Courses & Lectures

Monday Afternoon at the Movies: Immigration Stories*
Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH

Description: Immigration, a hot-button issue here in America, is a headline-grabber in Western Europe, too. Three 21st-century European films jumpstart our discussion of this very current event: one British, one German, and one an international co-production, set in Britain but directed by a Mexican. NOTE: Registrants should view the subject film before each class.

• Class 1: Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002) treats Nigerian, Turkish, West Indian and Russian immigrants in London, studiously de-emphasizing the white British presence, hardly seen in the film. The great Chiwetel Ejiofor (Inside Man, 12 Years A Slave, Doctor Strange) stars as Okwe, a Nigerian doctor working illegally in London as a minicab driver and hotel night clerk. He shares a room with Turkish asylum seeker Senay, also working illegally, as a chambermaid. When Okwe finds a human heart in one of the hotel bathrooms, a mystery ensues. Commercial neon of minicab offices, slot machines, and street markets give us a vibrantly colorful story. With Audrey Tautou (Amélie) as Senay.
• Class 2: Turkish-German director Fatih Akin sets Gegen die Wand (Head-On) (2004) in the Turkish community of Hamburg. Protagonist Cahit, whose only religious principle is “punk is not dead,” ekes out a bohemian living by collecting empties in a music venue. Enter Sibel, whose traditional-values parents want her to find a nice Turkish boy to marry, but must settle for Cahit. He vies with Sibel in self-destructiveness, though her self-harming in Germany pales in comparison to what awaits her in Turkey, when she returns to Istanbul to live with her cousin. The film’s soundtrack features post-punk, Goth, and Turkish traditional music, with a brief cameo from Maceo Parker, saxophone player with both James Brown and George Clinton.
• Class 3: Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), an action thriller based on a P. D. James novel, stars Clive Owen in a futuristic Britain. The world’s women have become infertile, the government issues suicide kits, and non-nationals are rounded up for internment and deportation. Owen’s cynical journalist character has an ex-girlfriend (Julianne Moore) who has become the leader of an underground resistance group. Like most good dystopias, Cuaron’s film is a commentary on the present. It’s also celebrated for both its production design and a long-take camera style with shots running five minutes uninterrupted. An entertaining Michael Caine cameos as an aging liberal.

Instructor: MICHAEL WALSH was born in London to Irish immigrant parents and was educated at Sussex University and SUNY Buffalo. He co-founded the Cinema Department at the University of Hartford and chaired it for 14 years. He has published widely on film, literature, and theory. His book, Durational Cinema: A Short History of Long Films, appeared from Palgrave Macmillan at the end of 2022. He plans to retire from full-time teaching at the end of the present academic year.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

U.S. Pop Music: How Race & Place Shaped the Music You Love*
Instructor: KAREN M. COOK

Description: Pop (as in “popular”) music is a concept, not a category. Pop music is always fluid, transitory, and often starts local before “all of a sudden” saturating the ether. America’s vastness, wildly divergent geography and exceptional mixture of people birthed dozens of pop music genres in the 20th century. Geography (place), origins/ethnicity (race), and even the space where music is performed – remember “disco,” as in discotheque? – all influence a genre’s spread. So does pressure from fans and promotion by music industry execs. As musicians grow, evolve, change (Bob Dylan goes electric!), their popularity soars or craters. Karen Cook dives into this flow, to tell us how place and race yielded minstrelsy and jazz; how 1950s Latinx immigration popularized the mambo (and “I Love Lucy”); how southeastern bluegrass and “Okie” country music became mainstream, which is to say, popular; and how an individual voice can start something big. Grab your place in this pop parade!

Instructor: KAREN M. COOK is associate professor and chair of Music History at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. She specializes in music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and also in medievalism in contemporary music & media, especially video games. Her book Music Theory in Late Medieval Avignon: Magister Johannes Pipardi was published in 2021 as part of Routledge’s RMA Monographs Series. She is currently co-editing two volumes: Gender, Sexuality, and Video Game Sound, with Michael Austin and Dana Plank for Routledge, and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology, with William Gibbons and Fanny Rebillard for Brepols. She teaches and lectures on popular music topics at Hartt and at various conferences and symposia.

*Made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Presidents’ College Conversations: Town & Gown Converse
Instructors: HARTFORD MAYOR ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM and UHART PRESIDENT LAWRENCE P. WARD

Description: What happens when “Town” talks to “Gown”? We’ll find out when these two smart Hartford leaders meet on the UHart campus to discuss their goals, challenges, and solutions. They’ll ask and answer each other’s questions, such as: How can the City support the University and vice-versa? Are there current or planned shared economic initiatives? Or, what is the perception of the University from the City’s vantage point: is there an “Ivory Tower” complex or perceived resentment? Do other university-civic relationships offer models for what should or shouldn’t happen between UHart and Hartford? These questions are especially timely given the charge new UHart President Larry Ward has for the University: “to demonstrate active leadership in the Greater Hartford community” and to “absolutely… be active co-conspirators at the table” forging a “healthy, vibrant Hartford.” You won’t want to miss this informal but info-rich meet-up, and attendees can ask questions (time permitting).

Instructors: LAWRENCE P. WARD became UHart’s seventh president on July 1, 2024. He previously served for ten years as Vice President for Learner Success and Dean of Campus Life at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Prior to that, Ward served as Associate Dean for Academic Programs at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C. He also served as managing director at PRS, Inc., an organizational development consulting firm, and as a health care account executive for Aetna. Ward earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UConn, his master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Michigan, and his doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a faculty appointment in the Graduate School of Education. He has held multiple leadership positions in higher education: on the NCAA Board of Governors, chair of the NCAA Division III Management Council, and trustee at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT.

ARUNAN ARULAMPALAM, Hartford’s 68th mayor, took office January 1, 2024. Mayor Arulampalam, the son of Sri Lankan refugees, was born in Zimbabwe. He previously served as CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, starting a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become local developers and tackle blight in Hartford. Mayor Arulampalam was formerly Deputy Commissioner of the CT Department of Consumer Protection in the Lamont Administration. He practiced law at the Hartford firm of Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, P.C. He was on the Boards of the Hartford Public Library and the House of Bread and also served on the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. The Mayor earned his BA in International Studies from Emory University and his JD from Quinnipiac University School of Law.

Understanding America’s Right Turn
Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE

Description: Politically savvy Chris Doyle once again does some heavy lifting, raising post-election issues. Why did America elect Donald Trump again? How does historical perspective aid our analysis of President Trump’s second term? Discussions will treat domestic policies like the war on “woke,” mis- and disinformation, and economic reverberations, as well as global impacts including immigration and global migration. All registrants will receive recommended reading to enrich your class appreciation.

Instructor: CHRIS DOYLE teaches at Avon Old Farms School. He holds a doctorate in history from the University of Connecticut, an MA in history from Trinity College, and a BA in history from Western Connecticut State University. His commentary writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant and Education Week. His teaching has been featured in the New York Times.

Babies/Birthrates: Boom. . . or Bust?
Instructor: JANE HORVATH

Description: Time was – the 1960s, to be specific – ZPG was the trending acronym. Experts believed a "population explosion" (imminent or already underway) would have dire global impact. Zero Population Growth became the objective. The question then was how to approach the problem, and how to avoid the adverse results of overpopulation. Now headlines announce declining birthrates, and experts ponder the implications of this “alarming” trend. Global population grows, birthrates drop – two concurrent demographic trends. Is there a contradiction here, and should we be concerned? About what, exactly? This two-part course looks at the numbers and examines the associated social, political, and economic implications, short-and long-term.

Instructor: JANE HORVATH is associate professor of economics and directs the economics and political economy programs for the College of Arts & Sciences. She is also the founding director of the van Rooy Center for Complexity and Conflict Analysis and serves as the director of the University’s Minor in Complexity. Horvath joined the faculty of the University of Hartford in 1985. She earned a PhD in economics from the University of Connecticut in 1986, with a specialization in economic development. Her research and teaching interests include economic development, economic policy, complexity economics, and network theory.

European Literary Excursions
Instructor: HUMPHREY TONKIN

Description: Travel (virtually) to far-flung European destinations without leaving campus. No lost luggage, infuriating delays, or obnoxious seatmates. The cost is modest. Expired passport? Not to worry. Let UHart President Emeritus and Presidents' College founder Humphrey Tonkin be your guide to four locales whose geography, culture and history he knows intimately. His curated tour includes striking visuals, personal anecdotes and quixotic reminiscences. Each exclusive excursion? Priceless.

• Cornwall. Cornwall, famed as a rugged and stunningly beautiful corner of England, has inspired artists as different as J.M.W. Turner and Barbara Hepworth, and writers as diverse as Tennyson, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and John LeCarré. I had the good fortune to be born there and, in the 1950s, to come into possession of a fold-up bicycle, the type used by WW II parachutists. That bicycle transported me to medieval theaters, ancient churches, graveyards, tin and copper mine ruins, and the origins of Methodism, among other curious destinations.
• Poland and the GDR.  Warsaw in 1959, when I first visited, was still emerging from the devastation of World War II. Poland, although firmly linked to Soviet Russia, was nevertheless experimenting artistically and reaching tentatively toward the west. East Germany, by contrast, was tied firmly to Mother Russia's apron strings. Moving around and within these areas in the 1970s and 1980s was truly surreal, a quality later captured in the novels of Jenny Erpenbeck and others.
• Hungary.  Visitors to today's Hungary will struggle to find the Hungary of eighty years ago – during German occupation and the ravages of the Holocaust. I first went in 1963 to interview a writer I knew, and I found myself immersed in a culture seemingly caught in amber–or, more precisely, a culture arrested by the Budapest Uprising of 1956. Later, I translated the World War II memoir of Tivadar Soros, the father of George. That gave me a new understanding of modern Hungary's origins and how George Soros became one of the world’s leading financiers.
• Italy.  Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, attracted a curious cast of characters at the end of the nineteenth century: humorist Edward Lear; anarchist Peter Kropotkin; and botanist-archaeologist-poet Clarence Bicknell. Bicknell, the son of wealthy British industrialists, was an Anglican priest who switched his devotion to the work of Charles Darwin. He gained renown as a poet, internationalist, and explorer of prehistoric rock engravings, founding a small museum and library, the Museo Bicknell, in Bordighera. It remains there today, complete with its books and botanical specimens, a moment captured in time. For tennis aficionados, the world’s second tennis club was founded in Bordighera in 1878 – the training ground for Jannik Sinner, winner of the 2023 US Open.

Instructor: HUMPHREY TONKIN was president of the University of Hartford during the decade of the 1990s and was instrumental in the founding of the Presidents’ College. For almost twenty years earlier in his career, he was professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written books and articles on Elizabethan literature, linguistics, and translation. Recent publications include an edited volume on Language and Sustainability (2023), an edition of the poems of Clarence Bicknell (2023), and a translation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus into Esperanto (2023).

AI’s Evolution and Future in Media
Instructor: ADAM CHIARA

Description: Artificial Intelligence has changed media forever. This emerging, evolving technology impacts, well, everything. Social media and all the other writing we do – emails, essays, exams – will change, or already has. Over two sessions Adam Chiara checks in on AI developments now in the mediaverse, then tells us where signposts in today’s landscape point. We so want to know what’s ahead! Session 2 includes a hands-on lab experience to make it real for participants. Learn how generative AI works by using it yourself. We’ll use AI tools (like Gemini and ChatGPT) to solve problems and help write creative content. By participating, you’ll better understand how these programs can be used for good or ill. Bring your laptop for the workshop and learn a few practical AI skills while you are at it! 

Instructor: ADAM CHIARA is an applied associate professor in the School of Communication, as well as a multimedia storyteller who teaches courses in social media, public relations, and digital media.  An authority on media-related issues, he educates the public about evolving topics in the field of communication, especially social media. Chiara, an award-winning journalist, has reported for several Hartford area media outlets. He is a former contributor to The Hill, and has worked on public relations for the Yale’s Rudd Center (now UConn Rudd Center), Universal Health Care Foundation, and communication firms. He has a politics and government background from working at the Connecticut General Assembly.