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!
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, by the young architect Walter Gropius, was part Modernist school of art and design and part dream factory. Students were taught in workshops led by both craftsmen and artists and the curriculum included everything from fine art, typography, and graphic design to interior design and architecture. In a 4-part series, art historian Joseph Paul Cassar explores the importance and enduring influence of the Bauhaus. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)
Soaring spires, glittering stained-glass windows, and sculpted figures that seem to breathe with life—these are the hallmarks of Gothic art, a style that transformed cathedrals, churches, and civic spaces across medieval Europe. Art historian Janetta Rebold Benton, author of Art of the Middle Ages, explores this extraordinary period. Through architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts, Benton reveals the unrivaled richness and refinement of the Gothic era. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)
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.
Create your own story as you learn to upcycle book pages as surfaces for drawing, painting, and collage using gelatin plate prints, textures, photo transfers, drawing, painting, and text redaction.
Liguria is best known for its idyllic seaside towns along the Italian Riviera, from such famed locales as Portofino and Rapallo to humbler fishing towns like Camogli. Art historian Sophia D’Addio surveys the history of the capital city of the region, Genoa, as one of the major maritime powers of the Italian peninsula during the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. She also celebrates its chief culinary achievement: pesto. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Thomas Aquinas transformed the Western intellectual tradition through his vast philosophical and theological work, especially the Summa theologiae. His vision has shaped thinkers and religious believers from his own era to today. Aquinas scholar Scott MacDonald explores some of the bold and perennially relevant ideas fundamental to Aquinas’ distinctively philosophical theology.
The picture-perfect snowcapped cone of Mount Fuji has attracted Japanese artists and pilgrims for more than a thousand years. Historian Justin M. Jacobs examines the history of human influences on this dormant volcano and its dynamic—and symbolic—role in Japanese history, including the elaborate network of Shinto and Buddhist shrines that that have drawn countless pilgrims from far away.
