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J.S. Bach–Still Amazing After All These Years*

Instructor: CHRIS SHEPARD

• Friday, September 18, 2–3:30 p.m., The McAuley (off-campus, West Hartford)
• Monday, September 28, 2–3:30 p.m., McLean (off-campus, Simsbury)

$20

Don’t say Bach is back. . .because he never left. J.S. Bach’s gigantic musical legacy strides onward 275 years after he died. Simply put, he did it all: music for voice, chorus, keyboard, orchestra, chamber groups, organ—over 1,100 known works. Now they are all being performed in a decade-long project in Worcester, MA. CONCORA, Connecticut’s oldest professional choir, is a partner in that monumental venture, under its artistic director Dr. Chris Shepard. Here in West Hartford, CONCORA will present three J.S. Bach cantatas on October 22. In advance of this concert, Chris Shepard’s talk on Bach, the cornerstone of Western music, will clue you in on sly mathematical puzzles and messages he often snuck into his pieces. You’ll want to take note.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructor: CHRIS SHEPARD, conductor and graduate of the Hartt School, launched THE COMPLETE BACH in May 2024, the first project to present live performances of all of Bach’s works. This monumental undertaking was inspired by BACH2010 (2005-2013), in which his Sydneian Bach Choir and Orchestra performed all of Bach’s choral cantatas in Sydney, Australia. Chris is music director of CONCORA (CT’s oldest professional choir), The Worcester Chorus, and Con Brio Choral Society. He has led two longstanding annual Handel Messiah traditions: Worcester Chorus’s annual performance at Mechanics Hall; and from 2015 to 2023 he conducted annual performances at Carnegie Hall by the Masterwork Chorus. He holds degrees from the Hartt School, the Yale School of Music, and the University of Sydney, where his PhD thesis on the performance history of the B Minor Mass received the American Choral Director Association’s 2012 Julius Herford Prize for outstanding dissertation.

Art and Music As Mirrors of Their Era*

Instructors: DEE HANSEN and FRAN ALTVATER

• Fridays, September 18, 25, October 2, 10:30 a.m.–noon, KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$60

"In every work of art, the spirit of the age and the individual artist's soul unite.”
—Friedrich Schlegel

If we look at particular periods—the Middle Ages, the Baroque, and the 20th century—we can observe something intriguing: a striking cross-feed between art and music as they tackled the existential issues of each age. Our artful teaching duo, music educator Dee Hansen and art historian Fran Altvater, say these music-art synchronicities are no coincidence. Artists and musicians of any one age often draw on similar tools, even though their mediums differ. Baroque music, for example, featured dramatic melodic complexity and a wealth of ornamentation. So did Baroque art (google “Bernini”). Twentieth century musicians and artists drew on quite different tools to express the complexities of an industrialized world that had faced not one, but two, world wars. Dissonance, unfamiliar materials, and abstraction came to the fore, yielding entirely new works. Think: Stravinsky’s "Rite of Spring, Cage’s "4’ 33'"' or Mark Rothko and Kandinsky’s non-figurative art. We’ll focus on one era each session to help you explore which historical events and artistic tools shaped the creative essence of the age.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructors: DEE (DEMARIS) HANSEN (MM, Music History; DMA, Music Education) 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 was director of The Hartt Summerterm graduate program (2006–2014). Dr. Hansen specializes in curriculum and assessment development, music and literacy connections, brain research, and learning theory and is the primary author of The Music and Literacy Connection (2026, 3rd ed.). She also performs with the Entwyned Early Music Trio as a Renaissance and Baroque flautist, Celtic harpist, and Baroque guitarist.

FRAN ALTVATER (PhD Boston University) is an associate professor of art history. She teaches Introduction to Fine Arts I, II, and III, and has taught art of the Silk Road, as well as classes in museum studies. Her research focuses on medieval art and architecture, museum studies, and issues in collegiate teaching. Her book Sacramental Theology and Baptismal Fonts: Incarnation, Initiation, and Institution was published in 2017. Her current research looks at how the visual representations of everyday objects in the Middle Ages reflect the wide range of social identity that was emerging at the time.

Jazz Takes on Bob Dylan*

Instructors: JAVON JACKSON and MATT DECHAMPLAIN

• Wednesdays, October 7, 14, 21, 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

$75

The Hartt School’s Javon Jackson takes center stage again this fall, this time with a tribute to Bob Dylan. His March 2026 album, Jackson Plays Dylan, takes Dylan’s musical-poetic legacy on board and drives it forward into today with Jackson's sonorous jazz saxophone. Why Dylan, one might ask? “Bob Dylan reminds me of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington,” Jackson says. “Like them, he's always trying to find another, better version of what came before, with one foot in the past and one foot in the future.” For the Presidents’ College, Jackson will trace his own evolving appreciation of Dylan, especially around themes of social justice and human vulnerability. The answer, my friends, is “blowin’ in the groove,” as one reviewer stated; hear the difference a little jazz makes, with Jackson talking about and playing Dylan, along with The Hartt School’s jazz pianist Matt DeChamplain.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

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.

Reimagining Dracula at Hartford Stage*

Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE

• Lectures: Mondays, October 12, 19, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries
• Performance: Sunday, October 18, 1 p.m. preview with Melia Bensussen; 2 p.m. performance, The Hartford Stage

$40 Lectures only
$65 Lectures + performance

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has long been considered the quintessential vampire novel of English literature. And contemporary adaptations of Dracula abound. Partly thanks to Stoker’s influence, vampires of every flavor now infuse conversations on empire, gender, kinship, religion, and sexuality. Why do vampires still enthrall us? Professor Pamela Bedore gets us talking in Session One, to set the stage before each of us heads to the Hartford Stage to see Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s adaptation of Dracula. Session Two will give us a chance to talk about it all: Does the play stand on its own merits? How does it draw on the romance and/or horror so dear to our hearts? How does it speak to the bigger questions about identity, belonging and power in vampire fiction? Read Dracula and/or watch one or more vampire films—if you can—but come join in the discussion regardless.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructor: PAMELA BEDORE is professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches courses on detective fiction, science fiction, gender theory, and American Literature. She has published widely on popular genres, including detective fiction; she is editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and the author of Dime Novels and the Roots of Detective Fiction and The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction (2024). Her new book, New Approaches to the Doppelganger in Literature and Culture, comes out in Fall 2026, and her Great Course, Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, is available on Audible or at your public library.

Peace, Love, & Show Tunes: Hair’s Enduring Appeal*

Instructor: JOHN PIKE

• Friday, October 16, 12:30–2 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$20 Lecture only
$30 Lecture + performance

Hair did it first—breaking musical ground, upending Broadway’s status quo. It was a shocker, reveling in the rock music of an untamed ‘60s tribe, the original hippies. Admit it: those “Age of Aquarius” lyrics are burned into your permanent storage, along with “Flower Power” and songs about sunshine. Musical theatre historian John Pike untangles Hair’s decidedly unorthodox marriage of theatrical innovation, rebellion and social commentary. The show poignantly expressed the fears, joys and consequences of resistance and revolution. John Pike’s talk gives us backstage stories, as well as clarity on why Hair still/again resonates.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructor: JOHN PIKE is a theatre professor at The Hartt School Theatre Division where teaches music theatre history, text analysis, and contemporary theatre. Previously, John was Artistic Associate for Goodspeed Musicals, collaborating on more than 90 productions (including five on Broadway) and as publisher of Show Music Magazine. His articles have appeared in Playbill, The Sondheim Review, and Dramatists Quarterly. Also a stage director, John has helmed more than 30 musicals and plays including Sweeney Todd, The Full Monty, The Farnsworth Invention and last year’s production of Guys & Dolls for The Hartt School.

Opera’s Magic Demystified*

Instructor: TROY COOK

• Lecture: Thursday, October 22, 3:30–5 p.m., Berkman Recital Hall/Fuller Music Center
• Performance: The Hartt School Opera Gala, Sunday, Nov. 15, 3 p.m. Fuller Music Center.

$20 Lecture only
$30 Lecture + performance

Opera is the force-multiplier of the dramatic arts. It needs voices, actors, musicians, costumers, tech experts, scenic talents, directors–and of course, composers–to produce a whole greater than the parts. How does it all synthesize? Luckily, we can rely on Troy Cook to expose the muscle behind the magic. This internationally acclaimed baritone, a Hartt School professor, will reveal how composers use harmony, melody, orchestration, and dramatic structure to heighten emotion. He’ll spotlight the crucial collaboration of all players–in the pit, on- and backstage. Hartt students will sing musical excerpts, populating our program with outsize operatic characters. By the time Troy Cook exits, you’ll know how opera moves audiences to weep, roar and riot. Whether you're an opera lover or a curious newcomer, you'll gain a deeper appreciation not only of its potent magic, but also of its demanding logistics.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructor: TROY COOK is a baritone who has enjoyed an international career spanning more than three decades, appearing with leading companies including The Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, and Opera Philadelphia. Equally at home in traditional repertoire and contemporary works, he has created roles in world premieres and earned praise for performances noted for their vocal beauty, dramatic commitment, and technical excellence. In addition to his performing career, Cook serves on the voice faculty of The Hartt School at the University of Hartford, where he mentors the next generation of singers.

Really Good French Films, Vraiment!*

Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH

• Mondays, October 26, November 2, 9, 16, 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

$80

Join our cohort of film devotees to consider French social comedy, a genre marrying humor to social commentary. Satire is always one ingredient, but here it’s savory, not sour. Also in the mix? Social solidarity. Two films are comedies of self-absorption: that of Jean Renoir’s landed gentry and Agnes Varda’s yé-yé singer, Cleo. The second Varda film uses the director's own life’s work as social commentary, while Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie fashions a Parisian fable about loneliness.

• Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939). Love triangles among aristocrats and servants on a country estate? Mon dieu! Whatever next? This film cost more to make than any before it, and it bombed at the box office. Later, it was recognized as a commentary on human frivolity when Europe was facing the fascist abyss. It was subsequently hailed as one of the greatest films ever. Rules of the Game remained in the Sight and Sound Top Ten from 1952 to 2012. With Nora Gregor and Marcel Dalio.
• Cléo From Five to Seven (Agnès Varda, 1962). Varda was the only woman director of the 1960s’ French New Wave, and this is very much a sixties film. Cléo, a somewhat vacuous pop singer, is facing a cancer diagnosis; she wanders from café to projection room to apartment, and finally to the Montsouris Park. There she meets a soldier from the Algerian War on the last day of his leave, and he goes with her to get the dreaded results of her biopsy. The composer Michel Legrand plays a version of himself, and Jean-Luc Godard has a cameo in a short film-within-the-film. Corrine Marchand is Cléo.
• The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000). Almost 40 years later, at the age of 70, Varda made an unconventional documentary on the practice of gleaning, which she proposes as a metaphor for her own work. She interviews gleaners both rural and urban, places a lawyer in full regalia in a picked-over field to discuss the right to glean, and makes amusing tableaux vivants of classic 19th-century paintings of gleaners by Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. The star of the film is the sensibility of Varda herself.
• Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). Audrey Tautou is a lonely waitress in a Montmartre café who sets out to do good works for the many eccentrics who populate her world. The film is a technical tour-de-force, winning praise for cinematography, production design, sound design, writing, and direction. It features a red/green color scheme, talking animals, and the original roaming gnome. Underneath all that, however, is a romantic comedy about two very shy people. With Mathieu Kassovitz as Nino, Amélie’s love interest.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

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.

The New Broadway Just Wants to Have Fun*

Instructor: FRANK RIZZO

• Tuesdays, December 1 and 8, 12:30–2 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$40

Oh, Mary! was just the start. A slew of wild new shows, and radically reimagined old ones, are revitalizing Broadway this year. Cats: The Jellicle Ball (Broadway’s first monster hit in years); The Rocky Horror Show (drag out your costumes!); Schmigadoon; Titanique; and others are attracting feisty new theatergoers seeking not just a show, but a party. In a season in which a former Hartt School professor won a Tony for Schmigadoon, Frank Rizzo, longtime Variety theater critic, dives deep into these fresh, fun musicals and tells us what’s ahead in New York and on tour in Hartford. He’ll dish on what these spirited shows say—or don’t—about our times.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation.

Instructor: FRANK RIZZO has been Variety’s theater critic for 23 years. He has covered the arts in Connecticut for nearly 50 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).

A Presidents' College Conversation: Local Beats, Vital Streets: Why Neighborhood Newsrooms Matter

Introductory Comments: Lawrence P. Ward
Moderator: Deepa Fadnis
Panel: Arunan Arulampalam, Helen Bennett, Elizabeth Hamilton

• Thursday, October 1, 12:45–2 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

Free for Fellows
Fee for Non-Fellows

Strong communities need strong stories. They need accurate local reporting, that reflects the realities of their neighborhoods and that gives them a voice. Local beats make vital streets. Taking the city of Hartford as a case in point, this panel discussion considers why and how certain cities have become “news deserts” and what community-centered journalism might do to right the balance. In the digital age, it may seem like the news is suddenly, everywhere, all at once; yet on the ground, many legacy publications have seen their staff so heavily reduced that they can no longer cover basic civic functions—like city council meetings, local school board decisions, or neighborhood-level crime—with the depth they once did.

Hear from experts who have navigated the realities of Hartford and understand the city well: How can we better cover this and other cities? And why might it be important to do so? Can we still be objective while cultivating relationships and building trust within the community? Join us for this stimulating conversation that considers how and whether community journalism can help build more informed and resilient communities, better able to come together to create solutions for their own revitalization. The last 20 minutes will be reserved for questions from the audience.

Speakers: LAWRENCE P. WARD became UHart’s seventh president on July 1, 2024, before which he served for ten years as Vice President for Learner Success and Dean of Campus Life at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In prior years, he served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., and was managing director at PRS, Inc., an organizational development consulting firm, and a health care account executive for Aetna. 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 at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT. Connecticut born and raised with deep roots in the Hartford region, President Ward is committed to the University's mission of community engagement.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM, Hartford’s 68th mayor, took office January 1, 2024. Mayor Arulampalam, the son of Sri Lankan refugees, was born in Zimbabwe. He previously served as CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, starting a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become local developers and tackle blight in Hartford, and was formerly Deputy Commissioner of the CT Department of Consumer Protection in the Lamont Administration. He practiced law at the Hartford firm of Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, P.C., and served on the Boards of the Hartford Public Library, the House of Bread and the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. Mayor Arulampalam lives in the Frog Hollow neighborhood in a formerly vacant and blighted house with his wife and their five children. Mayor Arulampalam’s wife, Liza, is the Senior Minister of the First Church of Christ (Center Church) in Hartford.

DEEPA FADNIS is an associate professor of digital media and journalism at the University of Hartford. As a former journalist, she has worked in newsrooms in the US and India. She is also the editor for the community-centered digital news publication, Reporting Hartford, that operates as an educational newsroom within UHart’s School of Communication. Reporting Hartford student reporters immerse themselves in covering events that directly impact residents and community members in Hartford. The publication aims to serve as a platform that honors and highlights the multiculturalism in the city to empower resilient communities. Visit the website at www.reportinghartford.com

HELEN BENNETT is the Executive Editor for The Hartford Courant. As a veteran journalist, Bennett has spent more than 25 years shaping local reporting in Connecticut news media. Prior to joining The Hartford Courant, she served as the editor for The New Haven Register, The Middletown Press, and The Register Citizen. Her tenure with The Register spanned multiple roles, starting as a reporter and rising through positions as suburban editor and managing editor. She was appointed executive editor of Digital First Media’s Connecticut Group of newspapers, magazines and websites in 2016.

ELIZABETH HAMILTON is the executive editor of The Connecticut Mirror, where, since 2018, she has expanded its staff, launched its first dedicated investigative team and built a culture of ambitious accountability journalism. Under Hamilton's leadership, The Connecticut Mirror won its first Pulitzer Prize in 2026 for Local Reporting for an investigation into Connecticut's predatory towing industry. Hamilton previously spent two decades in Connecticut newsrooms, including more than 10 years at The Hartford Courant, where she was named The Courant's Reporter of the Year in 2000 and received the Theodore Driscoll Investigative Award for a series exposing deaths in group homes for people with developmental disabilities. She is also an accomplished poet published in literary journals, and her poetry cycle Iseult Speaks has been set to music by composer Jessica Rudman and performed across the country.

A Presidents' College Conversation: Making Sense of Insurance Math

Instructor: Josh Hershman

• Thursday, December 3, 10:30–11:45 a.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

Free for Fellows
$20 for Non-Fellows

Health insurance. Two words that can make your head explode. We all need it but are baffled by a system that erects more barriers, even as costs increase. Who hasn’t fumed over:

• Why a procedure’s cost is often impossible to know in advance? (Note: not true of any other major purchase we make.)
• Why reimbursements may fall so short of that cost (say, $20K for a $60K procedure)?
• Why the in- or out-of-network system exists? And who decides which hospitals make the cut? Does that affect costs and quality of care?
• Why insurers can’t reduce costs? Or stop them skyrocketing? Why do we have a necessity that so many can’t buy into?

We’ll get answers from Connecticut’s Insurance Commissioner Josh Hershman. He will reveal how private and commercial insurance is funded, regulated, and managed; who sets the price for a day in the operating room; how private vs Medicare rates differ. He’ll do the math and show the work. He’ll talk you down, as he discusses both the challenges and possibilities of controlling healthcare costs. Join us for this healthy exchange.

Instructor: JOSH HERSHMAN was nominated by Governor Ned Lamont as Connecticut’s 34th Insurance Commissioner, leading a department with oversight of one of the largest and most complex insurance markets in the nation. From 2019 to 2022, Hershman served as Deputy Commissioner and COO of the Connecticut Insurance Department, where he modernized internal operations, strengthened regulatory processes, and supported responsible innovation within the insurance market. He previously served as CEO of the Immigrant Life Insurance Company of America, a Connecticut-domiciled subsidiary of IDT Corporation, where he helped build an admitted-market life insurance carrier designed to close coverage gaps for immigrant families. Earlier in his career, Hershman practiced law and has advised organizations in the insurance sector on regulatory compliance, legal risk, and operational strategy, and has spoken nationally on the intersection of insurance and artificial intelligence. Hershman is a long-serving member of the Guilford Fire Commission and lives in Guilford with his wife and their three daughters.

Hidden Iran: The Making of a Complex Society

Instructor: JANET BAUER

• Tuesdays, September 22, 29, October 6, 2–3:30 p.m., Hillyer Hall 125

$60

Are we surprised that Iran’s society is layered and complex? It would have to be, given its locus at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Iran’s borders define one nation, but encompass dozens of ethnic tribes, religious sects (Shi’ists, Sufis, others), and invaders who arrived over centuries. Twentieth-century modernization efforts have often marginalized Iran’s rich diversity and obscured pivotal contributions by women and the working class.

And what of US and Iranian relations? An Iraqi Constitutional Revolution (1906), a coup d’etat (1953) and a Revolution (1979) unbalanced our alliance, which was then shredded in an embassy seizure and the Iran-Iraq War. Cooperation morphed into distrust, reframing Iran’s struggle for sovereignty. Today youth, ethnic minorities and women–as well as the Green Movement and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement—pursue democracy, dignity, and normalcy, challenging the Iranian regime.

Join Trinity professor Janet Bauer for this historical excavation and contemporary take on a country of 93 million, about which we don’t know nearly enough.

Instructor: JANET BAUER (Ph.D., Anthropology, Stanford University) is a professor of International Studies and Human Rights at Trinity College and a former Fulbright Global Scholar whose work focuses on Iran, the Middle East, and migration. Her early fieldwork on women and rural-urban circulation in Iran shaped a long-term research agenda on migration and diaspora, with particular attention to the Iranian diaspora and the role of women in community formation and social movements across borders. She has published widely on Iran, the Iranian diaspora, translocal feminism, and migration, including work on refugee resettlement and Muslim communities in minority contexts. In collaboration with an Iranian colleague, she co-produced a translation and introduction to the writings of Iran’s first woman political prisoner of the Pahlavi era. Her work helps illuminate how everyday lives, movements, and media shape understandings of Iran across time and place.

The Latest on the Supreme Court

Instructor: JILDA ALIOTTA

• Mondays, October 5, 12, 19, 26, 5:30–7 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

$80

The 2025-26 Supreme Court term looks like another blockbuster. Before the Court’s recess in June 2026, it decided cases dealing with birthright citizenship, voting rights and transgender athletes, among other issues. 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 2025–26 term
• Session 2: Significant developments & decisions of the 2025–26 term—Part 1
• Session 3: Significant developments & decisions of the 2025–26 term—Part 2
• Session 4: Looking ahead to the US Supreme Court’s 2026-27 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.

American Democracy After the Midterms—Still a Thing?

Instructor: MICHAEL CLANCY

• Thursdays, October 15, 29, November 12, 3–4:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

$60

The party line (all parties, at the moment) says democracy depends on free and fair elections. Yet there’s real contention over just what free and fair voting means. Can we get a consensus on that? And in today’s world of “floating facts,” whose claims of election integrity and what results are credible? Or should we worry about no results—if there are no elections? Yikes! In three sessions Dr. Michael Clancy juggles these hot topics, first treating American democracy generally; then previewing the November 3rd elections; and finally recapping the results and assessing their implications for our post-midterm democracy. He’ll suggest a weekly reading and bring you into the discussion.

Instructor: MICHAEL CLANCY is a Professor in the Politics and Government Department at the University of Hartford, where he has taught since 1998. He directs the International Studies program, an interdisciplinary major and minor that includes examining trends in democracy and their alternatives globally. He teaches courses in various aspects of international politics, including U.S. foreign policy, the politics of war, international political economy, a course on the Iraq war, and international organization and law. 

Major League Baseball: Here Today, Gone Next Season?

WALTER HARRISON

• Tuesday, October 27, 2–3:30 p.m., Hillyer Hall 125
• Tuesday, November 10, 3:30–5 p.m., Duncaster (off-campus, Bloomfield)

$20

Die-hard fans don’t wait ‘til baseball season ends to anticipate (and argue about) next spring’s rosters. But this fall, expectations are different. Spring 2027 may bring a strike—or even a cancelled season. That threat is now the proverbial elephant in Major League locker rooms. Despite 2025’s record-setting attendance numbers, ditto 2026, there’s no guarantee of a 2027 Opening Day. Team owners may declare a player lockout to get what they want. What’s at stake for everyone involved?

Walt Harrison, UHart’s president emeritus (and formidable baseball guy), lays out today’s labor-management issues. He’ll also hark back to past strikes and lockouts, particularly the disastrous walkout of 1994, and even further back to the 1890 Players League and the 1912 Federal League. He'll revisit the stories of Curt Flood, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, who challenged the legality of the reserve clause, a standard provision in every player contract from 1891 until it was abolished in 1976. Even if you never collected baseball cards and don’t know a bloop from a blast, you’ll root for Walt Harrison’s recap and his 2027 forecast. Longtime fans know he always knocks it out of the park.

Instructor: WALTER HARRISON is president emeritus of the University of Hartford, having served as president from 1998 to 2017. As a scholar, he specializes in studying the role sports—especially baseball—play in American culture. He has written scholarly articles about baseball (its history, its place in fiction and film, and its role in promoting the assimilation of various groups in this country and abroad) alongside popular articles (baseball parks, announcers, players and owners). In addition, he has written widely on many aspects of college sports. Active in the NCAA for over 30 years, he won the Gerald R. Ford Award—the organization’s highest honor—in 2014 for his lifetime involvement in collegiate sports.

Unearthing the Story of the Connecticut Wangunk Tribe

Instructors: GARY RED OAK O’NEIL, SARAH SPORTMAN, TOM WICKMAN

• Tuesday, November 17, 1:30–3:30 p.m., Hillyer Hall 125

$40

The Wangunks rooted their people along the Connecticut River, from Hartford to Middletown, long before any Dutch or English did. Yet most of us are ignorant of this long-lived indigenous community and their culture. The waterway fostered their trade, transportation and communication over four hundred years. CT State Archaeologist Sarah Sportman will report on recent digs that tell their archaeological story. There’s also revealing oral tradition, which Gary Red Oak O’Neil, Wangunk elder, will convey, connecting it to his work as an artist. Environmental historian Tom Wickman will elaborate on the interdependence of Wangunk villages at the time of English colonization. Our presenters will then fast-forward, to talk of the pressures, power and conflicts confronting the Wangunk in today’s crowded world.

Instructors: GARY RED OAK O’NEIL is a Wangunk elder, ceramic artist, art instructor, and long-time Meriden public school teacher. His work is on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum’s American collection and has been exhibited frequently in Connecticut and beyond. The 2025 solo exhibition “Excavations” at Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zikha Gallery featured ceramics from throughout his career. He holds an MALS from Wesleyan University (1982) and has worked with Middletown’s Wesleyan Potters for nearly six decades. In 1999, he was recognized as Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year.

SARAH SPORTMAN (MA in History/Historical Archaeology, UMass Boston; PhD in Anthropology, University of Connecticut) is Connecticut’s State Archaeologist and an Assistant Extension Professor at the University of Connecticut. Her 25-year archaeology career in the Northeast reaches across both cultural resource management and academia. Her research focuses on public archaeology, historical archaeology, zooarchaeology and foodways, and ethnohistory. Since 2020, through the Office of State Archaeology, she has directed an archaeological project at the Hollister Site, a large 17th-century farm complex in South Glastonbury. The site provides a window into Wangunk lives in the early decades of English colonization and reflects complex cultural entanglements of the period, allowing volunteer excavators to make tangible connections to colonial and Indigenous histories.

TOM WICKMAN (BA, History and Literature; MA in History; PhD, History of American Civilization, Harvard) is an associate professor of History and American Studies at Trinity College and an environmental historian of the colonial Northeast. His research interests lie in climate history, political ecology, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. His first book Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018). His articles have appeared in the William & Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, and Atlantic Studies, and essays have been featured in The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History and Rethinking American Disasters. He is currently writing an environmental and political history of the early colonization of the lower Connecticut River, from Saybrook/Pasbeshauke to Hartford/Suckiaug.

Two Bookers + A Bonus: 2026 Novels to Get You Talking

Instructor: MICHELE TROY

• Tuesdays, September 15, October 13, November 10, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$60

Curious Readers! The London Times has deemed the 2026 Booker Prize List “the most original and mischievous longlist in years.” Without further ado, we’re plucking two Bookers for this fall: Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say (her third time on the long list), and The Renovation, the debut novel by Turkish-American author Kenan Orhan (Winner of the O. Henry Prize, finalist PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize). And since, in any prize list, there are always “those who got away,” we’re snapping up one book widely expected to have landed in Booker company, which did not: Transcription, by Ben Lerner (previously on the Pulitzer short list and a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow). As always, the true pleasure lies in our debate, all the more spirited, good-natured, and thoughtful because of your insights.

• September 15: Ben Lerner, The Transcription, in which a narrator travels to interview his 90-year-old mentor but loses his recording device. This three-part novel is “a stunning exploration of technology and storytelling” (The Guardian), a book “fascinated with language and how it works or doesn’t work as a way to capture or distort memory” (The Calgary Herald).
• October 13: Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say, in which Artie Dam, a Massachusetts teacher on the eve of the 2024 election becomes aware of a secret that “has saturated his life like an undetected but explosive gas” (NYT). Confronting the loneliness of our cultural moment and the search for connection and truth, this is “a profound, resplendent novel that stares our present moment in the face while throwing a lifeboat to cling to” (FT).
• November 10: Kenan Orhan, The Renovation, which began as a short story in The Atlantic, and turns on the bizarre premise that a woman discovers that her bathroom has been remodeled as a prison cell. The Booker judges were drawn to the novel’s “humour with a decidedly unsettling side.” With a nod to Kafka, to be sure, Orhan considers the tussle between freedom and belonging—our own “metaphorical prisons”—and the “exquisite excavation of a self that was buried” (The Harvard Review).

MICHELE TROY is Presidents’ College Director and professor of English at the University of Hartford, 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.

To Hell and Back: World Myths of Return from the Underworld

Instructor: TOM LEE

• Thursday, September 24, October 1, 15, 10:30 a.m.–noon, Greenberg Center/Harry Jack Gray Center

$60 

People of every age, in every age, wonder about life after death. We yearn to know what lies beyond death, and we tell tales that imagine that world. As Tolkien succinctly put it, the essence of these myths and stories is to journey "there and back again"— wherever "there" may be. Can we go there? Can we connect with those already there? And crucially, once there, can we get back? Tom Lee, our storyteller par excellence, will teach us about six figures in myth and literature who did just that. We’ll follow: Odysseus; Inanna (a Mesopotamian goddess); Dante’s Pilgrim; Ireland’s St Brendan, and others on their miraculous journeys. He promises us all round-trip tix.  

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. 

Why Is It Hard to Agree on Moral Truth?

Instructor: ELIZABETH VOZZOLA

• Monday, November 2 and 9, 10:30 a.m.–noon, KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$40

Is there any shared, universal agreement on good and bad, right and wrong? Or do the human values and actions we call morality vary around the world? Many cultural psychologists say they vary—that there are no universal truths or paths of development. They argue that culture and learning determine our moral content and development. Yet in today’s interconnected world, how significant are any differences? Elly Vozzola guides us here, in a segue from her previous popular course on Moral Courage. She’ll ground us in the theories and research of leading scholars, offering examples from China, Africa, Latin America and the Islamic world. Then back home we’ll learn what WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies contribute to this moral conundrum.

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.

Jane Eyre and the Female Gothic: Escaping Locked Rooms

Instructor: CATHERINE STEVENSON

• Thursdays, November 5 and 19, 2–3:30 p.m., Greenberg Center/Harry Jack Gray Center

$40

A friendless young woman is hired by a dark, brooding mystery man who lives in an isolated English castle full of hidden chambers and unknown horrors. What could possibly go awry? Author Charlotte Bronte employed these now-familiar Gothic tropes and recast them in a gripping tale of an orphaned girl’s journey. Travel with Jane from imprisonment (Session One) to freedom, selfhood, family and power (Session Two). In both sessions, we’ll explore this novel’s enduring literary influences, incisive psychology, and sheer artistry. We encourage you to read the novel, if you have time, but you’ll glean plenty of insights about this classic novel either way.

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.

Channel Your Inner CSI: Solving Cold Cases

Instructor: MICHELLE CLARK

• Tuesday, September 22, 29, October 6, 5:30–7 p.m., Hillyer Hall 125

$60

APB: Calling All Armchair Detectives! Exit your living room and head into the lab. Here’s your chance to soak up the science and technology that crack cold cases. Michelle Clark, a lead investigator on CT’s medicolegal team, will turn up the heat on three cold cases, one per session. She’ll explain: why cases stall, go cold, and later revive; what’s in today’s forensic tool kits; how DNA analysis and genetic genealogy boost results; and how legal issues impact the search for closure. Michelle Clark thinks you’ll be surprised at how little she sometimes has to work with. You’ll view the same evidence her department did and participate in finally closing the cases. Sorry, no bloodhounds admitted.

Instructor: MICHELLE CLARK, a former crime scene investigator in Waterbury, Connecticut, has been a lead medicolegal death investigator for the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) for the past 18 years. She is the OCME’s manager for unidentified remains and works closely with local, state, and federal agencies on cold case homicides. Michelle was on the Serial Killer Task Force uncovering buried victims in New Britain, Connecticut and was the lead investigator for the 1944 Hartford Circus Fire Exhumation. She has a BS in Medical Technology from the University of Hartford and an MA from UNH in forensic science with a concentration in Advanced Investigations. Board certified by ABMDI as a Medicolegal Death Investigator, ASCP in Medical Technology, she has her certificate in Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy from UNH. She’s been published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and presented multiple times at the American Academy of Forensic Scientists conference. She serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford and lectures on death investigation at the Connecticut State Police Academy, Central Connecticut State University, and the Henry C. Lee Institute.

Beyond the Fluff: The Science of Clouds

Instructor: Howard Wright

• Tuesday, October 6, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m., McLean (off-campus, Simsbury)
• Wednesday, October 14, 1–2:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$20

Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a Cloud! Unless you’re a meteorologist, mountaineer or sailor, you may give clouds just a passing glance (after all, you’re following your weather app). But what an aesthetic and scientific drama they offer us daily, for free! This summer featured a bounty of the pillowy kind, backed by bright blue skies.

In a single lecture by returning science-explainer Howard Wright, you’ll learn

• Eight cloud shapes and what each signifies;
• Three ways atmospheric energy is transferred (radiation, conduction, convection);
• Three concepts you never understood (dew point, relative humidity, condensation nuclei);
• Two pressures: high and low, and how they create wind;
• The “why” of cloud colors: white and gray, red-orange-yellow.

Connect to the meaning and beauty of clouds. To paraphrase Judy Collins’s song: you’ll look at clouds from (more than) both sides after this lively lecture.

Instructor: HOWARD WRIGHT recently retired after 45 years at Renbrook School, where he filled many roles including science department head, dean of students, and master calendar coordinator. He taught middle school Earth Science, focusing on the geologic history of Connecticut (Renbrook is located on Avon Mountain in West Hartford, the result of lava flows 180 million years ago). He twice received the Doug and Jane Cramphin Excellence in Education Award. He served on the Board of the Friends of Dinosaur State Park for 25 years, where he arranged a monthly lecture series with notable geologists, paleontologists, and paleobotanists from Wesleyan, Yale, Columbia, Western New England College, and UCONN. He is Connecticut’s preeminent Abraham Lincoln presenter and has portrayed the 16th president for 20 years.

How AI is Changing Consumers’ Lives

Instructor: LILLIAN KAMAL

• Friday, October 23, 10:30 a.m.–noon, KF Room/Harrison Libraries
• Tuesday, November 17, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m., McLean (off-campus, Simsbury)

$20

Searching for a ticket to your vacation destination, and perhaps the ideal festive clothing item to go along with it? Then expect a deluge of ads, links to those products, and offers of product-adjacent stuff. Does anyone doubt that AI marketing algorithms have your number? AI is not only changing the way that we are leading our lives; it is also revolutionizing the way that businesses try to reach us through marketing. But now we have intel from an expert in AI and marketing, the Barney School’s Lillian Kamal. She’ll differentiate AI from Generative AI. She’ll show us far-ranging examples of just how AI interaction shapes our entire consumer experience. AI occasionally misses the mark or fails in its messaging, but it sure knows a lot about each of us. Lillian Kamal will help us understand how our consumer experience is shifting under our feet, but also orient us about what to anticipate going forward.

Instructor: LILLIAN KAMAL is an associate professor of Economics at the Barney School of Business.  She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in economics, business, social entrepreneurship, alongside courses in the interdisciplinary curriculum. The 2018 winner of the University of Hartford Larsen Award for Teaching Excellence, Lillian has also won teaching awards at the Barney School of Business. Lillian sees great value in the role of AI as a tool that can be harnessed in effective teaching – working on effective AI prompts in teaching – and is currently exploring the use of a chatbot agent as a tutor for students. Her research focuses on financial development and economic growth, fintech, gender economics and economic policy. She is currently working on two co-authored projects: the first, with Barney colleague Dr. Shreya Malhotra, assesses hidden gender gaps in the efficacy of the pandemic era Paycheck Protection Program; the second, with Dr. Sylvester Horvey of the University of Witwatersrand, studies the role of digital financial inclusion and life insurance on health outcomes.  

Immunology’s Potential to Revolutionize Medicine

Instructor: MIKE MAGEE

• Wednesdays, October 28, November 4, 11, 1–2:30 p.m., Wilde Auditorium/Harry Jack Gray Center

$60

We know a robust immune system is desirable, but beyond that what does the layman know about this complex human system? Immunology is the medical specialty focused on what aids and what hinders immune interactions and responses. Imagine the possibility of adjusting one’s bodily responses to negate autoimmune afflictions or cancers, or to protect against communicable diseases. The promise is vast, vital and exciting! And the research is so crucial that in October 2025, the Nobel Prize in Physiology was bestowed on three scientists for work in immunology (specifically, peripheral immune tolerance). Join veteran medical historian, Mike Magee, MD, as he unlocks the secrets of immunology (and immunotherapy) and their potential to change the course of human health. If you attended the single lecture on this topic that he gave in spring 2026, you’ll know it’s a subject that is worth a deeper dive, this time in three sessions.

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 editor of the weekly blog Health Commentary.org.

Is Anybody Out There? Searching for ET Life

Instructor: MICHAEL ROBINSON

• Wednesdays, November 18, December 2, 9, 2–3:30 p.m., KF Room/Harrison Libraries

$60

“Are we alone?” A 1995 discovery of planets in other solar systems certainly turbocharged the search for extraterrestrial life. But, in fact, the question itself is centuries old. What form would such life take? What would the implications for mere earthlings be? Victorian scientists and spiritualists had their own notions about life beyond the earth’s orbit. And twentieth-century visions have been dominated by flying saucers, little green men or Star Trek characters. Our out-of-this-world guide, Michael Robinson, will update us on current scientific search techniques, including SETI radio signals and exoplanetary biosignatures, and on the new challenges they bring with them. He’ll also help us understand how our ideas about ET have changed over time, often reflecting us—our human hopes and fears—as much as scientific realities about the vast universe beyond our little earth’s orbit.

Instructor: MICHAEL ROBINSON is a professor of history at the University of Hartford whose 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 hosts the history of exploration podcast, Time to Eat the Dogs. Robinson has offered lectures at the American Museum of Natural History, The Explorers Club, The British Library, the Library of Congress, and NASA headquarters among others. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs including American Experience, BBC World Service, the Smithsonian Channel, and the Travel Channel and has been a news source for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, and USA Today. Robinson’s TEDx talk, “A Theory You’ve Never Heard of,” is one of the most popular talks on TEDx, having received 9.6 million views.