After its disappointing air combat performance over Vietnam, the U.S. set out to improve its training of fighter pilots. Among the initiatives was a top-secret project launched in the late 1970s that pitted clandestinely obtained Soviet MiGs flown by a cadre of highly experienced pilots—known as Red Eagles—against fighter pilots of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rob Zettel, a Red Eagles veteran, shares an insider’s view of the project.
Follow the 25-year journey of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s vice president of horticulture, Andrew Bunting, as he transforms his suburban Philadelphia property into a private garden featuring a series of distinctive small spaces. Bunting covers his approach to garden design, plant choice, seasonal displays, and his maintenance regime and covers the challenges of creating a personal landscape that provides practical lessons and creative ideas for home gardeners.
Pop culture is populated by plenty of fictional cephalopod and cephalopod-inspired characters, from Squidward of “SpongeBob SquarePants” to the heptapod aliens of Arrival. Whether these portrayals accurately represent the biology, anatomy, and behavior of the animals that inspired them is another question. Come find out how quickly Finding Dory’s Hank could regenerate his eighth arm and whether a kraken could really sink a ship as cephalopod expert Danna Staaf proves that truth can be stranger than fiction.
By the end of the 1950s, New York Abstract Expressionism had begun to wane. Painters adopted the large scale and rich palette of artists like Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko but with new processes and goals in mind. Many of these painters lived in Washington, D.C., where their originality earned them the name Washington Color School. Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Paul Reed, among others, were important innovators in new working methods based on staining unprimed canvas. Art historian David Gariff examines this golden age in the history of modern American art. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Cappadocia in central Turkiye is best known for its surreal landscapes of sculpted tuff, fairy chimneys, and ancient underground cities. But Cappadocia is more than just a natural marvel. Its valleys and rock-cut dwellings reveal a rich tapestry of history, from Hittite strongholds and Persian satrapies to Roman and Byzantine settlements to cave churches. Turkish tour guide Serif Yenen brings Cappadocia to life by weaving together its natural beauty, historical depth, and religious significance.
From ancient times to the present scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline as mathematics, which appears to have been a product of human thought, could so perfectly explain the natural world. In a fascinating presentation, astrophysicist Mario Livio explores why mathematics is a powerful lens through which to examine the cosmos.
If you’ve taken the studio arts class Gyotaku: The Japanese Art of Fish Printing, you are ready to try Hawaiian-style gyotaku. It includes printing in colorful inks and thin acrylics and adding color and texture with watercolor crayons and acrylic media.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and most technologically dynamic campaign of the Second World War, a vast contest in which engineering ingenuity, intelligence breakthroughs, and industrial capacity proved as decisive as bravery at sea. U.S. Naval Academy historian Marcus Jones offers a sweeping narrative of the struggle from 1939 to 1945, presenting the Atlantic war as a complex, interlocking system, one in which science, strategy, and endurance combined to determine the fate of nations: a story of innovation under pressure and survival against the odds.
