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W 2021

A Fresh Look at the New Deal Era and its Impact

Wednesday Jan 6 to Apr 7 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Alice Lewis
Co-coordinator: Edward Robin

We invite you to join us to look at the US between 1933 and 1950.  The standard narratives, which we have all read, view the events of the period through a national lens, as if the country was isolated from all other countries. What these narratives overlook is that the US was one of many players in a global economy; what happened in the US affected in the rest of the world, and what happened outside the US affected the Roosevelt administration.   

For the people who lived at the time, there was no pre-ordained outcome, and the entire period is permeated with uncertainty and fear about the future. Studying this period of American history presents us with themes that will thread throughout the SDG: (1) the immense societal changes wrought by the crises in the period; (2) how the United States’ “original sin” continued to shape governance in both the New Deal and WWII legislation; (3) the exchanges between the US and other countries in crafting the New Deal; (4) the change in the US international standing, as by the late 1930s as it became the shining example of preserving and reconciling democracy and capitalism; (5) how the New Deal built the scaffolding for the new world order that emerged from WWII.

By 1950, the US had authored a new world order that created a stable and prosperous world (in the west). In the process, Americans had changed radically since 1933, especially with regard of their relationship to the state and with regard to the country’s role in the new world. 

Join us as we explore familiar territory with fresh eyes.  

Alexander Hamilton

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Paul Markowitz and Diane Brookes


Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton.   The political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. We will recount Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton.  Hamilton's legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. This would all end in Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.
Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.

America's Funniest Writers

Wednesday Jan 6 to Apr 7 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Steve Breuer
Co-coordinator: Linda Kelemer

Hoping to raise our mood during difficult times, we propose to read many of our country’s best humorists.

Andy Borowitz, “America’s satire king”, a nationally known comedian and comic writer has edited selections from The 50  Funniest American Writers in an anthology from the Library of America.  Each participant will introduce us to two or three authors and their work, with recommendations for further reading. 

 Included is a Who’s Who of comic writers, including Mark Twain, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Nora Ephron, and Dave Barry. Included are lesser known pieces from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Lampoon, and The Onion.

There will be lots to learn and plenty of laughs.


American Mavericks, Mystics and Misfits (10 Weeks)

Monday Jan 4 to Mar 8 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Juanita Davis
Co-coordinator: Mimi Baer

In this stressful era, with uncomfortable government imposed health regulations and protestors marching on civic centers, I think an SDG on dissent in America would be very timely. There is a newly published book to serve as a perfect core book which author Arthur Hoyle has entitled  MAVERICKS,MYSTICS, AND MISFITS  -- AMERICANS AGAINST THE GRAIN . Hoyle supplies a gripping story of the lives of twelve people , from the earliest days of the country  to the present, who each in their own way have challenged and enriched the lives they were born into, some more publicly, some more privately, some through the arts. They have helped establish an American tradition for the sometimes conflicting voices of cooperation and the individual pursuing personal rights.  In so doing they have made important contributions to the culture and history of their times. Come join us in this celebration of their gifts.

American Public Schools/Higher Education: What Changes Should We Make?

Tuesday Jan 5 to Apr 6 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Jay Christensen
Co-coordinator: Carole Bender


My household has always been filled with education.  My Dad served as a superintendent of schools and principal as well as boys' counselor.  In addition, he taught world and American history, typewriting, band and orchestra.  In my college, I gravitated to business education because of a fine high school business teacher I admired.  After bachelor's and master's in business education, I taught my first junior high school class in typewriting to 275 ninth graders every two days.  After that experience, I ended up teaching high school business law, business math, shorthand and typewriting.  In the meantime, I was attracted to doctoral work in business education and a minor in higher education.  That resulted in struggling with a dissertation on "Automated Data Processing Concepts for High School Business Students."  Three more college teaching jobs followed with courses taught in office management, introduction to business, records management, shorthand, typewriting, elementary accounting, seminar in data processing education, analysis of communications in business, word processing management (started one of the first courses in the nation), office systems analysis, and University 100 (First-time college students).  I can proudly say 45+ years have been spent in the teaching profession.  

Everyone has an opinion on how public/higher education can be improved.  We hear how our students cannot read or write after graduating from high school.  We find students who have few marketable skills for computer-enhanced environments.  Our children are exposed to gun violence, drug availability, and gender and racial inequalities.  Surveys of global education show American public education lagging in 27th place.     

Higher education has also received considerable criticism for wealthy parents and celebrities who will do anything to get their children into Ivy League or well-known universities.  With the Covid-19 Pandemic still continuing, questions are being asked whether college students are getting a traditional college education by virtual learning.   Although our universities are world class, student debt accrued to attend these universities is now over one trillion dollars.  In addition to financial and curriculum concerns.  Will college brick and mortar buildings begin to disappear or become functional at a slower pace?  Will the traditional lecture be replaced with newer technological ways to present information in a faster, cheaper manner?  Will the tuition rates and college costs have to be adjusted to accommodate virtual learning and soaring costs of maintaining building, paying faculty, administrators, and staff, and keeping research programs solvent?  

This S/DG will explore the "crises" in both forms of education today, learn about ideas that are being proposed by educators and others, and enjoy meaningful dialogue to define the problems and suggest solutions.  We will discuss both the rational and the moral sides of these issues.

There is probably no other single issue that is as important to America's future as the education of our young.  

Each class meeting will begin with a 10-minute discussion of a current news event in public and higher education.









 





Best American Short Stories of the 20th Century

Thursday Jan 7 to Apr 8 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Frances Ehrmann
Co-coordinator: Doug Green

    Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY, published in 2000 brings together the best of the best - fifty-five extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed accomplishments in this quintessentially American literary genre. Here are the stories that have endured the test of time: masterworks by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner,  F. Scott Fitzgerald,  Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates,  and scores of others. These are the writers who have shaped and defined the landscape of the American short story, who have unflinchingly explored all aspects of the human condition, and whose works will continue to speak to us in the twenty-first century.

            In this SDG we will read all of these stories and discuss what makes them the best, how each explored aspects of the human condition, and whether each story continues to speak to us in the first 20 years of the 21st Century.

Consumption: From Wedgewood to Walmart (10 Weeks)

Thursday Jan 7 to Mar 11 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Sheri Ross
Co-coordinator: Rudy Sabaratnam

Whether buying at a general store or shopping at a mall, consumption has always formed an essential part of the American experience.  More than just commodities bought and sold, consumption is also about the institutions, social practices, cultural meanings and economic functions that surround the merchandise.  Bringing together business, labor and cultural history, this SDG will look at the changing meanings consumption has had for life, politics and the economy in the US.  And what better time to consider the effects on consumption of the recent tariffs and the shift in consumption patterns during the Covid-10 pandemic!

Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

Tuesday Jan 5 to Apr 6 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Lee Molho
Co-coordinator: Toni Delliquadri

A scientific flood from psychology poured into economics and undermined its most basic premise.  The result was Behavioral Economics.  Inventing it won psychologist Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize.  We'll study it using his accessible, surprise-packed book.

Kahneman presents new understandings about how the mind works.  The brain has two ways of processing information, as if it had two separate systems.  One system is slow and goes step by step.  It does rational thinking.  The other system is fast and associative.  It provides an endless stream of responses made from memory and sensory associations.  We will study the many unexpected ways in which the two systems collide and interact.

Then we will explore why human statistical intuition is stunningly bad.  Why does the mind prefer to use substitutes, or heuristics, when simple statistics would give better answers?  Kahneman connects heuristics and fallacies to risk analysis, prediction, intuition, and human overconfidence for some important and remarkable results. 

We will even meet a new species--the Econ.  Econs are humanoids who don't have our fast, associative mental system with its behavioral quirks.  For centuries economists have used totally-rational Econs instead of humans to explain economic behavior.  Join us as we learn what happens when real humans at last enter the world of the economists.

This SDG is a repeat of Thinking About Behavioral Economics as offered in Winter 2013, with the same core book, Coordinator, and course plan.

Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe 10 weeks

Tuesday Jan 5 to Mar 9 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Bob Glasser
Co-coordinator: Ed Keane

            As we look at the governments of the various countries of Europe today, we see, not surprisingly, a great variety.  Some, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have reasonably robust democracies.  Others, such as Hungary, have a form of populism that borders on authoritarianism.  Illiberal democracy is often used to describe the governments of Poland and Turkey.

            Our S/DG will study how these and the other major countries of Europe arrived at their current state.  (For this S/DG Europe will stop at the border of the former Soviet Union.)  To guide us in our study, we will read Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe by Sheri Berman, a professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.  The subtitle of the book, From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day, gives the historical time periods covered.  The chapter titles, shown in the weekly topics below, give an excellent idea of the topics covered.  In week 10 we will read and discuss an article (to be provided) by Sheri Berman and a colleague.

            For each of the countries and time periods covered, our book gives us the political, economic, and social conditions that help us understand why that country went the way it did at that particular time.  Berman believes that the ultimate goal for any country is “consolidated liberal democracy,” with elections, the rule of law, individual liberties, and minority rights.  That is a rare, and hard-won achievement.  A step forward is often followed by a step back.  We will see why democracy is so difficult to achieve. 

In our study of liberal democracies, we will explore the tension between democracy—rule by the people that can slide into repression of minority views, and liberal—respect for each individual.

            In a sentence with a lot of long words, Francis Fukuyama well says: “Sheri Berman is one of the best comparativists going, providing an encompassing framework for understanding the historical development of modern institutions.”

            I don’t think we have to worry about not having enough to talk about every week.

Descartes to Derrida

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Fariba Ghaffari
Co-coordinator: Judith Munoz

This critical survey of issues in European philosophy offers detailed accounts of crucial texts by important thinkers. Sedgwick draws key ideas from these sources, analyzing the various relationships between them and linking them to central themes in philosophical enquiry, such as the nature of subjectivity, reason and experience, anti-humanism, and the nature of language. 

Areas explored include epistemology, metaphysics and ontology, ethics and politics. Aspects of the work of a broad range of thinkers is considered in detail, including Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno and Horkheimer, Heidegger, Deleuze and Guatarri, Levinas, Derrida, Althusser, Foucault and Lyotard.

This intriguing new work presents the complex ideas of European philosophy in a straightforward manner, and will be of interest to both introductory and advanced-level readers

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Tuesday Jan 5 to Apr 6 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Jim Kohn
Co-coordinator: Tony Stern

              All of us remember Dwight Eisenhower.   We know he led the D-Day invasion and served as president for eight years.  Most of us remember attitudes that developed around Ike’s presidency.  Now that 76 years have passed since D-Day and 60 years have passed since he left office, there has been time to appraise Ike and his leadership of the D-Day invasion and his presidency.  Not surprisingly, books have been written in the last 20 years which do just that.  Ike served during a crucial period which included World War II, the recovery of Europe, the dominance and robust economy of the U.S. and early days of the Cold War.  

              The principal purposes of this SDG will be to (1) study Ike’s background,  family, education and time at West Point, (2) look at the difficulties inherent in the D-Day invasion and how crucial it was and how it was conducted, (3) study Ike’s leadership of the invasion and how he made the tough decisions, (4) see how Ike decided to run for president and (5) view the actions of Ike and his administration on important domestic and international issues of the day.   We will try to look at the issues Ike faced with the information he had, as well as appraising his decisions and actions with the benefit of hindsight.  It is impossible to understand the years since Ike’s presidency without understanding how Ike’s presence and actions prepared the way for them.  It will be interesting to see how the impressions of Ike which all of us carry jibe with recent scholarship.

               We will use two core books:  (A) "Eisenhower in War and Peace" by Jean Smith, an excellent biography, particularly on the years through the end of World War II and (B) "Eisenhower: The White House Years" by Jim Newton, an excellent account of Ike's presidency.  Both books offer sufficient detail to get a good "feel" for the subject, as well as conclusions (both positive and negative) on Ike's actions.  Other works, including Ike's own books, are cited below.  In addition, there are literally hundreds of other sources, including books, on line articles and documentaries, and consulting them will be encouraged

              

Economics and Ideology

Thursday Jan 7 to Apr 8 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: William Meisel
Co-coordinator: Ken Korman

Robert Reich’s new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is a highly readable discussion of how the elite in our country, the “oligarchy,” control the political system by lobbying and hiring government officials, congressmen, and senators with large salaries after they leave the government. While some corporations state they have liberal goals, those statements hid significant abuses, such as violating laws and paying fines that are less than the profits those abuses generate. This SDG will discuss the validity of those claims and the practicality of the solutions he suggests, and try to balance the discussion with outside articles that have a different point of view. (Note: This is a revision of the original SDG proposal.)

Elena Ferrante: The Furies & Visceral Pleasures of Italy's Greatest Living Novelist

Tuesday Jan 5 to Apr 6 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Carrie Bloom
Co-coordinator: Carolyn Baumwohl


Set mostly in postwar Southern Italy, Elena Ferrante's four-part novel about the discordant yet loving trajectories of two female friends from childhood to adulthood has gained widespread acclaim. The HBO series My Brilliant Friend is based on her work. Ferrante is that rarest of authors—one who is equally adept at depicting both sides of the romance and not-so-romantic transactions between men and women. 


This SDG covers the first half of the Neapolitan Quartet, My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name. The New Yorker review loudly proclaims:


“…the sensation...a hungry, relentless urge to keep going, the same feeling that drives you to borrow all someone’s clothes, or pinch them as hard as you can when they don’t understand you. Ferrante shows us the friction that generates human heat—she reminds us what the experience of liking is like.”




Ferrante's gift, one critic argues, is her "unflinching willingness to lead us toward 'the mutable fury of things'" —in particular, toward the passion and bitterness between women and men, and women and women. Ferrante's novels explore the recesses and limits of intimacy: "How many words," one of her heroine's asks, "remain unsayable even between a couple in love?"


Eternal Vigilance: The ACLU and the Expansion of Civil Liberties

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Stanton Zarrow
Co-coordinator: Judith Glass

Rights are not self-executing; they need cases and controversies brought by individuals and organizations like the ACLU,  which was founded by Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin in the aftermath of World War I, the Palmer Raids and the Red hysteria. From its inception until today the ACLU has been at the forefront protecting and extending those rights and liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment.

The ACLU has been identified with issues that continue to divide the Supreme Court and the nation, including a woman's personal autonomy and limitations on her ability to compete equally with men, whether classifications in the law based on race, sex or sexual orientation are illegitimate, and the appropriate role of religion in the public square. But the two areas in which the ACLU has been most zealous, some would say over-zealous, are freedom of speech and the protection of the rights of criminal defendants.

This SDG will examine those issues associated with the ACLU and the milestone cases it fostered in the development of civil rights and civil liberties. In this endeavor we will be guided by the recently published Fight of the Century, a collection of essays written by some of our pre-eminent writers exploring the meaning and impact of those cases---a confluence of judicial opinion and social significance, allowing each of us to reflect on how these issues impact us.

Europe: a natural history 13 weeks

Monday Jan 4 to Mar 29 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Wlodek Proskurowski
Co-coordinator: Tom Loo


What exactly is Europe, and who or what counts as European? Contemporary Europe is not a distinct continent but an appendix—an island-ringed peninsula projecting into the Atlantic from the western end of Eurasia.

Europe is a place of mongrels—and Europeans are “very special bastards indeed”. There can be no more dangerous concept than the idea of racial or genetic purity. The emergence of modern Homo sapiens owed much to Europe, the global centrifuge where our forebears had one final opportunity to trade DNA with other members of the hominid line—before we moderns were the last ones standing.

Gene-sequencing studies have shown that people of European and Asian descent today carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, less than 2 percent of their total genome on average. It is not the same 2 percent from one person to the next: taken together, up to 40 percent of the Neanderthal genome lives on. Recent research links lingering Neanderthal DNA sequences to variations in hair and skin color, sleep patterns, moodiness, and susceptibility to illnesses like diabetes.

 

Five Female Abstract Expressionists and Their World

Wednesday Jan 6 to Apr 7 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Doree Gerold
Co-coordinator: Hank Toles

Gabriel focuses on five of the female abstract expressionist painters who helped introduce a revolutionary international school of painting located in New York City.  Immersing them in their milieu, limning a vivid cultural history, Gabriel reminds us that male superiority infected every aspect of the post-World War II United States.  Determined to be painters in their own right, Krasner, De Kooning, Hartigan, Mitchell, and Frankenthaler refused to play second fiddle to their husbands and lovers, and they fought tenaciously for their identities as artists.  In doing so, they altered art and society.  Gabriel's in-depth look at these women and their struggles provides a wonderful new look at the United States, 1928-59.

Jane Austen's Revolutionary Novels: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice (12 Weeks)

Tuesday Jan 5 to Mar 23 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Anne Mellor
Co-coordinator: Jane Nadler

This SDG will explore Jane Austen's early fiction and her debt to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. After reading the sections of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that most heavily influenced Austen, we will look first at Austen's biography and her hilarious juvenilia, History of England and Love and Freindship (sic).  We will then read her first three novels in the order in which they were written, in the context of the social and political debates of her time concerning the education, roles and legal standing of women, the competing values of reason and sympathy, and the political demands of the French Revolution. We will also discuss the best film adaptations of these novels.


Los Angeles In World War II

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Steve Gordon
Co-coordinator: Anne Peplau

   The Los Angeles we know today took shape during World War II, which one historian described as the most significant event ever to occur to Los Angeles. The massive influx of war industries brought a population boom and a diversification of our community.  African-Americans and Latinos came here for work, joining whites from the South and Midwest.  The aircraft plants provided jobs, higher wages, and more open hiring, including women workers.  Civil defense included blackout precautions and defensive armaments against enemy air raids or invasion. At Hollywood Canteen, servicemen mingled with movie stars: dancing with Betty Grable, having a sandwich served by Shirley Temple.

   Under the surface, however, dangerous social conflicts were developing. Anti-Semitism was still a powerful force in Los Angeles, as restrictive covenants and redlining limited areas where Jews could live. Far worse, though, was an awareness of the Nazi persecution of European Jews and the very real local activities of Nazi sympathizers and German agents here.  Since the mid-1930s, pro-Hitler groups had held rallies in locations such as Hindenburg Park in La Crescenta, Patriotic Hall downtown, and the Pan-Pacific Auditorium. Sympathizers bought a 50-acre compound in Rustic Canyon, above Pacific Palisades, for use by eventual Nazi leaders. In opposition, Jews and Gentile allies organized to block Nazi influence in Los Angeles and became aware of Nazi death plots against prominent actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Paul Muni and Eddie Cantor and studio executives such as Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Along with these assassinations, Nazi hate group members planned massacres such as driving through Boyle Heights to shoot Jews on the street.

  This SDG will analyze the wartime social changes in Los Angeles and aim a special focus on the mostly amateur undercover espionage conducted by citizens on pro-Nazi and American fascist groups. This struggle is detailed in Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, by USC Professor Steven J. Ross. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The other core book is Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles During the Second World War by another history professor, Arthur C. Verge.


Examples of broader SDG Questions.  Among the broader insights that can be drawn from this historical period are these questions:

1.  Did wartime create a feeling of unity and solidarity across citizens, brought together by a common purpose?

2.  When and why do ordinary people take risks and get involved in public events, as did the citizens who conducted the undercover espionage against pro-Nazi groups in Los Angeles?

3. Which institutions and buildings are still part of our lives today after being important in the war?  What is the continuity to our time?  Which are commemorated and which locations and events have been forgotten?

4.  Did the war arouse emotional excitement manifested as anxiety, suspiciousness of others, and "war jitters", but also intense pursuit  of distracting entertainment and "live for today" romantic opportunities?







Memoirs: Classics and Classics-To-Be

Wednesday Jan 6 to Apr 7 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Kate Carpenter
Co-coordinator: Renee Hurewitz

What makes memoirs tick? How is it that one memoir moves us more than another? How revealing is a memoir of the author as well as of the "characters"? How do memoirists draw us into the eventfullness of their inner lives? How do their personal trajectories say something about their social milieu? 

We omit political memoirs. We treat writers who, famous or not, focus on their personal lives—their intimate and their professional relationships and, especially, the linkages between the two.  For all their diversity, the memoirs selected here have a common thread: how adventitious happenings shape lives into something like a coherent venture.

In a nutshell, the rationale of this SDG is comparison-and-contrast. We are less concerned with singular, recurrent themes. We are on the lookout for divergent stories and sensibilities, and for the mix of rawness and artfulness, that the best of the genre draws forth. We do not reach for an over-arching perspective.

Mushrooms - Tasty, Facinating & Mind Expanding

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Randy Kennon
Co-coordinator: Susan Guggenheim

Using the core book “Mycophilia - Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms” and the documentary film “Fantastic Fungi”, we will explore the biology of mushrooms and the much larger systems that mushrooms support and that support mushrooms (ie, fungi), the different types of mushrooms (edible and poisonous), the worlds of mushroom gathering and mushroom gatherers, and the possibility or reality that mushroom  systems and other plant systems have the capacities of sentient and sapient functions or communication and of responding to changes in their environments.  We will additionally explore human uses of mushroom and mushroom systems  in dealing with pollution, in manufacturing, in dealing with cancer and other diseases and other medicinal uses, and the uses of, consumption of, benefits of and histories of psychedelic mushrooms.

Native America from 1890 to Present (9 Weeks)

Thursday Jan 7 to Mar 4 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: David Roloff
Co-coordinator: Sheila Mc Coy

This SDG seeks to examine the history of Native America after the massacre at Wounded Knee to the present. The core book is The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present  written by David Treuer. The book has been widely praised and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. It tells a comprehensive story of Indian survival, resilience, adaptability and pride. It does so in a readable manner combining reportage, memoir and historical scholarship. The book shatters one myth after another and moves seamlessly from the big story to the tales of Native American lives. A beautifully written book telling a story that must be read, studied and understood.

Reimagining Global Health - 12 weeks

Tuesday Jan 5 to Mar 23 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Dori Davis
Co-coordinator: Barry Mc Grath

    The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that no country acting alone can respond effectively to health threats in a globalized world. Global governance is necessary to coordinate the global health response.


    The core book “Reimagining Global Health” provides a comprehensive, original and compelling introduction to the field of global health. It evaluates the history and underlying philosophy of global health, from its colonial times through the present. In addition to evaluating successful and failed programs, it offers an overview of how our thoughts of reasonable expectations and limitations have changed.

    The book examines creative ways of conducting programs pioneered by Partners in Health and other organizations and replicated to help populations treat HIV, TB, etc. Their interdisciplinary approach is multifaceted and requires an all hands-on deck approach that is geographically broad and historically deep.

    Given the historic opportunity to reimagine global health governance in the age of COVID-19, it’s critical that our global society explore where we go from here, both philosophically and practically.



 

Short Stories on the Wild Side: George Saunders (7 Weeks).

Wednesday Jan 6 to Feb 17 ( 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM )

Coordinator: Stan Morris
Co-coordinator: Lynne Bronner

George Saunders is a contemporary writer offering piercing insight into our modern culture and our private longings.  We will explore his world of funny, scary, subversive, magical, surreal, sometimes sad, unforgettable short stories.  Saunders has written more than twenty short stories for The New Yorker and won the 2017 Man-Booker prize.  He is a Professor at Syracuse University. 

The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean

Monday Jan 4 to Apr 5 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Sam Pryor and Fred Mc Lane

As we know, much of human history and many great cultures have emerged  from the area around the Mediterranean Sea, cultures such as the  Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginans, Phoenecians,  Ottomans, and the Arabs.  But the history of the Mediterranean has also been written by nations or states such as Venice, France, Spain and others who  sought to dominate its trade or to spread their culture and religions in the region.

 

The author of our highly readable and entertaining core book, The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean, John Julius Norwich, is the author of well-received and fascinating histories of Sicily, Venice and Byzantium.  In this ambitious work, he undertakes to cover the history of the entire Mediterranean from ancient Greece to the First World War.

 

Unlike many other authors, Norwich doesn't focus on the history of a single nation or all of Europe. Instead he covers a geographical region (the Mediterranean) to explore the forces and characters that have shaped its history. Norwich focuses on the rise and fall of civilizations, and the conflicts among them, He follows the conflicts between Greece and Persia, the rise and fall of Alexander the Great , the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and its offspring, Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity, the conflict between the Eastern and Western Catholic churches,  the rise of Islam, and the centuries long struggle between the Christians and Muslims.

 

This SDG is for those who wish to better understand the complex fabric of history,  trade,  empires and religions in the Mediterranean, from Greece to World War One. We will also supplement the  core book with additional material, and include as an optional supplemental work, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, by David Abulafia.



The Silk Road: Looking at Central Eurasia

Wednesday Jan 6 to Apr 7 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Ronald Mellor
Co-coordinator: Lise Matthews

It was on the Silk Road that the East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions.  From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the 20th century, we will examine how the West has always been linked to the East.

Beckwith describes the great Eurasian empires: Scythians, Huns, Turks, Tibetians, Chinggis Khan and the Mongols and the cultural and economic life of Central Eurasia.  The Indo-European migration from the region also affected Greco-Roman, Slavic, Germanic, Persian, and Indian languages and civilizations.

This book and our SDG will place Central Eurasia into a world historical framework.

We Have No Idea-A Guide to the Unknown Universe

Thursday Jan 7 to Apr 8 ( 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM )

Coordinator: Leo Roos
Co-coordinator: George Lauer

Our understanding of the Physical World and Universe has many gaps, some small and some very large. The latter  put into questions many of the current hypothesis that try to explain the Universe, how it formed and to some degree our relationship within it. Some of the greatest minds of the 19th and 20th century have tried to fill these gaps of knowledge, but many still remain and actually grow larger!

The authors of the core book have put together a humorous explanation of what we know and understand of the universe and what the gaps in our knowledge are. Since the book was published in 2017, some recent experiments have brought answers, partial answers or more questions relating to the various topics.

The book is written for those who have little or no knowledge about the Universe, but would like to know how it affects our existence directly and indirectly on this watery sphere. Can you live a comfortable life not knowing about these problems? Does resolving them help civilization? Maybe we will find some answers to these momentous questions.