Learn to capture the depth of field, motion effects, and exposure you want by quickly making camera adjustments in the field. Topics covered include ISO, apertures, shutter speeds, exposure modes, metering modes, exposure compensation, and histograms.

An ambitious expedition left central Mexico in 1540 as Francisco Coronado led nearly 2,000 Spaniards north in search of mythical golden cities. Instead of wealth, they confronted the vast, unmapped American West and formidable Indigenous nations who controlled it. Over two years, the expedition crossed more than 2,500 miles. Hard terrain, starvation, internal collapse, and Indigenous resistance devastated the force: nearly 90 percent never returned. Peter Stark, author of The Lost Cities of El Norte, examines how Indigenous power and the landscape combined to halt European domination of the Southwest and Plains for the next three centuries.

René Lalique, the daring jeweler of Belle Époque Paris, revolutionized adornment by rejecting gemstone traditions and blending metals with enamel, horn, glass, and semi-precious stones. His nature-inspired creations—dragonflies, orchids, and nymphs—elevated jewelry to fine art, embodying Art Nouveau’s union of art and life. Collaborating with Sarah Bernhardt and elite patrons, Lalique gained acclaim at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Art historian Tosca Ruggieri’s illustrated lecture explores his evolution, techniques, patrons, and rarely seen masterpieces. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Beverly Gage made 13 trips throughout the country to visit museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learn and argue about our history. Gage shares her experiences at locations such as Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Medora, North Dakota; and Dearborn, Michigan. She also examines key moments that define America’s greatest successes and challenges.

Stretching for more than 1,400 miles across the northeastern coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is home to the world’s largest coral reef system as well as an extraordinary range of marine life. Historian Justin M. Jacobs highlights the geological and biological evolution of the reef, its evolving cultural importance, and the manmade and environmental forces that now threaten its existence.

Knowing how to put together elements of wirework and strung bead jewelry is crucial to creative success. However, all the techniques in your toolbox become useless if you get stuck during the design process. Learn important design principles for jewelry makers such as use of color, creating visual texture and balance, and managing proportion.

Ages 7 to 11. Learn about the systems which built and shape our Mother Earth from her molten beginnings to her many ecosystems of today! 

Henry David Thoreau is widely known for Walden and “Civil Disobedience,” but he was also a pioneering environmentalist, an influence on nonviolence movements, and a geologist, botanist, inventor, poet, and early Darwinian thinker. Scholar Randall Fuller reexamines Thoreau as a figure shaped by post-Revolutionary America—an engaged artist-scientist who in many ways embodied the promise of a “new” citizen in the early Republic.