Recap of Fall /Spring 2016 Courses
"Introducing Cape Cod Modernist Houses" with Betsy Bray
guest presentation by Friedrich St. Florian (11 am -12:30 pm) and a field trip to Modernist houses by Peter McMahon
This course will explore the history of the modernist house movement on the Outer Cape. Participants will have an opportunity to hear from architect Peter McMahon, founder of Cape Cod Modern House Trust as well as tour several modernist houses. We will view the film “Built on Narrow Land” a documentary about Cape Cod Modern houses This course also provides opportunities for those interested in participatory learning. Attendees will be asked to identify an architect or modern house that they are drawn to, and to do a bit of research to share with the group in a later session. The book, Cape Cod Modern Midcentury Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape is suggested reading.
"Up Close and Personal: Exploring the Diversity of Work by Cape Cod Artists" with Deborah Forman
The course will cover the work of 20 artists she has interviewed, presenting their style and approach and discovering how their individual ideas and experiences influence them. The focus will be on looking closely at each artwork, at the composition, aesthetics, emotional aspects, and comparing it with work by other artists. Guest artists will give a personal account of how and why they work, what’s important to them, and their dealings with galleries and the marketplace, one at every session.
"Race in American History" with John Cumbler
Race plays a central role in American history. Some of the labor, especially in New England, came from within the family, but a good bit of it was involuntary. That involuntary labor was increasingly organized racially by the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the rest of our nation’s history. But that racial structuring of labor also took on a life of its own. This course will explore the process by which we organized ourselves racially, how it came about, and what it may mean for the present and future.
“Cape Cod National Seashore: Birth, Life, and Coming of Age” with Bill Burke
In the 1950s, Cape Codders were split over the proposal to carve a National Seashore out of the 6 towns of the Outer Cape. Some feared the clutches of big government and viewed it as a land grab, while others welcomed preservation of the Cape's last wild lands. Now over a half century later, some of the dust has settled and we will explore the Seashore's innovative "Cape Cod Model" that created a citizen advisory commission, patched together over 1,000 parcels of land, limited eminent domain and emphasized preservation of both land and cultural heritage. This course will include field trips to key areas of the National Seashore to evaluate how the Seashore greets millions of visitors a year, serves a center for science and learning, and still tries to be a refuge from everyday life.
“The Local is Global: Human Rights and Climate Change” with Judith Blau
We will discuss how climate change and climate warming are likely to impact the Cape and why human rights are so important in addressing this process. Human rights we will consider include vulnerable people, such as children and the elderly. Also, we will consider the importance of solidarity and responsibilities to others.
"The Golden Bowl by Henry James: The Education of an American Heroine” with Rhoda Flaxman
Spring 2016 courses
"Wellfleet’s Bauhaus History: Breuer, Chermeyev, Gropius, et al "with Julie Mockabee
Wellfleet's architecture shares an intrinsic bond to the Bauhaus school of design. An in-depth study of the Bauhaus philosophy and how Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and their contemporaries influenced design on the Outer Cape.
"Politics in Film and Fiction: 9/11 Revisited" with Linda B. Miller
2016 marks the 15th anniversary of 9/11. How do writers and film-makers deal with the changed realities of that day and its aftermath? What portrayals in which medium are persuasive?
"The Making of the New England Reform Community" with John Cumbler
Most of us are familiar with the big names in the abolitionist struggle, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Philips or Lucy Stone, and many of us are aware that New England led the nation in many of the reforms of the nineteenth century. What we know less about are the activities of abolitionists who were not full time activists, like Garrison and Phillips, but ordinary citizens who held regular jobs. It was these citizens who ultimately created the movement of which Garrison, Phillips and Stone came to be the public figures. After the Civil War the reform community that came together to oppose slavery went on to struggle for equal rights, public health, women’s rights, and other significant reform activities. This course will look at the creation of that reform community and its activities beyond slavery.
"Middlemarch and Thee: the Modern Dilemmas in the Great Victorian Novel" with Rhoda Flaxman
Middlemarch is one of the greatest novels ever, because Eliot creates here a fully-realized world that makes the issues her characters face universal. We, too, struggle to live our beliefs and values, and to understand and connect with the people around us. Under the guidance of a wise, just narrator, we will experience the world of 1830s provincial England—not so different from ours—and see in it a reflection of our own issues. Along the way we will gain a deeper understanding of how a great writer sculpts suspenseful plots and engaging characters within themes and a philosophy still relevant to our times.
"Eugene O'Neill: America's Greatest Playwright" with Ed Golden
The universally acknowledged father of serious American drama, O’Neill was a penniless, hard- drinking young wash ashore in Provincetown in 1916. It was here in the summer of that year that he staged his first play, “Bound East for Cardiff,” a one-act about the sea, in a waterfront shed with a cast of local amateurs. Watch him grow into the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and a Nobel Laureate as we read three works pivotal to his rise to international acclaim as America’s first playwright to plumb the depths of the human heart with the insight and compassion of a master. Plays to be read include: Long Day's Journey into Night, Ah Wilderness!, and Desire Under the Elms.
"Perspectives on the Provincetown Art Colony" with Deborah Forman
Take a journey through the history of the Provincetown art colony, which can be viewed as a microcosm of 20th century American art. The course will begin with the launching of the colony when Charles Hawthorne opened his school in 1899. It will look at early conflicts between the traditionalists and modernists, the impact of the Hans Hofmann School, and the golden years of the late ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, when Abstract Expressionists were in town and New York galleries had satellite locations in Provincetown. When the art colony began to languish in the late ‘60s, the effort to revitalize it with the founding of the Fine Arts Work Center and the impact of Long Point Gallery will attest to the determination to maintain the town’s cultural integrity.
"Norman Mailer: Yesterday’s Writer Today" with Jeanne McNett
Norman Mailer, writer and public intellectual, was a novelist, essayist, journalist, politician, and co-founder of the Village Voice. This long-time resident of Provincetown was central to intellectual and political life from the late 1940’s until his death in 2007. To imagine another American writer who has had such an immediate influence on our public conversation is difficult. Yet in 1971, when he attacked the women’s movement in a forum at the Town Hall in Manhattan, his following ebbed dramatically, especially within the feminist movement, where many joined those who had lost patience with his public performances. Forty-four years have passed since that Town Hall meeting, and close to eight years have passed since his death. This course revisits selections of Mailer’s work and re-examines his connections to Provincetown and his participation in public life in order to reassess his contribution to American literature.
A reading list will be circulated two weeks before the first session