Languages of the World
Asya M Pereltsvaig
Mondays, January 29 - March 4, 1:00 am - 3:00 pm
*Location: Online/Zoom
Registration deadline: Thursday, January 25, 5 pm
More than 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today and their variety seems unbounded. This linguistic diversity tells us a lot about the development of human language and thought. It also serves as an important tool for understanding the history of human civilization and what it means to be human. In this course, we will acquaint ourselves with the diversity of human languages; examine how languages evolve; and trace historical relationships among languages. We will take a whirlwind tour of the world’s language with stopovers in six mystery locations (a different location each week) and through examining the languages spoken in those places, we will learn the story of populations migrating, splitting, evolving, and interacting, and their languages changing and evolving.
*This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date. Recordings will be sent out to all registered in the class a day or two after the lecture has taken place.
Forest Management in Sonoma County
Frederick Euphrat, Ph.D., RPF
Tuesdays, January 30 - March 5, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: SSU Campus - Green Music Center 1058
Registration deadline: Friday, January 26, 5 pm
This class is intended for landowners and land managers in the North Coast, centering on Sonoma County. It will teach participants methods to analyze forest stands, roads and fire, regeneration and stewardship of our native forests. Focus will be on redwood forest succession, harvest, restoration, preservation and intergenerational transfers of land. This course will give participants tools to support fire safety, response to recent fires and water quality, while enhancing the aesthetics and wildlife capabilities of timber and hardwood stands.
Great Women Songwriters in Jazz and Blues
Pamela Rose
Tuesdays, January 30 - March 5, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
**Location: SSU Campus, Stevenson Hall 1300
Registration deadline: Friday, January 26, 5 pm
Celebrating the lives, times and music of the often-invisible women songwriters of jazz and blues, singer/educator Pamela Rose leads the class into a study of the women who helped create the American Songbook. From early blues to Motown – women like Alberta Hunter, Dorothy Fields (Sunny Side of the Street), Mary Lou Williams, Ann Ronnel (Willow Weep For Me), Peggy Lee, Carole King wrote popular standards, yet often struggled against sexism and racism to receive recognition for their work. With biographical detail, music appreciation and singalongs, this will be a swinging honors course in womankind!
**This class will be Hyflex, i.e., it will take place both in person and through Zoom. This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date.
Following the 2024 Election
Richard Hertz
Wednesdays, January 31 - March 6, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
**Location: SSU Campus - Stevenson Hall 1300
Registration deadline: Monday, January 29, 5 pm
The 2024 US Elections are shaping up to be one of the most consequential in our history. This course will guide you through the key dynamics of this election as well as potential outcomes. Topics will include what the key issues of these elections are likely to be, the potential makeup of the electorate, ways it may be historically different, the potential political consequences of different results, and potential paths forward for improving our political systems’ functionality. You’ll also learn about the intricacies of public opinion polling and how to interpret their results, other key voting metrics, procedures such as how elections are administered and votes are counted, and how institutions like the electoral college work.
**This class will be Hyflex, i.e., it will take place both in person and through Zoom. This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date.
The Gift: An Exploration of End of Life Conversations and Concerns
J. Redwing Keyssar
Wednesdays, January 31 - March 5, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Location: SSU Campus - Green Music Center 1057
Registration deadline: Monday, January 29, 5 pm
This course will offer a variety of presentations over 6 weeks, to engage the community in meaningful conversations about the one subject that will touch each and every one of us: life and death. We live in a culture that has traditionally been death-phobic. Although we have now lived through a global pandemic, when “ventilators” became an every-day word in our vocabulary and “Death” a daily front-page headline, most people are still reluctant to engage in open, honest conversations about end-of-life ideas, wishes, concerns or questions. Through film, slides, a panel presentation by “experts” in the field of Palliative Care, and small group experiential exercises, we will find creative ways to explore our thoughts, fears and feelings about this poignant subject.
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and the Twilight of American Liberalism
Mick Chantler
Thursdays, February 1 - March 7, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
**Location: SSU Campus - Stevenson 1300
Registration deadline: Tuesday, January 30, 5 pm
By the mid-1970s the liberal consensus in American politics was fraying badly. Jimmy Carter had the bad luck of rising to prominence at a time when most Americans were becoming deeply cynical about our government. The Vietnam catastrophe, followed quickly by the Watergate scandal, made it unlikely that any president of either party was going to be well-received in 1976. Carter paid the price for that erosion in confidence. Ronald Reagan offered a new beginning, --"Morning in America--to American voters. The resultant victory by the California Republican ushered in a sea change in our politics which continues to reverberate today. In this course we will examine how such a dramatic shift in our thinking came to pass.
**This class will be Hyflex, i.e., it will take place both in person and through Zoom. This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Mysteries and Message in The Visual Arts
Heidi Chretien & Charlie Goldberg
Thursdays, February 1 - March 7, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
**Location: SSU Campus - Stevenson 1300
Registration deadline: Tuesday, January 30, 5 pm
In our first jointly taught class, we taught you how to look at works of art and how to really see what you were looking at. Then we invited you on a "tour" of small museums in Europe and the US to see where many of the works we studied were housed. Now we propose to delve further into understanding how works of art can be interpreted, moving beyond the visuals into a deeper appreciation of the works themselves. To do this, we will address such issues as the importance of patronage and the mystery of symbolism and iconography. We will study how artists borrow and learn from one another as well as how early historical periods impact contemporary art, ultimately creating entirely new visual expressions. We will see how censorship and questions of identity impact subject matter and finally, how unfinished, broken and destroyed art play their role in our interpretation.
**This class will be Hyflex, i.e., it will take place both in person and through Zoom. This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date.
Catastrophism: Natural; Disasters & Human Civilization
Nicole Myers
Fridays, February 2 - March 8, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Location: SSU Campus - Stevenson 1102
Registration deadline: Wednesday, January 31, 5 pm
Earth has been repeatedly rocked by natural disasters, and some of these catastrophic events have changed the course of human history. Earth Scientists have developed a record of disastrous events going back thousands of years, to help us understand the causes of these disasters and to learn to predict future events. Natural disasters arise from the interactions between tectonic plates, space objects, meteorological extremes, and climatic cycles, and every location on Earth is susceptible to natural disasters. This class will investigate events in human history, focusing on how modern innovations have either made disasters worse or less severe. Learn where natural disasters occur, how to prepare for future events, and how human civilization has responded to catastrophic events.
**This class will be Hyflex, i.e., it will take place both in person and through Zoom. This class will be recorded and available for viewing at a later date.
