This class will be a chronological retrospective of music from the Baroque era, covering the years 1600-1750. All major composers of instrumental and vocal music will be discussed including Monteverdi, Corelli, Vivaldi, Couperin, Handel, Telemann, Rameau, and Bach. From the birth of opera through the major works of J.S. Bach, we will analyze the styles of the three main musical centers of composition: Italy, France, and Germany.

Learn how to expertly capture images, edit, and create extraordinary photographs using solely your iPhone. Gain inspiration to find your creative vision and expand your technical knowledge. By the end of this workshop, you will understand the ins and outs of iPhone photography.

This class will cover the historically significant country-rock movement which started in LA in 1965 and spread across the country, changing the musical landscape of popular music. We will explore how two roots-oriented genres — country music and rock and roll — borrowed from each other and merged to create a new genre which has since spawned many sub-genres, each with its own unique approach to country-rock.

Most Californians are unaware that their state sponsored and funded a campaign to exterminate the Indigenous population — a mass atrocity known under contemporary international law as genocide. This course explores what happened in California between 1846 and 1900 and looks at how a democracy orchestrated a crime typically associated with dictatorship. It also connects California’s story with the larger United States narrative of conquest, and considers the effects upon California society, culture, and politics today.

The threat of nuclear war has returned, both because of Russian actions on INF and US actions with Iran and North Korea. We will examine possible global futures by studying the practice of Nuclear Arms Control, its history, organization, and uses. No prior political or scientific knowledge is required.

Russian culture at the turn of the 20th century was in a dynamic period of experimentation and outstanding discoveries in the visual, literary, and performing arts. The Silver Age produced a galaxy of brilliant artistic talents: explore the poetry of Blok and Akhmatova; the music of Stravinsky and Scriabin; the paintings of Bakst and Malevich; Diaghilev’s “Ballets Russes” enterprise. We will also discuss how the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 impacted the arts and the lives of writers, musicians, and artists.

Nonfiction films are more essential than ever, but the subject matter typically overshadows the process for making them. In fact, the filmmaker’s narrative, thematic, and aesthetic choices are as important as the material itself. Each session will feature a recent or in-progress film followed by a candid discussion with the director. We’ll focus on the practical and ethical challenges of making documentaries, from conception through production and postproduction to distribution.

Using selected films, we’ll explore cultural realities, clashes and misunderstandings through the eyes of Chinese, Japanese, Iranian, Sudanese and Latino Immigrants. Background readings and intercultural tools will be offered to facilitate understanding of cultures to be featured, and where possible, film makers and cultural informants will be invited as resources. We’ll conclude by highlighting attitudes about the elderly across cultures and break some stereotypes with Lives Well Lived, a film featuring inspirational stories about seniors in the United States.

In this discussion-centered class we’ll delve into stirring creations from our rich roster of living Bay Area story writers, both known and lesser known: Joyce Carol Oates, Tommy Orange, Tobias Wolff, Molly Giles, Amy Tan, Namwali Serpell, Olga Zilberbourg, Kim Addonizio, Kara Vernor, Peter Orner, Ethel Rohan, Adam Johnson.

Your unique family, heritage, culture, and traditions offer a rich source of material. Learn how to draw on your own background to generate stories that are deeply meaningful to you, the people you love, and even to complete strangers. Writing assignments will include nonfiction and fiction. Sharing work will be encouraged but not required. Leave class with a roadmap for expanding your material.

This course emphasizes China’s national history as a part of the global process from the 19th century to the present. Particular attention will be paid to China’s links to transnational migration, trade, and investment throughout the history of Western colonization, the Pacific War and the Cold War, and socialism and post-socialism. China has experienced complex metamorphoses in both its internal economy and governance, as well as with its relations within the region and the world.

Toni Morrison was one of our greatest novelists. Her treatments of race, gender, and above all, humanity and love in America, were matched only by her ability to craft a sentence stunning enough to knock you to the ground. This course will focus on a small selection of Morrison’s most important novels, as well as some of her critical writings.