History & Politics   

The year 1936 saw continuing economic depression and a presidential election in the United States, the use of propaganda and the Olympic Games by Hitler, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and three kings in England. We will explore each of these topics in detail throughout this four-week class. 

World War II was the climactic event of the twentieth century and changed the face of warfare and the political and economic world forever. This class looks at the origins of the war, the decisive turning point battles, the factors that account for the Allied victory, and how the war still impacts our lives.

The U.S. Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government. This class will take a journey back two-hundred thirty-eight years to the crafting of the Constitution during the hot, humid, Philadelphia summer of 1787. During this journey we’ll discover who the framers were and ask what their influences, agreements, disagreements, and compromises were. We will learn about the founding principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and about other aspects of crafting this important document. Finally, we will discuss what changes, if any, should be made to our Constitution, as well as what should never change. Questions and comments from all class members will be encouraged.

Take a visual tour of Duluth’s historic architecture. Participants will learn about architects and landscape architects who worked in Duluth, explore lost structures, and relive the construction of Glensheen Mansion.

Explore the relationship between Ancient Greek communities and the Persian Empire as seen in contemporary literature, in the physical remains of both groups, and in the remains of others influenced by them.

Join a class built around Mayme Sevander's memoir They Took My Father: Finnish Americans in Stalin’s Russia. Mayme was born in Brule, Wisconsin, in 1923, to a Finnish-American family. The family emigrated to Soviet Russia in 1934 as a part of a mass emigration of (mostly) North American Finns disillusioned over the promise of an "American dream" and committed to going to Soviet Karelia to help build a new society under the leadership of Joseph Stalin.

Take some time to explore the complex and intertwined histories of Israel and Palestine. The book Side By Side: Parallel Histories Of Israel - Palestine provides a “dual narrative” of Israeli and Palestinian conflict, providing both perspectives on key historical events.

The year 1925 defined a decade of extraordinary creativity for Black arts of various media, and Harlem was the heart of it. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., “...these years marked an especially brilliant moment in the history of blacks in America…the creativity of black Americans undoubtedly came from a common source—the irresistible impulse of blacks to create boldly expressive art of a high quality as a primary response to their social conditions, as an affirmation of their dignity and humanity in the face of poverty and racism.” We will read and listen to the voices of a wide range of writers, musicians, and visual artists, ranging from Langston Hughes, to Zora Neale Hurston, to Louis Armstong, to Paul Robeson.

One hundred years ago, John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee, and the trial gripped the nation. This class will look at the stages of the trial and how it was covered in the press and written about in history books. After exploring how what everybody "knows" about the trial is not exactly accurate, we’ll view the 1960 film version of Inherit the Wind to see what it changed and why it matters, especially given the current conflicts between science and religion.

Gaslamp-lit and carriage-driven, the Victorian Era of England spanned Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901. A time of rapid industrialization and imperial expansion, the Victorian Era saw huge a disparity between rich and poor and between men and women. A refined culture on one hand, this was also a time of seances, sideshows, workhouses, child labor, grave robbers, disease, and famine. We will explore the contradictions of the Victorian Era as a microcosm of the human condition.

This class is an eight-week survey of women whose influence changed the world. We will discuss difference-makers and historical figures from the Middle Ages to the present. We will cover the royals, the scientists, the politicians, the literary giants, the abolitionists, the social reformers, the First Ladies, and the teenagers.