What's new this month?

Accompany former National Geographic executive vice president and chief science officer Terry Garcia and nature and cultural photographer Chris Rainier, a National Geographic Explorer, on a journey with some of the world’s most renowned explorers, scientists, astronauts, visionaries, thinkers, and authors as they discuss their insights about what motivates them, what is left to explore, and why we should care. Following the presentation, Garcia and Rainier are joined by deep-sea explorer and founder and president of the Ocean Discovery League Katy Croff Bell for a short conversation on the future of exploration.

In the early 20th century, a group of Italian artists sought to embrace modernity in all its glorious messiness and contradictions. The result was Futurism, not a style but a way of looking at life. Its adherents called for abrupt change and the replacement of reason and order with vitality and force of will. Art historian Mary Ann Calo examines Futurism as both an idea and a development in the visual arts. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Geoffrey Chaucer is often called the father of English literature because of his groundbreaking work, The Canterbury Tales. Joseph Luzzi, professor of literature at Bard College, explores what makes this masterpiece tick. He explores how Chaucer created such compelling characters as the Wife of Bath, a pioneering figure in the construction of modern female identity, and how his work influenced a range of later authors.

Despite its name, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy, is not a music museum but a museum containing extraordinary artwork commissioned by the opera, or building committee, of Florence Cathedral. Renaissance art expert Rocky Ruggiero explores the collection, which includes the reconstructed original 13th-century Gothic façade of the cathedral; Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise,” the original bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery; and Michelangelo's second “Pietà,” which he carved at age 75 and left unfinished. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials known. The technologies it has inspired—from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms—continue to be developed in laboratories around the world. Author Aarathi Prasad outlines the cultural and scientific history of the fabric including its origins, the ancient silk routes, and its future as a powerful resource.

Inspired by the letters in her new book, Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer (Akashic), Joyce Carol Oates, in a conversation with author and educator Rebecca Boggs Roberts, discusses her writing process and style over the past four decades. The letters in the book were part of a correspondence with a graduate student who eventually became her biographer.

In the distant past, people were both awed and alarmed by comets. We now know that comets are leftovers from the dawn of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. They may yield important clues about the solar system’s formation. Carey Lisse, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, highlights what we know about comets and what we are still hoping to find out.

Ever since its publication in 1954, Nobel laureate William Golding’s Lord of the Flies has been a mainstay of syllabi and reading lists throughout the world. Literature professor Joseph Luzzi leads a detailed analysis and examination of the harrowing story of a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island during a time of war.

The earliest known copy of work by Archimedes. Gutenberg and other early Bibles and Muslim manuscripts. Historical astronomical plates. All these historical objects have been digitized by Michael B. Toth, president of R. B. Toth Associates, and his colleagues in humanities and science. Toth discusses ongoing work on historic objects and offers examples of texts and objects that have been digitized using the latest advanced imaging systems.

In the months leading up to D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower projected optimism about the massive undertaking but was aware that failure was always a possibility. Author Michel Paradis examines how Eisenhower’s qualities as a leader shaped the strategic planning of Operation Overlord—which led to D-Day and the liberation of France—focusing on the six months preceding the mission when he grew from a widely respected general into one of the singular figures of American history.