magee will tell you. He’ll track seven decades of progress in technology-driven healthcare, beginning with A.I.’s forerunner: natural language processing. Then we’ll view a present in which basic Electronic Medical Records have morphed into computer-driven diagnostic aids, reading X-rays and EKGs. Physicians and consumers now use health-assist Apps, and Google’s multimodal Genesis promises to “combine data types like never before to unlock new possibilities in machine learning.” Our last session projects five years out, painting a revolutionized A.I. picture of medical education and research, diagnostics and therapeutics, drug discovery and genetic engineering. Dr. Mike says medical communications and power-sharing – between those delivering and those receiving care – will increase understanding and partnership.  But will it negatively impact trust, confidence and compassion? Dr. Mike will present five case studies. You’ll weigh in on the ethics of this fast-forwarding medical world.

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 the author of the weekly blog Health Commentary.org.

The Beat Goes On. How Does Recorded Music Work?*
Instructors: GABE HERMAN and JUSTIN KURTZ
Thursdays, November 21, December 5, 12, 12:30–2 p.m., Room 410/Fuller Hall
$75

Description: When and how was music first captured? What discoveries and innovations had to occur to make sound recording possible? The business of recording has its own history, as much as any musician or musical era does. It’s a fascinating mix of audio recording technology, social movements, and eccentric visionaries, further shaped by world events.  Some of its “a-ha!” moments are, in retrospect, impossibly random. Associate Professor Gabe Herman will spend two sessions reprising known and lesser-known critical junctures in the history of this industry. He’ll discuss modern industry trends and blue-sky some future changes. In session three, Dept Chair Justin Kurtz joins in to lead a tour of The Hartt School’s state-of-the-art recording studio facility, including a demonstration of how today’s digital tech keeps artistic music recording alive, while offering new, creative options.

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

Instructors: GABE HERMAN is Associate Professor of Music Production & Technology at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School, as well as a music producer, audio engineer, and sound designer. Through his company, AudioGabriel, he produces creative, new works with notable local, regional and international performing artists, and has engineered recordings from classical ensembles to modern rock, contemporary world beat music, jazz, blues, and R&B, on just about every form of media outlet. His film scores, audio posts, and sound design work have premiered and won awards at over 21 film festivals and he has also designed sound for original programming series for NBC, VS, the Outdoor Channel and MTV. A full, professional member of the Audio Engineering Society where he has served as a Regional Vice President for the Eastern US and Canada and Chair of the AES Education Committee, he teaches his students how to translate their passion for the music industry into skills to help them build vibrant careers in the entertainment industry as engineers, producers and performers.

JUSTIN KURTZ (BA linguistics and music, MA in sound recording, McGill University) is Associate Professor of Music Production and Technology at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School. He has worked as a recording engineer for the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta. From 1998-2000, he taught acoustics and music technology at the University of Ottawa, relocating to New England in 2001 to teach music production and recording at the Hartt School. His production company, Laurel Hill Recording, based in Northampton, MA, specializes in classical and acoustic music recording and broadcast based in Northampton, MA, including clients such as the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, VOCE, The Hartford Chorale, Noah Baerman, Archangel Voices, The Irrelevants, Cuatro Puntos, and Avery Ensemble. His projects have appeared on the Naxos, Albany, Innova, Toccata Classics, Divine Art, Summit, and New World record labels, with his recordings recognized by Fanfare, The New York Times, Gapplegate, NYC Jazz Record, and Jazz Truth among others. A full professional member of the Audio Engineering Society since 1999, he has particular research interest in stereo microphone techniques, auditory perception, and technical ear training methods.