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How did a young girl from Newport News, Virginia, become the first lady of jazz? This in-depth musical review of Ella Fitzgerald’s work will include discussions of her life and the challenges she overcame. We will focus on pivotal moments in a singing career that spanned seven decades and that would secure her role as a jazz legend. We will survey her work as a soloist as well as her collaborations with such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington.

INSTRUCTOR: Timothy Hankewich is in his 19th season as music director of Orchestra Iowa. He has appeared with Symphony San Jose, the Jacksonville Symphony, the Victoria Symphony, the Moravian Philharmonic, and the Slovak State Orchestra. He holds degrees in piano performance and choral conducting. His doctorate in instrumental and opera conducting is from Indiana University.

Registration for Course 1 is now closed.

Submerged in dreamy pinkness, the 2023 film Barbie became an instant cultural phenomenon and the highest-grossing film ever by a female director, earning Greta Gerwig her fourth Academy Award nomination. Beneath the glossy plastic surface, the film offers nuanced assessment of weighty existential concepts such as beauty, aging, immortality, quest, cultural alienation, femininity, masculinity, becoming “real,” and the relationship with a creator.

We will read selected passages from works such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and examine Barbie in its relationship to other films (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard of Oz), pop music, marketing, and consumer psychology.

INSTRUCTOR: Anna Barker, PhD, teaches in the UI Russian Program and at the Tippie College of Business on topics ranging from Tolstoy to Barbie. She writes “Anna’s Thinking Cap,” an Iowa City Press-Citizen column, dedicated this year to Iowa’s Napoleonic and French past. Her daily Substack posts can be found at annasthinkingcap.substack.com and her literary tutorials at iowacityofliterature.org/anna-barker-classics.

Registration for Course 2 is now closed.

Since its inception in 1967, the International Writing Program (IWP) at the UI has hosted more than 1,500 writers from more than 150 countries. The program aims to introduce talented poets, fiction writers, dramatists, and nonfiction writers to American culture, to facilitate their participation in American university life, and to provide them with time and a congenial setting for producing their own literary work. This course offers the opportunity to meet eight writers in residence at the UI this fall. Each week, two writers will read and discuss their works, talk about the current state of literature in their home countries, and answer your questions.

INSTRUCTORS: Two visiting writers will present their work at each session.

Registration for Course 3 is now closed.

From 1907 to 1931, Florenz Ziegfeld’s annual Follies ruled Broadway as the most glamorous, star-studded, lavish productions in the history of show business. This course traces the story of Ziegfeld’s empire and the careers of some of its biggest stars, including Anna Held, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Eddie Cantor, and many more. In each session, we’ll take a front-row seat at the Follies as we focus on the musicians, composers, and performers, as well as the business, production, and legacy of The Ziegfeld Follies.

INSTRUCTOR: Evan Hilsabeck, managing director at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, is a magpie in the junk heap of American theater history. His passion is researching and collecting the original playbills, photographs, faded press clippings, and archival documents that tell the stories of an earlier era of American theater.

Registration for Course 4 is now closed.

In film after film, director Alfred Hitchcock used music to enrapture and unsettle audiences. Whether using melody to turn the plot (as in Shadow of a Doubt) or presenting musical themes as repressed memories (as in Spellbound), Hitchcock turned music into a defining marker of his style. Focusing on Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Vertigo, and Psycho, this course explores Hitchcock’s musical methods to illuminate the profound but often subconscious role music plays in cinematic storytelling. We will also dive behind the scenes to learn how Hitchcock’s uneven relationships with composers like Bernard Herrmann affected the sound and function of music in his films. 

The films can be viewed as digital, streaming rentals and are also available on DVD or Blu-ray, often from public libraries. A series of Hitchcock films will screen at FilmScene in late summer.

INSTRUCTOR: Nathan Platte teaches courses on film music for the School of Music and Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Iowa. His research explores the sound of Hollywood’s studio era, including the collaborative process of film scoring and the role of music in Hitchcock’s films.

Registration for Course 5 is now closed.

Hey! What’s that sound? This course will focus on the role played by the record labels in the development and presentation of classic rock music of the late 1960s through the 1970s, an era of great change, diversity, and experimentation. We’ll examine record company moguls like Ahmet Ertegun/Atlantic, Jac Holzman/Elektra, and Mo Ostin/Warner Brothers, who discovered and mentored the performers. We’ll look at how album cover artwork shaped the performers’ images. We’ll discuss the importance of radio stations and record stores in promotion and distribution. Finally, we’ll examine the music scenes in places such as New York City, Los Angeles, and the southern United States, where the music flourished.

INSTRUCTOR: Music enthusiast Greg Newmaster has photographed over 100 major recording artists in live performance and maintains a large archive of music memorabilia. He holds a BA in communication studies from the University of Iowa and worked for 15 years in corporate communications as a writer and producer of video presentations. 

Registration for Course 6 is now closed.

In the 200 years since Euro-American settlement, much of Iowa has been transformed from a complex sustainable wilderness to expanses of row crops and concentrated animal feeding operations. Why, how, and to what end? This course will address these questions while discussing Iowa’s soil, water, climate, and biodiversity challenges. Short, diverse lectures will be based on the book Tending Iowa’s Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future, which considers positive solutions for reuniting natural features with agricultural landscapes for the betterment of both.

INSTRUCTOR: Ecologist Connie Mutel, a regular writer and speaker on nature and sustainability, edited Tending Iowa’s Land, which received the 2023 Midwest Book Award for Nature. Mutel’s newest of seven books on Iowa’s natural features and processes, it is Iowa’s first book to consider environmental challenges as an integrated whole. Other course lecturers will include chapter authors Pauline Drobney, Ken Faucett, Jim Pease, Tom Rosburg, Keith Schilling, Jerry Schnoor, Lisa Schulte Moore, Charlie Stanier, Francis Thicke, Larry Weber, and Kathy Woida.

Registration for Course 7 is now closed.

Here is your chance to immerse yourself in some of American literature’s most enigmatic and rewarding poems. Our overview will include Emily Dickinson’s life and her place in the history of American poetry. In each class we will examine three or four of her brief but astonishingly dense poems. We will look at poems about the art of poetry itself, about being a woman in 19th-century America, about the Civil War, and about death.

INSTRUCTOR: Ed Folsom is the Roy J. Carver Professor Emeritus of English. He has taught courses on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson at the University of Iowa for 40 years. He is the author or editor of numerous books and essays on Whitman, Dickinson, and other American writers.

The decade of the 1960s was a period of profound change in Iowa City and at the University of Iowa. There was political upheaval and civil rights activism, including anti-war protests, the black athletes’ boycott, and the 1970 suspension of classes. Taking a roughly chronological approach, we’ll begin in 1959, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the campus, and conclude in 1973 with the “last peace rally” on the Pentacrest following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. These events serve as bookends for a significant period of turmoil and transformation whose effects are still felt today.

INSTRUCTOR: David McCartney, University of Iowa archivist emeritus, holds master’s degrees in history and library science and a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He is past president of the Midwest Archives Conference and chaired the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s University Archivists Group from 2007 to 2014.

Session 9 is now full. If you would like to be added to a waiting list for this course, email the course number, your name, and your phone number to Senior College at alumni.seniorcollege@foriowa.org or contact the UI Center for Advancement at 319-335-3305 or 800-648-6973.

Just a few years ago, Americans could not have imagined the current political landscape as we head into the 2024 election. Since the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, ruminations about civil war are not uncommon. The very foundations of our democratic system, including fair elections, are being tested. This course will examine the key races and major issues surrounding the elections and include a morning-after analysis of the 2024 election results. Sessions will strive for objectivity and balance and include conversations with guest political scientists, video clips of political news and interviews, and lively in-class discussions.

(In Person Participation is Full) - Zoom Registration Available

INSTRUCTOR: Ben Kieffer is the award-winning host and producer of Iowa Public Radio’s daily talk show River to River. Kieffer previously worked in Europe, where he reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall and covered the Velvet Revolution in Prague. He is a Cedar Falls native and UI graduate.

The language Shakespeare uses in his plays creates vivid characters and memorable speeches. In this course, we will learn what is being said, and then we’ll look at how it is being said—through verse, prose, and images. Next, touching upon several plays, we’ll explore how characters use the verse, and variations of it, to make their points. Finally, we will examine one or more speeches to see how this all comes together.

INSTRUCTOR: Alan MacVey, University of Iowa professor emeritus of theatre arts, served as chair of the Department of Theatre Arts for 29 years and as director of the Division of Performing Arts for 17 years. He has directed some 20 productions of Shakespeare plays, most of them for professional theatres.

Pathophysiology is the study of functional changes to our body systems when they’re affected by disease. Each week we will cover one of the body systems, such as the nervous system, in depth. We’ll begin with a review of anatomy and physiology, dip generously into how the system develops in the embryo, and look at comparative anatomy. Then we will consider new research findings. For example, while we think of Parkinson’s disease as a brain disease, new research suggests that the gut and vagus nerve may play a role in its development. We’ll explore balance and locomotion, the blood-forming system, and other functions and systems that are underappreciated—until something goes wrong!

INSTRUCTOR: Carol Scott-Conner, MD PhD, is professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Iowa. She received the Honored Member award from the American Association of Clinical Anatomy and is a founding member of the Academy of Master Surgeon Educators. A perennial student, she recently received an MFA from Lenoir-Rhyne University.

In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing so much ash and lapilli into the air that Pompeii was buried within 24 hours. This catastrophe transformed this regional town of about 30,000 people into one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. From loaves of bread left in an oven, to figs set out for sale in the market, to doors shuttered against the onslaught, the evidence of daily life preserved by the eruption remains unparalleled by finds from other Roman cities. We will use the art, architecture, and archaeological remains of the city to explore different aspects of Pompeian life.

INSTRUCTOR: Brenda Longfellow is in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where she is the Roger A. Hornsby Associate Professor in the Classics. She teaches classes on fakes and forgeries as well as on ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art. She has published broadly on the art, architecture, and hydraulics of the ancient Roman Empire, and her latest book is on women in Pompeii (forthcoming spring 2025).

Crime and mystery fiction has been reinventing itself since the 19th century when Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katherine Green, and others laid down blueprints for murder most foul, amateur and professional detectives, and the puzzles of whodunnit, howdunnit, and whydunnit. We will read the debut books of contemporary novelists Sara Paretsky (Indemnity Only), Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress), Denise Mina (Still Midnight), and Mick Herron (Slow Horses). Through lectures and discussions, we will consider how each engages with the gender and genre conventions that have marked mystery and detective fiction since its beginnings, what links them, and what distinguishes them from each other.

INSTRUCTOR: Margaret Kinsman retired from teaching English literature at London South Bank University. Past editor of CLUES: A Journal of Detection and author of the book Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, she has received awards from the American Popular Culture Association, the Mystery Writers of America, and Mystery Readers International.

Session 14 is now full. If you would like to be added to a waiting list for this course, email the course number, your name, and your phone number to Senior College at alumni.seniorcollege@foriowa.org or contact the UI Center for Advancement at 319-335-3305 or 800-648-6973.