October 2019
International Trade and Cultural Exchange from the Renaissance to Today
What do we learn when we exchange goods and ideas with other cultures? How does engagement with the wider world help us understand ourselves? This seminar explores connections among commerce, art, and culture in three eras. We’ll travel to early modern Venice to learn about that city-state’s ascendance as a commercial power in Europe and understand how business with the East helped usher in the modern age. Next, we’ll be introduced to American artists of the 19th-century era of imperial…
Find out more »The Atomic Bomb and the End of the Second World War *Sold Out*
*This event is sold out. To be added to the waitlist, email human@unc.edu with your First & Last Name, Email address, & phone number.* Political and military leaders in the United States planned a final military campaign that could end the war with Japan in 1945, but a land invasion would carry extremely high human and economic costs.The American decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki evolved from careful strategic analysis of these costs, but the new weapons…
Find out more »November 2019
Four Great Controversies in Early Christianity: An Encore Presentation *Sold Out. Waitlist Available*
Sold Out: To be added to the waitlist please email human@unc.edu with your name and phone number.* A Distinguished Scholar Seminar featuring Bart D. Ehrman The growth of the Christian church from a tiny sect of Jesus’ close followers to a major world religion was not smooth and seamless. Christians faced controversy on every front—externally with both pagans and Jews and internally with various Christian groups holding diverse theological views struggling for dominance.This seminar will consider four major controversies in…
Find out more »The Fall of the Berlin Wall – 30 Years Later
In collaboration with the Center for European Studies The collapse of communist governments in Central Europe in 1989 offered an historic transition for people who expected new political freedoms, new wealth, and new personal opportunities. No event symbol- ized this momentous change more dramatically than the destruction of the Berlin Wall in November of that year.This program will begin with a review of the history leading up to the wall’s fall and an analysis of its political, economic, and cultural…
Find out more »The Postwar Boom: American Musicals of the 1950s
A Distinguished Scholar Seminar featuring Tim Carter “You’ve never had it so good,” proclaimed the U.S. Democratic party in the 1952 presidential election.The fact that the Democrats lost, however, suggests that despite the postwar boom, not everything in the garden was rosy. As in previous decades, Broadway and Hollywood musicals captured the spirit of the times; they also came into increasing competition with each other as new technologies transformed the movie-going experience. Come for another installment of Tim Carter’s series…
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