Winter 2023
Who was Carson McCullers and Why All the Renewed Interest in her Life and Written Work? with Steven Reynolds
I remember my first encounter with Carson McCullers’s work in the late 1960s when I was mesmerized by the film version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter starring the mute Alan Arkin. To this day, I think of its beautiful and profound vision of lost love and the important need we all have for connection and friendship. I was equally moved by reading and seeing the novel and film versions and her other great works, The Ballad of the Sad Café and The Member of the Wedding. Then, in 2008, when I was asked to direct a Julie Harris tribute production of the stage version of The Member of the Wedding at Cape Rep in Brewster, I knew my fascination and interest in McCullers would only grow as I visualized and listened to her words almost every day for six weeks.
What I would like to do in this course is to explore with you both the life and major work of Carson McCullers and why there is so much renewed interest in her work in the 21 st Century. After the first Zoom session on her biography, we’ll focus on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Ballad of the Sad Café (1943) and both the novel (1946) and play (1950) versions of The Member of the Wedding. I’m hoping to have some of the actors involved in the 2008 Cape Rep production share thier experiences with us in the last class.
Gore Vidal thought Carson to be “the best American woman novelist” in the mid-twentieth century and “of all Southern writers, . . . the most apt to endure.” However, playwright Arthur Miller and others considered her a “minor” American writer. Let’s consider why these and other recent perspectives (including our own) were formed.
Cole Porter: The Elfin Wonder from Peru with Marc Strauss
From before his first hit, “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” in the 1928 Broadway musical Paris, to after his last, “True Love,” in the 1955 film High Society, Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was famous for his witty, urbane lyrics, breathtaking melodies, and often censored double entendres in over 800 songs written for dozens ofvBroadway shows and film musicals.
Over the five weeks of this course, Marc Strauss will present and coordinate discussion of over fifty Great American Standard and rare Cole Porter tunes via CD, DVD, and YouTube recordings from both Broadway and Hollywood. Marc will help students dig deep into Porter’s musical and lyrical artistry, as well as discuss cultural and social contexts surrounding his personal life to provide rich insights into his songs.
Women in Architecture: Defining Viewpoints with Martha Rothman
This course will focus on women who became architects from the 19th century to the present. We will examine their motivations to choose the profession, their place in the historic trajectory, and their contributions as practicing architects and/or design educators. For each class, we will cite several women who were notable in the profession at the time, then explore the work of two architects and how their individual viewpoints shaped their types of work, practice models and their design.
Let us note that the course is titled “Women in Architecture” (not “women architects”). My premise is that individual viewpoints produced different types of work, with no common ground of a “feminine gene” that links the work. Rather, an underlying persistence and aptitude enabled these women to succeed in what was perceived as “a man’s profession.” Work of women, largely unrecognized in earlier eras, has recently begun to receive recognition. Women are acknowledged now as firm leaders and for their design contributions.
We will consider, also, how these architects, their specific points of view and their work reflects generational shifts within the profession. In addition to the formal aspects of building design and execution, themes we will explore include: blurring boundaries between disciplines, working across different scales, and extending the idealistic roots of architecture to serve the “common good” as they apply to current social issues: the environment, climate change and equity/equality.
Fall 2022
Thornton Wilder: Beyond Our Town, with John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman
Though best known for his Pulitzer-Prize winning plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder also wrote fiction, winning his first Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. This course surveys Wilder’s wide-ranging body of work in multiple genres with a focus on his epic novel The Eighth Day, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1968. Wilder said the novel, a murder mystery and philosophical tale, was “as though Little Women were being mulled over by Dostoevsky.”
The First Light: A brief look at the long history of the first inhabitants of the Cape, with Paul Savage
Cape Cod’s history is indelibly linked to Nov. 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown. In Massachusetts, the Cape and Islands–and in numerous locations of North America--thousands of places are named for Native American peoples, cultures and nations. This is a journey back to the origins of human settlement in North America and the Cape. The class will include two classroom meetings and three field trips.
Sexuality and Gender: Staying Current in a Changing Landscape, with Toby Simon
Given the attacks on gender identity, women’s reproductive rights, sexual expression and sex education curricula, this timely class will address the current political landscape and its impact on sexual expression and sex education curricula. It will also examine how frameworks of gender and sexuality have shifted dramatically in recent years from discrete categories to omnipresent discussions in our news cycle, living rooms and community “third spaces." In recent years, both sexuality and gender identity have been conceptualized along a spectrum, although the notion of “spectrum” has also been challenged.
A Revolutionary look at Opera, with Christopher Ostrom
For many, opera plots feel like far-fetched relics from an earlier time, tied closely to a classist system and unapproachable to the masses. But strip away the gowns and finery and pull back the brocade curtain, and you just might be surprised by the deeply political themes that escaped the censor’s pen. We will explore pivotal moments in opera history, not through the music, but through the libretti and dramaturgy behind many of the form’s most enduring works, while uncovering the often subversive and satirical elements hiding within the score.
Humor and Horror in Works by Two Russian Masters, with Rhoda Flaxman
Most of us read Crime and Punishment a long time ago, most likely viewing it as a gripping murder mystery. To be sure, it is that, but there is so much more to this story of a murder and its consequences for Raskolnikov, a poor law student in 19C. St. Petersburg. Although it is part of the realist tradition of the novel, it can also be seen as a mixed genre combining both grotesquerie and humor! Where did Dostoyevsky learn this approach?
The Versatile George Gershwin, with Marc Strauss
George Gershwin (né Jacob Gershwine; 1898 – 1937) packed multiple skills and accomplishments into his brief thirty-eight years of life. Most famous for the songs he wrote with his older brother Ira (1896 – 1983), these appeared in classic Broadway shows such as Lady, Be Good! (1924), Funny Face (1927), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), as well as in Hollywood films such as Shall We Dance (1937), The Goldwyn Follies (1938) and, posthumously, An American in Paris (1951). Gershwin also wrote classical and contemporary compositions as a secondary but no less influential genre with works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Concerto in F (1925), and An American in Paris (1928). A true polymath who could play piano with two hands better than most duos with four--he was also an accomplished painter--Gershwin forwarded the art of show, jazz, classical, and contemporary music in ways that continue to be popular and influential nearly ninety years after his death.
Contemporary Visual Artists of Cape Cod with Robert Rindler
This exciting lecture series is designed to introduce course participants to extraordinary visual artists and their work created among us on the Outer Cape. We will engage with each of them in person during a spirited, intelligent and illuminating presentation and dialogue.
This is a carefully chosen, and diverse roster of emerging, mid and later career transformational leaders in the arts. They are all deeply involved in their personal creative inquiry and continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local, exemplary art makers, from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand before, during or after our time together.
Spring 2022
Re-Imagining Five Shakespeare Comedies, with Steve Reynolds
I want us to consider why and how “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” “ Much Ado About Nothing,” “ The Comedy of Errors,” “ The Taming of the Shrew,” and “As You Like It” are produced for the stage. Participants should come to class familiar with the play from having read it or from having watched a live or filmed production. We will spend class sessions discussing the play's unique dramatic qualities, themes, and possible directorial approaches. Participants will have a chance to talk about their experiences with each play. Near the end of every class I will share how I directed the comedy.
American Painting from 1910 to 2010 in Massachusetts Museums, with Lewis Shepard
The 20th century in American Art was marked by the divergent pulls of figurative depiction and abstract invention. Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent were still alive when The Armory Show (1913) changed the course of visual arts for many American artists. We who live in New England are fortunate that municipal and collegiate museums have incredible collections that span the years that mark the end of Romantic and Impressionist Painting to Abstract and Figurative art that merge historic traditions, indigenous awareness and emotional content.
The Socially Engaged Art of Provincetown's Jay Critchley, with Janis Bergman-Carton
This class provides a window into “socially engaged art,” visually compelling contemporary art that aims to affect its community and environment in a real (rather than symbolic) way. Provincetown’s Jay Critchley is one such artist. Critchley generates conceptual work with an enduring impact locally (Provincetown Community Compact, Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla) and globally, from Argentina and Colombia to England, Holland, Germany, and Japan. We will look at Critchley in a larger global context of socially engaged art by such figures as Ai Wei Wei, Tania Bruguera, Theaster Gates, and Olafar Eliuason - four of the most dynamic creative thinkers in the art world today.
Memoir: Fact and Fiction, with Seth Rolbein
Memoir writing; the more you delve into the idea, the more fraught it becomes.
For example, we’re supposed to think of memoirs as “non-fiction,” but is that true? Selective memory is the only kind, and serving as your own witness, how credible can you possibly be?
Meanwhile, isn’t the idea of memoir by definition among the most egocentric, indulgent, fundamentally embarrassing pastimes imaginable? Why would someone other than the most famous and influential think that the progression of our makeshift lives is of fascination to strangers?
Yet memoirs have always been written, and the best of them are celebrated as the great literature they are. And in the end, every doubt and suspicion about the memoir form creeps into every writer’s thoughts in every form, which means that the same standards for success and merit come into play for every attempt.
This course explores the idea and philosophy of memoir, where it fits in literature and in a life. Basic questions explored include how writers choose to address content, how much “reliability” matters, the subjective voice, thinking about audience, motivation, and aspirations for impact – and of course the creative demands of good storytelling, whether the subject is this morning’s coffee or a trip to the Andromeda galaxy.
We’ll look at and discuss some interesting memoir examples, and also create an opportunity to share some of our own efforts, should we be brave enough.
ANNA KARENINA, with Rhoda Flaxman
Literature of the past often gives us a window into the present, and “Anna Karenina” is no exception. Russian dreams of empire have exploded on the world scene, as I write, and I want to ask,” Can a novel written in the 1870s help us understand anything about the spirit and ambitions of the Russian people today?” By giving us one of the great page-turners in fiction—a novel on the grand scale-- and telling the stories of Anna Karenina and her fall into passion with her lover Vronsky, and the Levin/ Kitty romance, we also learn about social change in 19th Century Russia, family life, farming and peasant life, attitudes toward marriage and adultery, and so much more. We are exposed to differences between the sophisticated aristocratic life of St. Petersburg and the pleasures of country life. In addition,Tolstoy, master of realism, takes on many moral questions, asking us to consider the novel’s overall views of women, issues of class, and how one should conduct one’s life. But beyond these weighty subjects is the pure joy of reading Tolstoy’s masterpiece as we consider how he--crowned by Nabokov as “the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction”-- makes art from life.
Class in person will be conducted through a combination of mini-lecture and discussion using organizing questions and topics sent in advance. Class on Zoom will rely more on directed discussion.
Though a long work, “Anna Karenina” reads fast. We will be reading approximately 160 pages for each class. Please read the novel in the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation (Viking Press,2001).
Winter 2022
Two Worlds Collide: Teaching Ourselves About Cape Cod’s First Inhabitants with Paul Savage
Cape Cod’s history is indelibly linked to Nov. 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown. In Massachusetts, the Cape and Islands–and in numerous locations of North America--thousands of places are named for Native American peoples, cultures and nations. Yet most of the history we were taught in our schools comes from the European and American perspectives; Native American history is often generalized, glossed over, romanticized or not taught at all.
Join retired Advanced Placement United States History teacher Paul Savage for a journey back to the origins of human settlement in North America and the Cape. This exploration will use historical thinking skills to open a new path of discovery to teach ourselves about the rich, highly advanced and complex cultures that were in North America for thousands of years before European settlement. The five sessions will emphasize the Native American history of the Cape and Islands.
Irving Berlin, America’s Songwriter with Marc Strauss
Irving Berlin (1888 – 1989) was a Russian American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in history. His music forms a major part of the Great American Songbook, including hits as recognizable and eternally popular as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), “Blue Skies” (1926), “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (1927), “Easter Parade” (1933), “God Bless America” (1938), “White Christmas” (1942), and literally hundreds of others.
Following the approach of earlier Open University of Wellfleet composer-focused courses on Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen, and most recently, Jerome Kern, Marc Strauss, Ph.D., will present, discuss, and analyze dozens of vocal and dance versions of Berlin’s popular, and oftentimes overlooked, songs, from his first published tune, “Marie from Sunny Italy” (1907), through his last hit in 1966, “An Old-Fashioned Wedding.” Come revisit, or experience for the first time, the broad historical and popular reach of one of the world’s greatest songwriters, on Broadway and in film.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: Context and Contrast with Martha and Elliot Rothman
For this OUW course, we want to examine the architectural heritage of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), two architects whose lives spanned from the late 19th century to a post-World War II world of developing technologies— Le Corbusier based almost exclusively in Europe, Frank Lloyd Wright firmly rooted in mid-western United States. We will look at selected work of both these “greats,” the contexts in which their work was developed, and discuss why each is (or is not) relevant to today’s architecture.
These two architects lived at a time when the majority of architects were men, white men. Each encountered, and worked with, some women architects, but their views and actions were influenced by their time. Each has been criticized for his political views and alleged prejudices. They can be judged by today’s perceptions; but we propose, rather, to look together at their work in context. We will read, look, discuss and learn together. We hope that this course will help each of us to understand the work of these two architects better and appreciate their importance for architecture today. We have selected a few key works and utopian visions to look at in the class, but we are not attempting a comprehensive view of their works.
Utopias and Dystopias with Elissa Greenwald
People have tried to design better worlds for centuries. Recently, we have been forced to confront human imperfections such as inequity, exploitation of Nature, and competition rather than cooperation in using resources. Looking at past models of better worlds, as well as warnings about the consequences if humankind does not correct its course, may help us design a better future. We will read Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” from The Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as models of utopian societies, then explore the possibility of equality between men and women in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella Herland (1915) and Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). We will conclude with two twentieth century dystopian works, Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth, a satire of the American Dream from 1942, and Octavia Butler’s visionary novel The Parable of the Sower (1993; set in 2024). Along the way, we will consider examples of utopian architecture and urban design as well as the history of utopian communities. In the spirit of equality, the course will combine mini-lectures with discussion.
Fall 2021
A Cultural History of 19th Century Russia with George Swope
“For the past two hundred years the arts in Russia have served as an arena for political, philosophical and religious debate in the absence of a parliament or a free press….Nowhere has the artist been more burdened with the task of moral leadership and national prophecy, nor more feared and persecuted by the state. Alienated from official Russia by their politics, and from peasant Russia by their education, Russia’s artists took it upon themselves to create a national community of values and ideas through literature and art. What did it mean to be a Russian? What was Russia’s place and mission in the world? And where was the true Russia? In Europe or in Asia? St Petersburg or Moscow? These were the ‘accursed questions’ that occupied the mind of every serious writer, literary critic and historian, painter and composer, theologian and philosopher in the golden age of Russian culture from Pushkin to Pasternak.
Jerome Kern on Broadway and in Hollywood with Marc Strauss
Jerome Kern (1885 - 1945), early 20th century composer in the West End of London, on Broadway, and in Hollywood, wrote over 700 tunes over four decades, leaving the world with some fifty-odd famous tunes immediately recognizable and hummed to this day nearly 80 years after his death. Songs such as "Old Man River," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "The Way You Look Tonight," "All the Things You Are," "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and "Long Ago and Far Away" remain essential standards in the Great American Songbook. Kern was acknowledged by both George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers as their most important early influence, and Gershwin was even Kern's rehearsal pianist on several shows in the teens. In many ways a link between the European operetta tradition and the Broadway musical style, Kern 's songwriting showed a remarkable evolution toward greater and greater sophistication and a truly American style.
Shipwrecks of Cape Cod: Stories of Tragedy and Triumph with Don Wilding
Cape Cod’s outer beach has always been known for its shipwrecks. Between 1626 and the mid-20th century, this solitary 40-mile stretch of beach and sandbars saw the demise of over 3,000 vessels. It’s been said that if all the wrecks were raised, one could walk from Provincetown to Chatham without getting his or her feet wet.
Join Cape Cod historian Don Wilding, author of the new book, “Shipwrecks of Cape Cod: Stories of Tragedy & Triumph,” for an extensive look back at some of these disasters, from the Sparrow Hawk in 1626 to the Eldia in 1984. He’ll also cover the heroic efforts of the U.S. Lifesaving Service and Coast Guard.
Posthuman - Life in the 21st Century's Anonymous Society with Fred Magee
What will that world look like? Answering that question is the goal of this course.
Session I: The increasing influence of Medialogy
I define Medialogy as a synthesis of technology and media that enables people to bypass traditional social practices by eliminating the need for human beings to be physically near each other. In just one generation, Medialogy has enabled a world in which human life no longer requires institutions based on place.
Session II: The Anonymous Society
Until the past 30 years, every generation in history has interacted with other people directly and in person. In the Anonymous Society, nearly every social institution can be represented through a screen – from banking to government and more, enabling people to trade faces for interfaces and remain anonymous to each other.
Session III: The new social fabric of society
As people have adopted and adapted to combining presence and anonymity in their lives, society’s structure has changed. A range of participation, from displacement to full acceptance, has transformed the way information and relationships move. Detachment and alienation drives distrust of institutions – reshaping everyday life.
Session IV: The larger forces shaping the next fifty years
Medialogy is in its infancy as an influencer. Artificial intelligence (AI), combined with Virtual Reality (AR/VR) will improve in their ability to establish alternative human relationships. At the same time, as climate change and population growth shape the future narrative, people will be increasingly reliant on mediated life.
Session V: Posthuman – A World without the need for people
The concept that human beings are the apex of creation has fueled social structure throughout history. In the 21st century, there will be more people, fewer resources, and an insufficient supply of useful work to sustain humanity. For the first time, human beings will be a disposable commodity rather than a source for growth.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series, Part 4, with Robert Rindler
This course is designed to introduce participants to extraordinarily fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the diverse work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local and noteworthy Fine Art makers, (BOB BAILEY, CHERIE MITTENTHAL, ESTEBAN del VALLE, and LAURA SHABOTT, ROMOLO DEL DEO and DAN RANALLI …so far)...from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand.
Comedies of Oscar Wilde with Ed Golden
The many faces of Oscar Wilde – incomparable wit, prolific essayist, poet, outrageous public personality, notorious gay man married with two sons, convicted criminal in one of the most famous cases in world annals, abject pauper succumbing to an early death after a prison sentence at hard labor – surely make him one of the most fascinating characters in literary if not all of history. Our focus is on Oscar Wilde playwright whose superb comedies of manners rank him in the highest echelons of world theatre. His most celebrated piece THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST will be followed by AN IDEAL HUSBAND, and, if time permits, A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE. Join audiences the world over who, since the 1890s, have laughed from start to finish at Wilde’s sustained brilliance as he takes aim at the follies and foibles of the English upper classes.
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James with Rhoda Flaxman
This semester we’ll tackle James’ best –known and most popular work. Besides being a fabulously interesting read, “Portrait” is extremely important to the history of the novel. Janus-like, James writes a gripping story in the realistic novelistic mode of 19th Century fiction yet points ahead to the 20th century modernist novel of Joyce and Woolf. Driving the action inward, he explores the psychology of Isabel Archer, whose consciousness—her perception and internal life--is the primary focus of the novel. James is also modern because he experiments with the form of the novel (the medium, i.e., the point of view and structure) in his works after 1890s and is no longer interested only in the content (plot, characters, themes). He is one of the first to create a body of theory about the novel (its point of view and structure in particular), often employing the terminology of art. Finally, he paves the way to dispense with linear time and conventional plots to capture the flow, drift, and associations of minds.
Spring 2021
Stephen Sondheim, Songwriter with Marc Strauss
A nonagenarian since last year, Stephen Sondheim (b. March 22, 1930) remains arguably the most consequential musical theatre songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century. With songs from before his work on West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) through the groundbreaking Company (1970), Follies (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Assassins(1990), and many projects between and aft, Sondheim’s complex and sophisticated and dissonant and melodic and tangled investigations into the realistic ambivalence of personal relationships continue to challenge and delight new and old fans.
This Open University of Wellfleet spring course will present to the student via CD audio and DVD/YouTube video dozens of Sondheim tunes in their historical and cultural context. Marc Strauss, Professor Emeritus in the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University, has taught courses in musical theatre, dance history, aesthetics, and film for over thirty years, and shares his love and knowledge of the arts in ways that encourage discussion, participation, and engagement. Come re-live or experience for the first time major events and songs from the hugely influential Sondheim canon.
Great Printmakers in New England with Lewis Shepard
New England, with its great museums, book publishers, and printers universities and art schools has fostered a long tradition in the graphic arts. Whistler and his adherents here and abroad, drew inspiration from many sources and created and followed international trends. We will examine and discuss both subject matter (landscape, portraiture, abstraction) and the various media (etching, engraving, monotype, lithography etc.).
Comparing Plays of Recollection by Eugene O'Neill and Brian Friel with Steve Reynolds
In this seminar I want to explore the connections between two plays I have directed, Ah, Wilderness! and Dancing at Lughnasa. They are the childhood recollections of two of the greatest playwrights of the American and Irish theatres: Eugene O’Neill and Brian Friel. We will look at some critical analysis, read scenes, and question the plot, character, thought, music, language and spectacle of each. I’m particularly fascinated by how each play holds a mirror up to the societal expectations of each place and time period.
The first play we will consider is by the American (of Irish descent) Eugene O’Neill. He wrote Ah, Wilderness! in 1932 and it became a star vehicle for both George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Now considered a “problem comedy” by scholar Andrew Sofer, the play focuses on how O’Neill wished his family had behaved during the summer before he entered college.
The second play we will examine is Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Dancing at Lughnasa. It is his imaginative and poetic recreation of his family life during a few significant summer days in 1936 when he was seven years old. This play about the five Mundy sisters and their brother is brought back to life by young Michael playing the “seanchaí.”
Here Comes Dickens! with Rhoda Flaxman
“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.” With this evocative, visually-oriented sentence we plunge into the Dickens novel many consider his greatest. Perhaps you recall reading Great Expectations as a child. But it is not just for children, because it contains depths of psychoanalytic, gender, and cultural revelations for us to explore together. We’ll ask such questions as: why are there two endings to the novel? Why did the Victorians write so many novels about orphans? How does Dickens keep the plot open all the way through? What are the issues around class? Who is Miss Havisham and why is her wedding cake moldy? Who is the mysterious convict who terrifies Pip and generates the mystery at the center of the work? How does Dickens use various plot structures to keep the story going (bildungsroman, fairy tale, the marriage plot, realism, etc.)?
Where appropriate along the way we’ll also observe some social satire concerning Regency and some history of mid-century England in the heyday of the Victorian novel. And thanks to Zoom, we will enrich our reading with images from Victorian art and book illustration.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost and Found in Translation with Linda B. Miller
Is translation an art? When politics are the focus whose world views are prominent? Are historical memories a problem for both original authors and their translators? Why does it matter? Are novels especially rich as a source for films whose distortions could be prominent when fictional standards are themselves shifting over time and space? How, if at all, do our own expectations about form and structure shape our responses to novels and films?
Explore these and other questions in a provocative set of readings and related videos including Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient or Warlight; Toni Morrison, Beloved; James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk; Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Waking Lions; Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Tommy Orange, There, There.
Studying the ArtSTRANDers with Grace Hopkins
The artSTRAND gallery was a unique endeavor in Provincetown from 2005 to 2016. It was a gallery owned and operated by the artists, rather than a single owner, a director, or a collective. The artists themselves chose the artwork. They described themselves as a cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation and felt that they all had a stake in the town’s legacy, its relevance, and its future.
During its heyday, artSTRAND served sophisticated art lovers and offered its six male and six female artists extraordinary creative freedom, enduring friendships, and continuing creative connections. An inheritor of the spirit of the Long Point Gallery, artSTRAND took on the mission of re-invigorating Provincetown’s artist colony with annual projects and a philosophy that allowed artists to show what they wanted. A cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation, artSTRAND was a catalytic locus for the best that American artists have to offer. Many of the artSTRAND artists are still creating inspirational and forward-looking work today.
Winter 2021
A.R. GURNEY’S LITERARY DRAMATURGY with John Anderson and John Shuman
The late A. R. Gurney (1930-2017) is best known as the author of popular plays such as Love Letters, The Dining Room, and others that explore the decline of the ascendancy of WASP culture. Gurney was also a professor of literature and the humanities, who taught at MIT for several decades. His experiences teaching classic texts are evident in the plays this class will cover: Another Antigone, The Grand Manner, The Golden Age, Later Life, and The Fourth Wall. Each week, the class will read a literary work that inspired Gurney to write a given play, see and hear the Gurney play read by experienced actors, and then discuss the two works. The literary works include Antigone by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, “The Aspern Papers” and “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.
Gurney said in an interview that he “lean[ed] on these older stories as a way of trying to sound chords with the audience, build a relationship with an audience, a communality, by telling a story which they already knew but telling it in a new way.” These plays, while standing on their own, become richer and more expansive experiences through familiarity with the source texts. Gurney’s love of theatre is evident in these plays, the first two of which focus on the study and performance of plays and the last two self-consciously play with theatrical conventions by having actors play multiple roles (Later Life) and have the characters confront their own presence on a stage (The Fourth Wall). The course will be team-taught by John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman.
Remembering the Long Point Gallery with Grace Hopkins
The Long Point Gallery was founded in 1977 by thirteen active Cape Cod artists. It quickly became an important gallery that revitalized the historic but static Provincetown art colony. The innovative cooperative was the catalyst for numerous new galleries and workspaces, attracted artists both prominent and promising, drew art dealers and art collectors to the area, and helped to reestablish the outer Cape as a vital hub and heart for New England art.
Today the relevance and reputation of Provincetown continues to grow. The legendary Hans Hofmann taught in Provincetown for nearly four decades. In 2010, Provincetown was formally recognized as the “nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. P’town was a cradle and crux for the Abstract Expressionism movement as it outgrew Manhattan and the New York School. Franz Kline and Mark Rothko taught in Provincetown; When Robert Motherwell relocated to the outer Cape, he joined the group that founded the Long Point Gallery.
Sailing into 2021 through "Moby Dick" with Elissa Greenwald
This whale of a book is about the American enterprise: the capacity of individuals for self-invention, the relationship of human beings to nature, the need for community among people of different backgrounds. As these issues take on new urgency in the 21st century, we will look at Melville's 1851 novel as drama, philosophy, and manual for living. For the first class, please read Chapters 1-23, pp 19-123 in the Signet Classics edition (ISBN 978-0-451-53228-2), which I recommend and is available online or through your local bookseller, though any edition will do. Welcome, all “thought-divers!"
Confronting Capitalism, with George Swope
Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist professor, argued that “Capitalism has been a success story in improving the lives of people. Capitalism has delivered more growth and freedom than any other system.” Yet in the recent 20th annual Edelman Trust Barometer — an annual survey of 34,000 people across 28 countries that measures the public's trust in NGOs, business, government, and media — most people believe that modern day capitalism "does more harm than good in the world.” This divide is certainly reflected in our current political climate.
Capitalism--spanning a spectrum from laissez faire to authoritarian--shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. But does that mean it is perfect as is, and that we would not all benefit from an honest evaluation and reconstruction of the free market system that has shaped our country’s way of economic growth. The truth is capitalism needs to address its many issues. For instance, in the US, Europe, and Japan, economic growth has slowed down. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few; natural resources are exploited for short-term profit; and good jobs are hard to find.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley with Marc Strauss
Busby Berkeley (1895 – 1976) was a dancer, singer, and choreographer of elaborate designs for Broadway musicals in the 1920s before moving to greater fame in 1930s Hollywood. He developed unique film techniques such as his parade of faces and kaleidoscope effects by transforming dozens of dancers, mostly female, into fascinating geometric patterns, often shot from a crane high above the sound stage. Beginning in the Great Depression and continuing into the 1960s with numbers as varied as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “By a Waterfall,” “The Lullaby of Broadway,” and “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,” Berkeley brought spectacle and fantasy in film to a whole new level of artistry.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley will be taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University. Marc will introduce and lead discussion on dozens of song and dance videos, both famous and rare, excerpted from Berkeley’s 50+ movie musicals beginning with his first, Whoopee!(1930) through his last, Jumbo (1962). With detailed historical contexts and multiple anecdotes, come relive the Hollywood days of yesteryear through dance and song as set to many Great American Standard tunes by songwriters such as Harry Warren, Al Dubin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and many others.
Spring/Fall 2020
Austerity and Excess: The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, with Jan Sidebotham
Each novel gives the reader a window into an extraordinary moment in U.S. history. The Scarlet Letter, written some 200 years after the time period in which it was set (1642), depicts a culture where values like hard work, thrift, and religious devotion flourished. The Great Gatsby shows us how people handled prosperity in the 1920s — carelessly, selfishly, and lawlessly; their gods were money and power.
What do these two books tell us about the human condition? And, more narrowly, what might they tell us about the American condition? Perhaps these works of fiction can enlighten us about the troubled and troubling nation we live in today. Most classes will begin with a short lecture about literary elements (structure, narration, symbolism) or background information; but the course will rely heavily on a discussion in which every voice is valued and in which the text is our primary focus.
Comparing Plays of Recollection by O’Neill and Friel, with Steve Reynolds
In this seminar I want to explore the connections between two plays I have directed, Ah, Wilderness! and Dancing at Lughnasa. They are the childhood recollections of two of the greatest playwrights of the American and Irish theatres: Eugene O’Neill and Brian Friel. We will look at some critical analysis, read scenes, and question the plot, character, thought, music, language and spectacle of each. I’m particularly fascinated by how each play holds a mirror up to the societal expectations of each place and time period.
The first play we will consider is by the American (of Irish descent) Eugene O’Neill. He wrote Ah, Wilderness! in 1932 and it became a star vehicle for both George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Now considered a “problem comedy” by scholar Andrew Sofer, the play focuses on how O’Neill wished his family had behaved during the summer before he entered college.
The second play we will examine is Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Dancing at Lughnasa. It is his imaginative and poetic recreation of his family life during a few significant summer days in 1936 when he was seven years old. This play about the five Mundy sisters and their brother is brought back to life by young Michael playing the “seanchaí.”
Conversations About International Folkdance, with Pat Nash
Archaeological evidence points to the suggestion that humankind has always danced. “Folk” dance has been a peoples’ expression of their life on the land, their customs, and their stories. This course will explore dances as diverse as “Kendime” from Turkey and “Road to the Isles” from Scotland. Each class will begin with a conversation around a topic related to a specific dance or dances. I will then demonstrate the dance, inviting students to participate. Topics will be primarily drawn from the research and discussions by Don Buskirk on hissite https://folkdancefootnotes.org/. Along the way we will address questions such as:
-Why do North and Western European folk cultures have mostly partner dances while South East Europe has hardly any?
-Why is Joc de Leagane, a dance from Romania, discussed as "Purity, Blood, Women, Midwives, and Milk in Maramures?”
-Why the two names for Roma or Gypies? We’ll learn a dance entitled Cocek to better understand the beauties and tribulations of this shunned group.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost and Found in Translation, with Linda B. Miller
Is translation an art? When politics are the focus whose world views are prominent? Are historical memories a problem for both original authors and their translators? Why does it matter? Are novels especially rich as a source for films whose distortions could be prominent when fictional standards are themselves shifting over time and space? How, if at all, do our own expectations about form and structure shape our responses to novels and films? Explore these and other questions in a provocative set of readings and related videos including Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient or Warlight; Toni Morrison, Beloved; James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk; Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Walking Lions; Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Tommy Orange, There There.
The Nature of Cape Cod: Inspiration for Writers, with Morgan Henderson and Bob Prescott
Some of America’s greatest writers have found inspiration in the natural beauty of the Cape ever since Henry David Thoreau walked our beaches centuries ago.
How did writers translate the visual beauty of Cape Cod into important works that capture our “place apart?” This course will examine their seminal works and visit the sites that inspired them. A collaboration between a reader of literature and a master of natural history, this course combines discussions of important writers who’ve found inspiration on Cape Cod with field trips to sites that triggered their imaginations. Morgan will help us examine works by Thoreau (“Cape Cod”), Beston (“The Outermost House”), Richardson (“The House on Nauset Marsh”), John Hay (“The Run”) and the Cape poetry of Mary Oliver. And Bob will lead the class in field trips to the locations that inspired their writings.
THE OTHER R AND H: RODGERS AND HART with Marc Strauss
When musical aficionados hear the letters “R & H,” the usual association is with the venerable songwriting team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who wrote so many hummable hits together from 1943 until 1959 - for shows as diverse and popular as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music.
But before composer Richard Rodgers worked with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein on eleven musicals over sixteen years, Rodgers had another, even longer partnership—twenty-four years—with lyricist Lorenz Hart, beginning in 1919 and continuing until Hart’s passing in 1943. In Broadway shows and films such as The Garrick Gaieties, Love Me Tonight, On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, and Pal Joey, the first R & H wrote over 500 songs together, many of them standards to this day in the Great American Songbook: “Manhattan,” “Thou Swell,” “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
This fall 2020, Open University of Wellfleet course will focus on that earlier artistic collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Instructor Marc Strauss, Ph.D., will present the subjects through short lectures, guided discussions, and the listening and viewing of dozens of Rodgers and Hart CD and DVD recordings, both famous and rare, as sung and danced to by extraordinary artists throughout and far beyond their 24-year partnership. A richer understanding of the distinct talents of these two musical artists—one all too often ignored or, sadly, unheard of—will be a focus of the course.
CONTEMPORARY PAINTING, 1970-2020 with Megan Hinton
This series of slide talks will show the trajectory of Contemporary Painting over the past 50 years. The five-session lectures will explore one decade per session, from 1970 to 2020. Learning about the innovations, shifts, and trends of late 20th-century - early 21st-century painting will inspire and educate both artists and art lovers. Significant American and international painters will be included, with an emphasis on multicultural, LGBTQIA, and women artists, and will offer an opportunity to immerse ourselves beyond local Cape Cod art.
Winter 2019 courses
Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, with Robert Chibka: “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last,” Samuel Johnson sneered nine years after the final Volume of the supremely odd The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman appeared. He wasn’t alone in scorning the hilarious, indecorous, self-consciously eccentric, dirty-minded, tender-hearted novel that made a country parson the scandalous toast of 1760s London—“One extenuating circumstance attends his works, that they are too gross to be inflaming” (Richardson); “not a page of Sterne’s writing but has . . . a latent corruption—a hint as of an impure presence” (Thackeray). Dissenting opinions: “The writings of Sterne . . . form the best course of morality that ever was written” (Jefferson; yes, Thomas); “In the power of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled” (Scott); “the freest writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff, square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish” (Nietzsche); “No writing seems to flow more exactly into the very folds and creases of the individual mind, to express its changing moods, to answer its lightest whim and impulse, and yet the result is perfectly precise and composed” (Woolf). Kundera, Rushdie, & innumerable other “post-moderns” are scarcely imaginable without Sterne.
Worlds Within Wellfleet, with David Wright: This course offers a chronological look at Wellfleet history, focusing on the various individuals and entities who have shaped the sensibility we share. What do we know of the original inhabitants? The English colonizers? What did the French Canadians bring? The Finns, the Portuguese, the Irish? What about the tribe of Summer People, the artists, the intelllectuals, the retirees? What were they looking for, and what were their contributions to the collective reality we call home? Grounding ourselves in historical texts, we’ll examine and discuss the worlds within Wellfleet.
Immigration and Its Discontents, with John Cumbler: Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We are a nation of immigrants.” But as in all things historical, the story is more complicated. Some of us were not immigrants at all, but indigenous to this continent at least for some 12 thousand years, some of us were forcibly brought to this continent, while others of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. And although many of us are descendants of immigrants, as a nation we have not often welcomed our fellow migrants with open arms. This course will explore--emphasis on explore --the history of American immigration. It will focus on the tensions around the need for labor within the white economy, the fear of loss of privilege, the exploitation of that fear for political gain, the demographic shifts which facilitate migration and the political and economic forces which propel it.
Fall 2019 courses
Tolstoy’s War and Peace with Rhoda Flaxman
“To live in truth in Russia—these were the questions of Tolstoy’s life and work, and the main concerns of War and Peace.”
Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance
Through a close study of War and Peace we will work together to achieve a deeper understanding of nineteenth-century Russian history and culture. Focusing on both the content and form of his great work, we will explore techniques by which this master of Realism was able to create art from life. Like Dickens and Eliot, whom he loved, Tolstoy believed art should be mimetic, should recreate reality, and reflect moral truth by reflecting relationships between individuals and society in contemporary times.
Though Tolstoy took five years to complete this novel, we will read it in five weeks, covering approximately 250 pages a week in the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007). available from Amazon and elsewhere. I suggest, for ease of reading, that you ask Staples to bind each of Tolstoy’s four volumes separately.
A Conversation About Proust and Food with Nathalie Ferrier
…D’où avait pu me venir cette puissante joie? Je sentais qu’elle était liée au goût du gâteau, mais qu’elle le dépassait infiniment, ne devait pas être de même nature. D’où venait-elle? Que signifiait-elle? Où l’appréhender?
Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?...
This course is a conversation about Proust, his time and the power of food memories. The course will be taught both in English and French. In order to enjoy the course fully, it is recommended that you have a solid knowledge of French, since we will be reading excerpts from Proust’s books, first in French and then in English.
In addition to reading Proust and learning about the times in which he lived and wrote, we will be learning about the history of the French cake called the madeleine, catalyst for Proust’s evocation of his past. We will also learn to bake this cake. While we bake and taste this treat we can discuss what constitutes your own “madeleine.” What kind of revelations have you experienced from food?
A Brief Big History of Everything with Jeff Tash
How comfortable are you with your own understanding of science and history? Do you feel you can intelligently explain how our world, and mankind, has gotten to where we are today? This course is about natural, biological, and cultural evolution. The goal is to help you re-explore all the science and history that you may have either already forgotten or never bothered to learn in the first place.
In each class we’ll present stories drawn from the works of three outstanding authors: David Christian, Yuval Noah Harari, and Leonard Shlain. Their books include the following: Origin Story, Sapiens, Homo Deus, Sex, Time and Power, and The Alphabet versus The Goddess. These historical narratives provide incredibly deep, yet easy-to-understand, scientific and historical explanations that describe virtually everything – from the moment our universe began – right on up to the present day political battles between the disillusioned and the deplorables.
Ancient peoples based their lives around mythology and religion. Even though those religions and myths are now thousands of years old, many of the ideas and concepts they put forth continue to persist today. Yet, beginning about 500 years ago, the world embarked on a scientific revolution. Science tells a pretty compelling story explaining who we are and how we got here – and that story is quite a bit different than the explanations provided by religions and myths. Are you ready for a new renaissance – a modern age enlightenment?
Think of this class as infotainment – kind of like sitting in front of your television watching PBS’s Nova but, instead, you’ll be sitting in a classroom listening to an impassioned lecturer tell stories. There is no requirement that students must read any of the aforementioned books. The presentation materials are drawn directly from the authors’ books.
The instructor for this course is Jeff Tash – an experienced storyteller. Back when Open University of Wellfleet was founded, Jeff taught a course where he told stories about the history of Wellfleet. In his professional career, before he retired to Wellfleet, Jeff was a technology architect who specialized in telling stories about computers and information technology.
How Musicians Make Music with Fred Magee
For many people, creativity can seem like a mysterious gift. For those not familiar with the craft of actors, painters or musicians it may appear that an artist or performer has some special innate talent that can’t really be described or explained. The endless hours of practice, trial-and-error, and repetition that goes into becoming an expert may be assumed, but doesn’t explain the decisions an artist makes in front of a blank canvas, an actor with a new script or a musician sitting down and preparing to play.
Musicians must make all kinds of choices in performance, whether as a soloist or in a group, that may only apply to that one occasion. In fact, depending on the style of music, a musician might use one performance to experiment with ideas that will be used or discarded in the future – all while seeming to be playing a song or composition as if it were fixed in his/her mind. This is especially true for styles that require improvisation, like jazz or rock or blues. In nearly all cases, the musicians are remembering past performances, calling on current skills (or chops) and thinking in real-time as they play.
In this course, we’ll follow the thought process of making music from considering how to use the basic building blocks of rhythm, melody and harmony and applying them to the requirements of styles as diverse as jazz, blues, standards and classical music. We’ll think along with a musician in the process of writing music, performing and collaborating with other musicians – and with the audience. The goal is demystify the process of musicianship and give participants a new tool to better appreciate performance across the spectrum of musical styles.
The course will be taught in five sessions that are designed to remove some of the mystery about how musicians think and perform – from applying the basic building blocks like rhythm and harmony to various styles of music to the challenges musicians face in songwriting, improvisation and performance.
The History and Ecology of Wellfleet’s Herring River with Barbara Brennessel, Alice Iacuessa, and John Portnoy
Share the history, share the journey, share the momentous advent of the restoration of Wellfleet’s Herring River. This important waterway flows from Wellfleet’s famous kettle ponds into Wellfleet Harbor. The course will provide an overview of the history of the Herring River from the post-glacial formation of the Herring River valley to modern initiatives to restore tidal flow to the River and its estuary. With a mixture of classroom presentations and field trips, this team-taught course will feature some of the important ecological issues and historical events that shaped the present state of Herring River and current initiatives that will restore it to a healthy ecosystem.
O’Casey and Synge with Ed Golden
Not only premier Irish playwrights, Sean O’Casey and J.M. Synge rank unquestionably in the highest echelons of world drama. O’Casey the realist and Synge the romantic, seeming opposites, are nevertheless firmly linked by an underlying assumption that O’Casey expressed in a comment about life itself: “ Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” You will be captivated by the splendid prose poetry of the dialogue, the indelible characters, and the unforgettable stories they have to tell, laced with wrenching pathos and the most glorious comedy.
We will have time to read two full-length plays, both the most popular of their works: O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock,”and Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World.” In addition, please read two short pieces for the first class: O’Casey’s “Bedtime Story” and Synge’s “Riders to the Sea.” All these scripts are widely available, and I am requesting the Wellfleet Library to put copies on reserve for us.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series Part Three with Robert Rindler
This series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinary fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment. We will hear from 8-10 local and noteworthy Fine Art makers, (TBA) from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand.
FALL 2019 GUEST ARTIST ROSTER
MONA DUKESS, NATHALIE FERRIER, JO HAY, PETER HOCKING, GRACE HOPKINS, TIMOTHY HORN, IRENE LIPTON, SUSAN LYMAN
and BERT YARBOROUGH
Dance History II: Five More Choreographers with Marc Strauss
The Fall 2019 course for Open University of Wellfleet entitled Dance History II: Five More Choreographers will focus on the choreography and major dance companies of Jerome Robbins (1918 - 1998; United States), Twyla Tharp (b. 1941; United States), Mats Ek (b. 1945; Sweden), Jiri Kylian (b. 1947; Holland), and Mark Morris (b. 1956; United States). Taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre and Dance, Holland College of Arts & Media, Southeast Missouri State University, Dance History II focuses on five more major 20th and 21st century choreographers who have created hundreds of dance works over nearly 80 years in genres as diverse as classical & contemporary ballet, jazz, modern dance, and on Broadway, around the country and throughout the world. We will study, view and discuss numerous dances from each choreographer: Robbins' work for New York City Ballet & on Broadway/film, Tharp's multiple styles (modern, jazz, ballet) on her own company & on Broadway/film, Ek's contemporary work in Sweden and around the globe, Kylian's work for Netherlands Dance Theatre and beyond, and Morris' contemporary work for his own company and beyond. With historical context provided on all dances presented via DVD and video, Marc will lead discussion in ways that will allow students to better understand and appreciate the styles, training, concerns, and philosophies of five more of the most important choreographers on the planet.
Spring 2019 courses
Decoding Virginia Woolf, with Jeanne McNett and Rhoda Flaxman
Join us to explore the varied themes and techniques in Woolf’s pioneering novel, Mrs. Dalloway, as well as her extended essays, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. In the time since she wrote, feminists have debated the women’s issues her writing evokes, critics have studied her innovative stream of consciousness technique, and readers have been inspired by her attention to the social and political issues of her times and their relevance to ours. We will delve into her fiction and essays to contribute our ideas to the ongoing fascination with Woolf, her life, and her writings.
This course will be conducted in the active learning tradition by two instructors, using short lectures, focused discussions, and other activities. There are several edited versions of Mrs. Dalloway available. We will use the Harcourt, Brace & World Harvest and the Cambridge editions. Any edition will be fine, with edited editions having the advantage of criticism and commentary. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas are available in combined editions. All of these works are now in the public domain, so they can be found on line gratis at several sites, including Feedbooks (.com) and the virtual library (.org). You are encouraged to have access to the text for reference in class.
Community Journalism and Its Discontents, with Ed Miller
Local newspapers, especially small-town weeklies, have traditionally played a central role in community life in the U.S., but the internet and corporate consolidation now pose serious threats to their existence. We will read about and discuss the history, current state, and future of newspapers, including examples of how stories are being reported—or not reported—in our local press. There may be one or more guest speakers.
Modern Photography in New England, with Lewis Shepard
Modern Photography in New England will be a lecture and discussion class examining the work of photographers who worked in the many modes of expression. We will see how abstraction, documents, portraiture, surrealism, the natural world and commercial usage provided a basis for the greatly diverse presentation of many artists.
New England has been a center for the growth of photographic technology, from the use of daguerreotypes, stereo views, strobe lighting, instant cameras and now the digital age. Photography has enjoyed and employed these technical advances with enhanced results.
From Barter to Bitcoin: A Short Economic History of the U.S., with John Cumbler
This course will look at the development of the American economy from the colonial period to the end of the 20th century. It will begin with the collapse of feudalism and the emergence of commercialism and how that ties into the white colonial expansion into North America. It will the provide a short overview of the development of commercial capitalism and then industrial capitalism. Along the way, we’ll try and familiarize ourselves with the basic ideas and concepts of classical economics from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes. The course will end with a discussion of the modern transnational economy, and its penetration into ever deeper layers of everyday life.
On Stage: From Oklahoma! to Osage County with John Anderson
This class will focus on drama set in Oklahoma by tracing the development of a now-obscure play into the beloved 1943 musical Oklahoma! (opening on Broadway in March in a newly imagined revival) as well as exploring the 2008 Pulitzer-Prize-winning comedy-drama August: Osage County (on stage at the Provincetown Theater in May).
In 1930, a gay, part-Cherokee playwright named Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) wrote Green Grow the Lilacs, a folk-play set in pre-statehood “Indian Territory” in 1900. It played on Broadway for two months and was a finalist for the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II followed Riggs’ work closely when they adapted it into a now-classic musical in 1943. Hammerstein acknowledged that “Mr. Riggs’ play is the well-spring of almost all that is good in Oklahoma! The ground-breaking musical integrated music and dance with Riggs’ folk-play in an innovative way that revolutionized the form of musical theatre.
Set in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, August: Osage County is an intense comedy-drama about the Weston family confronting various crises in the wake of the disappearance of the family’s patriarch. Author Tracy Letts (born in 1965), a native Oklahoman, is a long-time member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where the play premiered in 2007 before opening on Broadway the following year, winning the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The class will have opportunities to see the Provincetown Theater production of August: Osage County, directed by David Drake and the Broadway revival of Oklahoma! at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Plots, Patterns and Playbooks, with Linda B. Miller
How do novelists and authors of short stories mirror their own times while exercising “poetic license” in order to dramatize individual lives, when citizens must cope with the shifting playbooks of democratic and more authoritarian political leaders? What patterns of response are then reflected in literature? What are the consequences of “unreliable narrators” in the spheres of politics and the arts? How and when, if at all, do national or regional settings and stereotypes matter?
Selected Buildings: An Architect’s Choice, with John Thornley
What makes a building special? Where did the idea come from? What were the forces that shaped it?
Our course will cover a series of successful buildings – works of architecture. Each will be examined from many points of view, including program, structure, aesthetics, technology, and its relationship to other preceding and subsequent structures. We will span time and geography by looking at works ranging from the Cape Cod House to Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water.” Along the way, we will examine the Duomo (Florence), Durham Cathedral (England), Hagia Sophia (Istanbul), the Pantheon and Saint Ivo (Rome), the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), and other works, as time allows.
Winter 2019 courses
Aspects of the American Revolution, with Jim Sefcik
When most of us first studied the American Revolution, courses focused primarily on battles, politics, and Great White Men, and mainly from the Colonists’ point of view. That is no longer the case. Instead, historians are presenting fresh, sometimes provocative interpretations challenging those of the past. One recent book is entitled WHOSE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS IT?: HISTORIANS INTERPRET THE FOUNDING (2011).
I propose to explore some of these topics to both stimulate further interest in the period as well as to provide more recent viewpoints that students of the era are being exposed to today. These will include the Causes of the American Revolution; the Loyalists; Who fought and Why did they?; Why the British lost; and the Results of the War for Independence.
Cape Cod Contraband: Rum Running and the Era of Prohibition, with Don Wilding
The course will consist of five two-hour lectures, with dozens of PowerPoint images to go along with each session.
During the era of Prohibition (1920-1933), rum running was big business on Cape Cod. Farmers and fishermen of the Cape took to the seas, heading offshore to "Rum Row" to bring the criminal yet coveted alcohol to the mainland under cover of darkness, while the possibility of being caught by the Coast Guard was always present. Busy harbors and remote estuaries, many of which are now popular tourist destinations, were all game for bringing the contraband ashore, while local law enforcement officials often turned a blind eye.
Join Cape Cod historian Don Wilding for this comprehensive look at Prohibition, its history, the connection to organized crime, and how "the Noble Experiment" turned into a profitable and potentially dangerous undertaking for many of the Cape's residents.
Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, with Bob Chibka
In 1719, a 59-year-old Englishman with a résumé full of bankruptcies, imprisonments, and pilloryings both literary and literal began writing books we call novels but some of his contemporaries condemned as fake news.
Three years after Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe published one Disney never adapted for children: “The FORTUNES and MISFORTUNES Of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate,* and during a Life of continu’d Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother) Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.” That spoiler of a full title says a lot about the novel’s contradictory aims. Capitalizing on a hunger for salacious “true crime” stories as well as a thirst for high-purposed “spiritual autobiographies,” Defoe paints the respectable façades and criminal undergrounds of late-17th-century society through one woman’s rollercoaster life. Realistic and contrived, harrowing and hilarious, Moll Flanders is a case study in problems of narrative tone and structure, an important text for students of gender and class inequalities, and just a weirdly good read.
We’ll also read “Fantomina, or Love in a Maze,” a near-contemporary shorter story by Eliza Haywood featuring a wildly different female shape-shifter, and a smattering of literary criticism.
Dance History: Five Seminal Choreographers with Marc Strauss
The 2019 Winter Session course for Open University of Wellfleet entitled Dance History: Five Seminal Choreographers will focus on the choreography and major dance companies of the Russian-American George Balanchine (1904 – 1983), Martha Graham (1894 – 1991), Merce Cunningham (1919 – 2009), Paul Taylor (1930 – 2018), and Alvin Ailey (1931 – 1989). Taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre and Dance of the Holland College of Arts & Media at Southeast Missouri State University, these five choreographers had created over 1000 dance works over a roughly 60-year period during the 20th and 21st centuries. Their work lives on in their continuing companies after their death as well as their student and dancer companies We will study numerous dances from each choreographer: Balanchine’s neoclassical ballets, Graham’s modern dance ballets, Cunningham’s neoclassical dances of serendipity, Taylor’s alternately lively and dark modern works, and Ailey’s blues and jazz-inflected dances of unity. With historical context provided to all dances presented via DVD, Marc will lead discussion in ways that will allow students to better understand and appreciate the styles, training, concerns, and philosophies of five of the greatest choreographers on the planet.
Winter 2021
A.R. GURNEY’S LITERARY DRAMATURGY with John Anderson and John Shuman
The late A. R. Gurney (1930-2017) is best known as the author of popular plays such as Love Letters, The Dining Room, and others that explore the decline of the ascendancy of WASP culture. Gurney was also a professor of literature and the humanities, who taught at MIT for several decades. His experiences teaching classic texts are evident in the plays this class will cover: Another Antigone, The Grand Manner, The Golden Age, Later Life, and The Fourth Wall. Each week, the class will read a literary work that inspired Gurney to write a given play, see and hear the Gurney play read by experienced actors, and then discuss the two works. The literary works include Antigone by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, “The Aspern Papers” and “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.
Gurney said in an interview that he “lean[ed] on these older stories as a way of trying to sound chords with the audience, build a relationship with an audience, a communality, by telling a story which they already knew but telling it in a new way.” These plays, while standing on their own, become richer and more expansive experiences through familiarity with the source texts. Gurney’s love of theatre is evident in these plays, the first two of which focus on the study and performance of plays and the last two self-consciously play with theatrical conventions by having actors play multiple roles (Later Life) and have the characters confront their own presence on a stage (The Fourth Wall). The course will be team-taught by John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman.
Remembering the Long Point Gallery with Grace Hopkins
The Long Point Gallery was founded in 1977 by thirteen active Cape Cod artists. It quickly became an important gallery that revitalized the historic but static Provincetown art colony. The innovative cooperative was the catalyst for numerous new galleries and workspaces, attracted artists both prominent and promising, drew art dealers and art collectors to the area, and helped to reestablish the outer Cape as a vital hub and heart for New England art.
Today the relevance and reputation of Provincetown continues to grow. The legendary Hans Hofmann taught in Provincetown for nearly four decades. In 2010, Provincetown was formally recognized as the “nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. P’town was a cradle and crux for the Abstract Expressionism movement as it outgrew Manhattan and the New York School. Franz Kline and Mark Rothko taught in Provincetown; When Robert Motherwell relocated to the outer Cape, he joined the group that founded the Long Point Gallery.
Grace Hopkins is an accomplished Wellfleet artist with intimate connections to the Long Point Gallery. A passionate student of art, Hopkins brings an encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth century American art, Abstract Expressionism, Cape Cod art and artists, and the Long Point Gallery. She is the director of the Berta Walker Gallery, the daughter of Long Point Gallery founder Budd Hopkins, and the daughter of art critic and art historian April Kingsley. Her course will draw on her long friendships with Long Point Gallery artists and an expertly curated field of artwork by Long Point Gallery artists.
Sailing into 2021 through "Moby Dick" with Elissa Greenwald
This whale of a book is about the American enterprise: the capacity of individuals for self-invention, the relationship of human beings to nature, the need for community among people of different backgrounds. As these issues take on new urgency in the 21st century, we will look at Melville's 1851 novel as drama, philosophy, and manual for living. For the first class, please read Chapters 1-23, pp 19-123 in the Signet Classics edition (ISBN 978-0-451-53228-2), which I recommend and is available online or through your local bookseller, though any edition will do. Welcome, all “thought-divers!"
Confronting Capitalism, with George Swope
Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist professor, argued that “Capitalism has been a success story in improving the lives of people. Capitalism has delivered more growth and freedom than any other system.” Yet in the recent 20th annual Edelman Trust Barometer — an annual survey of 34,000 people across 28 countries that measures the public's trust in NGOs, business, government, and media — most people believe that modern day capitalism "does more harm than good in the world.” This divide is certainly reflected in our current political climate.
Capitalism--spanning a spectrum from laissez faire to authoritarian--shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. But does that mean it is perfect as is, and that we would not all benefit from an honest evaluation and reconstruction of the free market system that has shaped our country’s way of economic growth. The truth is capitalism needs to address its many issues. For instance, in the US, Europe, and Japan, economic growth has slowed down. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few; natural resources are exploited for short-term profit; and good jobs are hard to find.
Our text will be Philip Kotler’s Confronting Capitalism (available on Kindle). Using it as our guide, we will examine 14 major issues challenging capitalism, including: • Persistent and increasing poverty • Automation’s effects on job creation • High debt burdens • Steep environmental costs • Boom-bust economic cycles• and more. Each
week we will collectively discuss several of the issues Kotler identifies and his suggested resolutions, as well as our own thoughts and recommendations for a better economic system that yields more shared prosperity and equity.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley with Marc Strauss
Busby Berkeley (1895 – 1976) was a dancer, singer, and choreographer of elaborate designs for Broadway musicals in the 1920s before moving to greater fame in 1930s Hollywood. He developed unique film techniques such as his parade of faces and kaleidoscope effects by transforming dozens of dancers, mostly female, into fascinating geometric patterns, often shot from a crane high above the sound stage. Beginning in the Great Depression and continuing into the 1960s with numbers as varied as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “By a Waterfall,” “The Lullaby of Broadway,” and “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,” Berkeley brought spectacle and fantasy in film to a whole new level of artistry.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley will be taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University. Marc will introduce and lead discussion on dozens of song and dance videos, both famous and rare, excerpted from Berkeley’s 50+ movie musicals beginning with his first, Whoopee!(1930) through his last, Jumbo (1962). With detailed historical contexts and multiple anecdotes, come relive the Hollywood days of yesteryear through dance and song as set to many Great American Standard tunes by songwriters such as Harry Warren, Al Dubin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and many others.
Who was Carson McCullers and Why All the Renewed Interest in her Life and Written Work? with Steven Reynolds
I remember my first encounter with Carson McCullers’s work in the late 1960s when I was mesmerized by the film version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter starring the mute Alan Arkin. To this day, I think of its beautiful and profound vision of lost love and the important need we all have for connection and friendship. I was equally moved by reading and seeing the novel and film versions and her other great works, The Ballad of the Sad Café and The Member of the Wedding. Then, in 2008, when I was asked to direct a Julie Harris tribute production of the stage version of The Member of the Wedding at Cape Rep in Brewster, I knew my fascination and interest in McCullers would only grow as I visualized and listened to her words almost every day for six weeks.
What I would like to do in this course is to explore with you both the life and major work of Carson McCullers and why there is so much renewed interest in her work in the 21 st Century. After the first Zoom session on her biography, we’ll focus on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Ballad of the Sad Café (1943) and both the novel (1946) and play (1950) versions of The Member of the Wedding. I’m hoping to have some of the actors involved in the 2008 Cape Rep production share thier experiences with us in the last class.
Gore Vidal thought Carson to be “the best American woman novelist” in the mid-twentieth century and “of all Southern writers, . . . the most apt to endure.” However, playwright Arthur Miller and others considered her a “minor” American writer. Let’s consider why these and other recent perspectives (including our own) were formed.
Cole Porter: The Elfin Wonder from Peru with Marc Strauss
From before his first hit, “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” in the 1928 Broadway musical Paris, to after his last, “True Love,” in the 1955 film High Society, Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was famous for his witty, urbane lyrics, breathtaking melodies, and often censored double entendres in over 800 songs written for dozens ofvBroadway shows and film musicals.
Over the five weeks of this course, Marc Strauss will present and coordinate discussion of over fifty Great American Standard and rare Cole Porter tunes via CD, DVD, and YouTube recordings from both Broadway and Hollywood. Marc will help students dig deep into Porter’s musical and lyrical artistry, as well as discuss cultural and social contexts surrounding his personal life to provide rich insights into his songs.
Women in Architecture: Defining Viewpoints with Martha Rothman
This course will focus on women who became architects from the 19th century to the present. We will examine their motivations to choose the profession, their place in the historic trajectory, and their contributions as practicing architects and/or design educators. For each class, we will cite several women who were notable in the profession at the time, then explore the work of two architects and how their individual viewpoints shaped their types of work, practice models and their design.
Let us note that the course is titled “Women in Architecture” (not “women architects”). My premise is that individual viewpoints produced different types of work, with no common ground of a “feminine gene” that links the work. Rather, an underlying persistence and aptitude enabled these women to succeed in what was perceived as “a man’s profession.” Work of women, largely unrecognized in earlier eras, has recently begun to receive recognition. Women are acknowledged now as firm leaders and for their design contributions.
We will consider, also, how these architects, their specific points of view and their work reflects generational shifts within the profession. In addition to the formal aspects of building design and execution, themes we will explore include: blurring boundaries between disciplines, working across different scales, and extending the idealistic roots of architecture to serve the “common good” as they apply to current social issues: the environment, climate change and equity/equality.
Fall 2022
Thornton Wilder: Beyond Our Town, with John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman
Though best known for his Pulitzer-Prize winning plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder also wrote fiction, winning his first Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. This course surveys Wilder’s wide-ranging body of work in multiple genres with a focus on his epic novel The Eighth Day, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1968. Wilder said the novel, a murder mystery and philosophical tale, was “as though Little Women were being mulled over by Dostoevsky.”
The First Light: A brief look at the long history of the first inhabitants of the Cape, with Paul Savage
Cape Cod’s history is indelibly linked to Nov. 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown. In Massachusetts, the Cape and Islands–and in numerous locations of North America--thousands of places are named for Native American peoples, cultures and nations. This is a journey back to the origins of human settlement in North America and the Cape. The class will include two classroom meetings and three field trips.
Sexuality and Gender: Staying Current in a Changing Landscape, with Toby Simon
Given the attacks on gender identity, women’s reproductive rights, sexual expression and sex education curricula, this timely class will address the current political landscape and its impact on sexual expression and sex education curricula. It will also examine how frameworks of gender and sexuality have shifted dramatically in recent years from discrete categories to omnipresent discussions in our news cycle, living rooms and community “third spaces." In recent years, both sexuality and gender identity have been conceptualized along a spectrum, although the notion of “spectrum” has also been challenged.
A Revolutionary look at Opera, with Christopher Ostrom
For many, opera plots feel like far-fetched relics from an earlier time, tied closely to a classist system and unapproachable to the masses. But strip away the gowns and finery and pull back the brocade curtain, and you just might be surprised by the deeply political themes that escaped the censor’s pen. We will explore pivotal moments in opera history, not through the music, but through the libretti and dramaturgy behind many of the form’s most enduring works, while uncovering the often subversive and satirical elements hiding within the score.
Humor and Horror in Works by Two Russian Masters, with Rhoda Flaxman
Most of us read Crime and Punishment a long time ago, most likely viewing it as a gripping murder mystery. To be sure, it is that, but there is so much more to this story of a murder and its consequences for Raskolnikov, a poor law student in 19C. St. Petersburg. Although it is part of the realist tradition of the novel, it can also be seen as a mixed genre combining both grotesquerie and humor! Where did Dostoyevsky learn this approach?
The Versatile George Gershwin, with Marc Strauss
George Gershwin (né Jacob Gershwine; 1898 – 1937) packed multiple skills and accomplishments into his brief thirty-eight years of life. Most famous for the songs he wrote with his older brother Ira (1896 – 1983), these appeared in classic Broadway shows such as Lady, Be Good! (1924), Funny Face (1927), Of Thee I Sing (1931), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), as well as in Hollywood films such as Shall We Dance (1937), The Goldwyn Follies (1938) and, posthumously, An American in Paris (1951). Gershwin also wrote classical and contemporary compositions as a secondary but no less influential genre with works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Concerto in F (1925), and An American in Paris (1928). A true polymath who could play piano with two hands better than most duos with four--he was also an accomplished painter--Gershwin forwarded the art of show, jazz, classical, and contemporary music in ways that continue to be popular and influential nearly ninety years after his death.
Contemporary Visual Artists of Cape Cod with Robert Rindler
This exciting lecture series is designed to introduce course participants to extraordinary visual artists and their work created among us on the Outer Cape. We will engage with each of them in person during a spirited, intelligent and illuminating presentation and dialogue.
This is a carefully chosen, and diverse roster of emerging, mid and later career transformational leaders in the arts. They are all deeply involved in their personal creative inquiry and continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local, exemplary art makers, from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand before, during or after our time together.
Spring 2022
Re-Imagining Five Shakespeare Comedies, with Steve Reynolds
I want us to consider why and how “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” “ Much Ado About Nothing,” “ The Comedy of Errors,” “ The Taming of the Shrew,” and “As You Like It” are produced for the stage. Participants should come to class familiar with the play from having read it or from having watched a live or filmed production. We will spend class sessions discussing the play's unique dramatic qualities, themes, and possible directorial approaches. Participants will have a chance to talk about their experiences with each play. Near the end of every class I will share how I directed the comedy.
American Painting from 1910 to 2010 in Massachusetts Museums, with Lewis Shepard
The 20th century in American Art was marked by the divergent pulls of figurative depiction and abstract invention. Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent were still alive when The Armory Show (1913) changed the course of visual arts for many American artists. We who live in New England are fortunate that municipal and collegiate museums have incredible collections that span the years that mark the end of Romantic and Impressionist Painting to Abstract and Figurative art that merge historic traditions, indigenous awareness and emotional content.
The Socially Engaged Art of Provincetown's Jay Critchley, with Janis Bergman-Carton
This class provides a window into “socially engaged art,” visually compelling contemporary art that aims to affect its community and environment in a real (rather than symbolic) way. Provincetown’s Jay Critchley is one such artist. Critchley generates conceptual work with an enduring impact locally (Provincetown Community Compact, Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla) and globally, from Argentina and Colombia to England, Holland, Germany, and Japan. We will look at Critchley in a larger global context of socially engaged art by such figures as Ai Wei Wei, Tania Bruguera, Theaster Gates, and Olafar Eliuason - four of the most dynamic creative thinkers in the art world today.
Memoir: Fact and Fiction, with Seth Rolbein
Memoir writing; the more you delve into the idea, the more fraught it becomes.
For example, we’re supposed to think of memoirs as “non-fiction,” but is that true? Selective memory is the only kind, and serving as your own witness, how credible can you possibly be?
Meanwhile, isn’t the idea of memoir by definition among the most egocentric, indulgent, fundamentally embarrassing pastimes imaginable? Why would someone other than the most famous and influential think that the progression of our makeshift lives is of fascination to strangers?
Yet memoirs have always been written, and the best of them are celebrated as the great literature they are. And in the end, every doubt and suspicion about the memoir form creeps into every writer’s thoughts in every form, which means that the same standards for success and merit come into play for every attempt.
This course explores the idea and philosophy of memoir, where it fits in literature and in a life. Basic questions explored include how writers choose to address content, how much “reliability” matters, the subjective voice, thinking about audience, motivation, and aspirations for impact – and of course the creative demands of good storytelling, whether the subject is this morning’s coffee or a trip to the Andromeda galaxy.
We’ll look at and discuss some interesting memoir examples, and also create an opportunity to share some of our own efforts, should we be brave enough.
ANNA KARENINA, with Rhoda Flaxman
Literature of the past often gives us a window into the present, and “Anna Karenina” is no exception. Russian dreams of empire have exploded on the world scene, as I write, and I want to ask,” Can a novel written in the 1870s help us understand anything about the spirit and ambitions of the Russian people today?” By giving us one of the great page-turners in fiction—a novel on the grand scale-- and telling the stories of Anna Karenina and her fall into passion with her lover Vronsky, and the Levin/ Kitty romance, we also learn about social change in 19th Century Russia, family life, farming and peasant life, attitudes toward marriage and adultery, and so much more. We are exposed to differences between the sophisticated aristocratic life of St. Petersburg and the pleasures of country life. In addition,Tolstoy, master of realism, takes on many moral questions, asking us to consider the novel’s overall views of women, issues of class, and how one should conduct one’s life. But beyond these weighty subjects is the pure joy of reading Tolstoy’s masterpiece as we consider how he--crowned by Nabokov as “the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction”-- makes art from life.
Class in person will be conducted through a combination of mini-lecture and discussion using organizing questions and topics sent in advance. Class on Zoom will rely more on directed discussion.
Though a long work, “Anna Karenina” reads fast. We will be reading approximately 160 pages for each class. Please read the novel in the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation (Viking Press,2001).
Winter 2022
Two Worlds Collide: Teaching Ourselves About Cape Cod’s First Inhabitants with Paul Savage
Cape Cod’s history is indelibly linked to Nov. 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Provincetown. In Massachusetts, the Cape and Islands–and in numerous locations of North America--thousands of places are named for Native American peoples, cultures and nations. Yet most of the history we were taught in our schools comes from the European and American perspectives; Native American history is often generalized, glossed over, romanticized or not taught at all.
Join retired Advanced Placement United States History teacher Paul Savage for a journey back to the origins of human settlement in North America and the Cape. This exploration will use historical thinking skills to open a new path of discovery to teach ourselves about the rich, highly advanced and complex cultures that were in North America for thousands of years before European settlement. The five sessions will emphasize the Native American history of the Cape and Islands.
Irving Berlin, America’s Songwriter with Marc Strauss
Irving Berlin (1888 – 1989) was a Russian American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in history. His music forms a major part of the Great American Songbook, including hits as recognizable and eternally popular as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), “Blue Skies” (1926), “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (1927), “Easter Parade” (1933), “God Bless America” (1938), “White Christmas” (1942), and literally hundreds of others.
Following the approach of earlier Open University of Wellfleet composer-focused courses on Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen, and most recently, Jerome Kern, Marc Strauss, Ph.D., will present, discuss, and analyze dozens of vocal and dance versions of Berlin’s popular, and oftentimes overlooked, songs, from his first published tune, “Marie from Sunny Italy” (1907), through his last hit in 1966, “An Old-Fashioned Wedding.” Come revisit, or experience for the first time, the broad historical and popular reach of one of the world’s greatest songwriters, on Broadway and in film.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: Context and Contrast with Martha and Elliot Rothman
For this OUW course, we want to examine the architectural heritage of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), two architects whose lives spanned from the late 19th century to a post-World War II world of developing technologies— Le Corbusier based almost exclusively in Europe, Frank Lloyd Wright firmly rooted in mid-western United States. We will look at selected work of both these “greats,” the contexts in which their work was developed, and discuss why each is (or is not) relevant to today’s architecture.
These two architects lived at a time when the majority of architects were men, white men. Each encountered, and worked with, some women architects, but their views and actions were influenced by their time. Each has been criticized for his political views and alleged prejudices. They can be judged by today’s perceptions; but we propose, rather, to look together at their work in context. We will read, look, discuss and learn together. We hope that this course will help each of us to understand the work of these two architects better and appreciate their importance for architecture today. We have selected a few key works and utopian visions to look at in the class, but we are not attempting a comprehensive view of their works.
Utopias and Dystopias with Elissa Greenwald
People have tried to design better worlds for centuries. Recently, we have been forced to confront human imperfections such as inequity, exploitation of Nature, and competition rather than cooperation in using resources. Looking at past models of better worlds, as well as warnings about the consequences if humankind does not correct its course, may help us design a better future. We will read Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” from The Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as models of utopian societies, then explore the possibility of equality between men and women in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella Herland (1915) and Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own (1929). We will conclude with two twentieth century dystopian works, Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth, a satire of the American Dream from 1942, and Octavia Butler’s visionary novel The Parable of the Sower (1993; set in 2024). Along the way, we will consider examples of utopian architecture and urban design as well as the history of utopian communities. In the spirit of equality, the course will combine mini-lectures with discussion.
Fall 2021
A Cultural History of 19th Century Russia with George Swope
“For the past two hundred years the arts in Russia have served as an arena for political, philosophical and religious debate in the absence of a parliament or a free press….Nowhere has the artist been more burdened with the task of moral leadership and national prophecy, nor more feared and persecuted by the state. Alienated from official Russia by their politics, and from peasant Russia by their education, Russia’s artists took it upon themselves to create a national community of values and ideas through literature and art. What did it mean to be a Russian? What was Russia’s place and mission in the world? And where was the true Russia? In Europe or in Asia? St Petersburg or Moscow? These were the ‘accursed questions’ that occupied the mind of every serious writer, literary critic and historian, painter and composer, theologian and philosopher in the golden age of Russian culture from Pushkin to Pasternak.
Jerome Kern on Broadway and in Hollywood with Marc Strauss
Jerome Kern (1885 - 1945), early 20th century composer in the West End of London, on Broadway, and in Hollywood, wrote over 700 tunes over four decades, leaving the world with some fifty-odd famous tunes immediately recognizable and hummed to this day nearly 80 years after his death. Songs such as "Old Man River," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "The Way You Look Tonight," "All the Things You Are," "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and "Long Ago and Far Away" remain essential standards in the Great American Songbook. Kern was acknowledged by both George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers as their most important early influence, and Gershwin was even Kern's rehearsal pianist on several shows in the teens. In many ways a link between the European operetta tradition and the Broadway musical style, Kern 's songwriting showed a remarkable evolution toward greater and greater sophistication and a truly American style.
Shipwrecks of Cape Cod: Stories of Tragedy and Triumph with Don Wilding
Cape Cod’s outer beach has always been known for its shipwrecks. Between 1626 and the mid-20th century, this solitary 40-mile stretch of beach and sandbars saw the demise of over 3,000 vessels. It’s been said that if all the wrecks were raised, one could walk from Provincetown to Chatham without getting his or her feet wet.
Join Cape Cod historian Don Wilding, author of the new book, “Shipwrecks of Cape Cod: Stories of Tragedy & Triumph,” for an extensive look back at some of these disasters, from the Sparrow Hawk in 1626 to the Eldia in 1984. He’ll also cover the heroic efforts of the U.S. Lifesaving Service and Coast Guard.
Posthuman - Life in the 21st Century's Anonymous Society with Fred Magee
What will that world look like? Answering that question is the goal of this course.
Session I: The increasing influence of Medialogy
I define Medialogy as a synthesis of technology and media that enables people to bypass traditional social practices by eliminating the need for human beings to be physically near each other. In just one generation, Medialogy has enabled a world in which human life no longer requires institutions based on place.
Session II: The Anonymous Society
Until the past 30 years, every generation in history has interacted with other people directly and in person. In the Anonymous Society, nearly every social institution can be represented through a screen – from banking to government and more, enabling people to trade faces for interfaces and remain anonymous to each other.
Session III: The new social fabric of society
As people have adopted and adapted to combining presence and anonymity in their lives, society’s structure has changed. A range of participation, from displacement to full acceptance, has transformed the way information and relationships move. Detachment and alienation drives distrust of institutions – reshaping everyday life.
Session IV: The larger forces shaping the next fifty years
Medialogy is in its infancy as an influencer. Artificial intelligence (AI), combined with Virtual Reality (AR/VR) will improve in their ability to establish alternative human relationships. At the same time, as climate change and population growth shape the future narrative, people will be increasingly reliant on mediated life.
Session V: Posthuman – A World without the need for people
The concept that human beings are the apex of creation has fueled social structure throughout history. In the 21st century, there will be more people, fewer resources, and an insufficient supply of useful work to sustain humanity. For the first time, human beings will be a disposable commodity rather than a source for growth.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series, Part 4, with Robert Rindler
This course is designed to introduce participants to extraordinarily fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the diverse work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local and noteworthy Fine Art makers, (BOB BAILEY, CHERIE MITTENTHAL, ESTEBAN del VALLE, and LAURA SHABOTT, ROMOLO DEL DEO and DAN RANALLI …so far)...from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand.
Comedies of Oscar Wilde with Ed Golden
The many faces of Oscar Wilde – incomparable wit, prolific essayist, poet, outrageous public personality, notorious gay man married with two sons, convicted criminal in one of the most famous cases in world annals, abject pauper succumbing to an early death after a prison sentence at hard labor – surely make him one of the most fascinating characters in literary if not all of history. Our focus is on Oscar Wilde playwright whose superb comedies of manners rank him in the highest echelons of world theatre. His most celebrated piece THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST will be followed by AN IDEAL HUSBAND, and, if time permits, A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE. Join audiences the world over who, since the 1890s, have laughed from start to finish at Wilde’s sustained brilliance as he takes aim at the follies and foibles of the English upper classes.
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James with Rhoda Flaxman
This semester we’ll tackle James’ best –known and most popular work. Besides being a fabulously interesting read, “Portrait” is extremely important to the history of the novel. Janus-like, James writes a gripping story in the realistic novelistic mode of 19th Century fiction yet points ahead to the 20th century modernist novel of Joyce and Woolf. Driving the action inward, he explores the psychology of Isabel Archer, whose consciousness—her perception and internal life--is the primary focus of the novel. James is also modern because he experiments with the form of the novel (the medium, i.e., the point of view and structure) in his works after 1890s and is no longer interested only in the content (plot, characters, themes). He is one of the first to create a body of theory about the novel (its point of view and structure in particular), often employing the terminology of art. Finally, he paves the way to dispense with linear time and conventional plots to capture the flow, drift, and associations of minds.
Spring 2021
Stephen Sondheim, Songwriter with Marc Strauss
A nonagenarian since last year, Stephen Sondheim (b. March 22, 1930) remains arguably the most consequential musical theatre songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century. With songs from before his work on West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) through the groundbreaking Company (1970), Follies (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Assassins(1990), and many projects between and aft, Sondheim’s complex and sophisticated and dissonant and melodic and tangled investigations into the realistic ambivalence of personal relationships continue to challenge and delight new and old fans.
This Open University of Wellfleet spring course will present to the student via CD audio and DVD/YouTube video dozens of Sondheim tunes in their historical and cultural context. Marc Strauss, Professor Emeritus in the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University, has taught courses in musical theatre, dance history, aesthetics, and film for over thirty years, and shares his love and knowledge of the arts in ways that encourage discussion, participation, and engagement. Come re-live or experience for the first time major events and songs from the hugely influential Sondheim canon.
Great Printmakers in New England with Lewis Shepard
New England, with its great museums, book publishers, and printers universities and art schools has fostered a long tradition in the graphic arts. Whistler and his adherents here and abroad, drew inspiration from many sources and created and followed international trends. We will examine and discuss both subject matter (landscape, portraiture, abstraction) and the various media (etching, engraving, monotype, lithography etc.).
Comparing Plays of Recollection by Eugene O'Neill and Brian Friel with Steve Reynolds
In this seminar I want to explore the connections between two plays I have directed, Ah, Wilderness! and Dancing at Lughnasa. They are the childhood recollections of two of the greatest playwrights of the American and Irish theatres: Eugene O’Neill and Brian Friel. We will look at some critical analysis, read scenes, and question the plot, character, thought, music, language and spectacle of each. I’m particularly fascinated by how each play holds a mirror up to the societal expectations of each place and time period.
The first play we will consider is by the American (of Irish descent) Eugene O’Neill. He wrote Ah, Wilderness! in 1932 and it became a star vehicle for both George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Now considered a “problem comedy” by scholar Andrew Sofer, the play focuses on how O’Neill wished his family had behaved during the summer before he entered college.
The second play we will examine is Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Dancing at Lughnasa. It is his imaginative and poetic recreation of his family life during a few significant summer days in 1936 when he was seven years old. This play about the five Mundy sisters and their brother is brought back to life by young Michael playing the “seanchaí.”
Here Comes Dickens! with Rhoda Flaxman
“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.” With this evocative, visually-oriented sentence we plunge into the Dickens novel many consider his greatest. Perhaps you recall reading Great Expectations as a child. But it is not just for children, because it contains depths of psychoanalytic, gender, and cultural revelations for us to explore together. We’ll ask such questions as: why are there two endings to the novel? Why did the Victorians write so many novels about orphans? How does Dickens keep the plot open all the way through? What are the issues around class? Who is Miss Havisham and why is her wedding cake moldy? Who is the mysterious convict who terrifies Pip and generates the mystery at the center of the work? How does Dickens use various plot structures to keep the story going (bildungsroman, fairy tale, the marriage plot, realism, etc.)?
Where appropriate along the way we’ll also observe some social satire concerning Regency and some history of mid-century England in the heyday of the Victorian novel. And thanks to Zoom, we will enrich our reading with images from Victorian art and book illustration.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost and Found in Translation with Linda B. Miller
Is translation an art? When politics are the focus whose world views are prominent? Are historical memories a problem for both original authors and their translators? Why does it matter? Are novels especially rich as a source for films whose distortions could be prominent when fictional standards are themselves shifting over time and space? How, if at all, do our own expectations about form and structure shape our responses to novels and films?
Explore these and other questions in a provocative set of readings and related videos including Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient or Warlight; Toni Morrison, Beloved; James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk; Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Waking Lions; Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Tommy Orange, There, There.
Studying the ArtSTRANDers with Grace Hopkins
The artSTRAND gallery was a unique endeavor in Provincetown from 2005 to 2016. It was a gallery owned and operated by the artists, rather than a single owner, a director, or a collective. The artists themselves chose the artwork. They described themselves as a cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation and felt that they all had a stake in the town’s legacy, its relevance, and its future.
During its heyday, artSTRAND served sophisticated art lovers and offered its six male and six female artists extraordinary creative freedom, enduring friendships, and continuing creative connections. An inheritor of the spirit of the Long Point Gallery, artSTRAND took on the mission of re-invigorating Provincetown’s artist colony with annual projects and a philosophy that allowed artists to show what they wanted. A cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation, artSTRAND was a catalytic locus for the best that American artists have to offer. Many of the artSTRAND artists are still creating inspirational and forward-looking work today.
Winter 2021
A.R. GURNEY’S LITERARY DRAMATURGY with John Anderson and John Shuman
The late A. R. Gurney (1930-2017) is best known as the author of popular plays such as Love Letters, The Dining Room, and others that explore the decline of the ascendancy of WASP culture. Gurney was also a professor of literature and the humanities, who taught at MIT for several decades. His experiences teaching classic texts are evident in the plays this class will cover: Another Antigone, The Grand Manner, The Golden Age, Later Life, and The Fourth Wall. Each week, the class will read a literary work that inspired Gurney to write a given play, see and hear the Gurney play read by experienced actors, and then discuss the two works. The literary works include Antigone by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, “The Aspern Papers” and “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.
Gurney said in an interview that he “lean[ed] on these older stories as a way of trying to sound chords with the audience, build a relationship with an audience, a communality, by telling a story which they already knew but telling it in a new way.” These plays, while standing on their own, become richer and more expansive experiences through familiarity with the source texts. Gurney’s love of theatre is evident in these plays, the first two of which focus on the study and performance of plays and the last two self-consciously play with theatrical conventions by having actors play multiple roles (Later Life) and have the characters confront their own presence on a stage (The Fourth Wall). The course will be team-taught by John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman.
Remembering the Long Point Gallery with Grace Hopkins
The Long Point Gallery was founded in 1977 by thirteen active Cape Cod artists. It quickly became an important gallery that revitalized the historic but static Provincetown art colony. The innovative cooperative was the catalyst for numerous new galleries and workspaces, attracted artists both prominent and promising, drew art dealers and art collectors to the area, and helped to reestablish the outer Cape as a vital hub and heart for New England art.
Today the relevance and reputation of Provincetown continues to grow. The legendary Hans Hofmann taught in Provincetown for nearly four decades. In 2010, Provincetown was formally recognized as the “nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. P’town was a cradle and crux for the Abstract Expressionism movement as it outgrew Manhattan and the New York School. Franz Kline and Mark Rothko taught in Provincetown; When Robert Motherwell relocated to the outer Cape, he joined the group that founded the Long Point Gallery.
Sailing into 2021 through "Moby Dick" with Elissa Greenwald
This whale of a book is about the American enterprise: the capacity of individuals for self-invention, the relationship of human beings to nature, the need for community among people of different backgrounds. As these issues take on new urgency in the 21st century, we will look at Melville's 1851 novel as drama, philosophy, and manual for living. For the first class, please read Chapters 1-23, pp 19-123 in the Signet Classics edition (ISBN 978-0-451-53228-2), which I recommend and is available online or through your local bookseller, though any edition will do. Welcome, all “thought-divers!"
Confronting Capitalism, with George Swope
Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist professor, argued that “Capitalism has been a success story in improving the lives of people. Capitalism has delivered more growth and freedom than any other system.” Yet in the recent 20th annual Edelman Trust Barometer — an annual survey of 34,000 people across 28 countries that measures the public's trust in NGOs, business, government, and media — most people believe that modern day capitalism "does more harm than good in the world.” This divide is certainly reflected in our current political climate.
Capitalism--spanning a spectrum from laissez faire to authoritarian--shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. But does that mean it is perfect as is, and that we would not all benefit from an honest evaluation and reconstruction of the free market system that has shaped our country’s way of economic growth. The truth is capitalism needs to address its many issues. For instance, in the US, Europe, and Japan, economic growth has slowed down. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few; natural resources are exploited for short-term profit; and good jobs are hard to find.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley with Marc Strauss
Busby Berkeley (1895 – 1976) was a dancer, singer, and choreographer of elaborate designs for Broadway musicals in the 1920s before moving to greater fame in 1930s Hollywood. He developed unique film techniques such as his parade of faces and kaleidoscope effects by transforming dozens of dancers, mostly female, into fascinating geometric patterns, often shot from a crane high above the sound stage. Beginning in the Great Depression and continuing into the 1960s with numbers as varied as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “By a Waterfall,” “The Lullaby of Broadway,” and “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,” Berkeley brought spectacle and fantasy in film to a whole new level of artistry.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley will be taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University. Marc will introduce and lead discussion on dozens of song and dance videos, both famous and rare, excerpted from Berkeley’s 50+ movie musicals beginning with his first, Whoopee!(1930) through his last, Jumbo (1962). With detailed historical contexts and multiple anecdotes, come relive the Hollywood days of yesteryear through dance and song as set to many Great American Standard tunes by songwriters such as Harry Warren, Al Dubin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and many others.
Spring/Fall 2020
Austerity and Excess: The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, with Jan Sidebotham
Each novel gives the reader a window into an extraordinary moment in U.S. history. The Scarlet Letter, written some 200 years after the time period in which it was set (1642), depicts a culture where values like hard work, thrift, and religious devotion flourished. The Great Gatsby shows us how people handled prosperity in the 1920s — carelessly, selfishly, and lawlessly; their gods were money and power.
What do these two books tell us about the human condition? And, more narrowly, what might they tell us about the American condition? Perhaps these works of fiction can enlighten us about the troubled and troubling nation we live in today. Most classes will begin with a short lecture about literary elements (structure, narration, symbolism) or background information; but the course will rely heavily on a discussion in which every voice is valued and in which the text is our primary focus.
Comparing Plays of Recollection by O’Neill and Friel, with Steve Reynolds
In this seminar I want to explore the connections between two plays I have directed, Ah, Wilderness! and Dancing at Lughnasa. They are the childhood recollections of two of the greatest playwrights of the American and Irish theatres: Eugene O’Neill and Brian Friel. We will look at some critical analysis, read scenes, and question the plot, character, thought, music, language and spectacle of each. I’m particularly fascinated by how each play holds a mirror up to the societal expectations of each place and time period.
The first play we will consider is by the American (of Irish descent) Eugene O’Neill. He wrote Ah, Wilderness! in 1932 and it became a star vehicle for both George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Now considered a “problem comedy” by scholar Andrew Sofer, the play focuses on how O’Neill wished his family had behaved during the summer before he entered college.
The second play we will examine is Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Dancing at Lughnasa. It is his imaginative and poetic recreation of his family life during a few significant summer days in 1936 when he was seven years old. This play about the five Mundy sisters and their brother is brought back to life by young Michael playing the “seanchaí.”
Conversations About International Folkdance, with Pat Nash
Archaeological evidence points to the suggestion that humankind has always danced. “Folk” dance has been a peoples’ expression of their life on the land, their customs, and their stories. This course will explore dances as diverse as “Kendime” from Turkey and “Road to the Isles” from Scotland. Each class will begin with a conversation around a topic related to a specific dance or dances. I will then demonstrate the dance, inviting students to participate. Topics will be primarily drawn from the research and discussions by Don Buskirk on hissite https://folkdancefootnotes.org/. Along the way we will address questions such as:
-Why do North and Western European folk cultures have mostly partner dances while South East Europe has hardly any?
-Why is Joc de Leagane, a dance from Romania, discussed as "Purity, Blood, Women, Midwives, and Milk in Maramures?”
-Why the two names for Roma or Gypies? We’ll learn a dance entitled Cocek to better understand the beauties and tribulations of this shunned group.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost and Found in Translation, with Linda B. Miller
Is translation an art? When politics are the focus whose world views are prominent? Are historical memories a problem for both original authors and their translators? Why does it matter? Are novels especially rich as a source for films whose distortions could be prominent when fictional standards are themselves shifting over time and space? How, if at all, do our own expectations about form and structure shape our responses to novels and films? Explore these and other questions in a provocative set of readings and related videos including Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient or Warlight; Toni Morrison, Beloved; James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk; Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Walking Lions; Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Tommy Orange, There There.
The Nature of Cape Cod: Inspiration for Writers, with Morgan Henderson and Bob Prescott
Some of America’s greatest writers have found inspiration in the natural beauty of the Cape ever since Henry David Thoreau walked our beaches centuries ago.
How did writers translate the visual beauty of Cape Cod into important works that capture our “place apart?” This course will examine their seminal works and visit the sites that inspired them. A collaboration between a reader of literature and a master of natural history, this course combines discussions of important writers who’ve found inspiration on Cape Cod with field trips to sites that triggered their imaginations. Morgan will help us examine works by Thoreau (“Cape Cod”), Beston (“The Outermost House”), Richardson (“The House on Nauset Marsh”), John Hay (“The Run”) and the Cape poetry of Mary Oliver. And Bob will lead the class in field trips to the locations that inspired their writings.
THE OTHER R AND H: RODGERS AND HART with Marc Strauss
When musical aficionados hear the letters “R & H,” the usual association is with the venerable songwriting team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who wrote so many hummable hits together from 1943 until 1959 - for shows as diverse and popular as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music.
But before composer Richard Rodgers worked with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein on eleven musicals over sixteen years, Rodgers had another, even longer partnership—twenty-four years—with lyricist Lorenz Hart, beginning in 1919 and continuing until Hart’s passing in 1943. In Broadway shows and films such as The Garrick Gaieties, Love Me Tonight, On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, and Pal Joey, the first R & H wrote over 500 songs together, many of them standards to this day in the Great American Songbook: “Manhattan,” “Thou Swell,” “Where or When,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
This fall 2020, Open University of Wellfleet course will focus on that earlier artistic collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Instructor Marc Strauss, Ph.D., will present the subjects through short lectures, guided discussions, and the listening and viewing of dozens of Rodgers and Hart CD and DVD recordings, both famous and rare, as sung and danced to by extraordinary artists throughout and far beyond their 24-year partnership. A richer understanding of the distinct talents of these two musical artists—one all too often ignored or, sadly, unheard of—will be a focus of the course.
CONTEMPORARY PAINTING, 1970-2020 with Megan Hinton
This series of slide talks will show the trajectory of Contemporary Painting over the past 50 years. The five-session lectures will explore one decade per session, from 1970 to 2020. Learning about the innovations, shifts, and trends of late 20th-century - early 21st-century painting will inspire and educate both artists and art lovers. Significant American and international painters will be included, with an emphasis on multicultural, LGBTQIA, and women artists, and will offer an opportunity to immerse ourselves beyond local Cape Cod art.
Winter 2019 courses
Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, with Robert Chibka: “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last,” Samuel Johnson sneered nine years after the final Volume of the supremely odd The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman appeared. He wasn’t alone in scorning the hilarious, indecorous, self-consciously eccentric, dirty-minded, tender-hearted novel that made a country parson the scandalous toast of 1760s London—“One extenuating circumstance attends his works, that they are too gross to be inflaming” (Richardson); “not a page of Sterne’s writing but has . . . a latent corruption—a hint as of an impure presence” (Thackeray). Dissenting opinions: “The writings of Sterne . . . form the best course of morality that ever was written” (Jefferson; yes, Thomas); “In the power of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled” (Scott); “the freest writer of all times, in comparison with whom all others appear stiff, square-toed, intolerant, and downright boorish” (Nietzsche); “No writing seems to flow more exactly into the very folds and creases of the individual mind, to express its changing moods, to answer its lightest whim and impulse, and yet the result is perfectly precise and composed” (Woolf). Kundera, Rushdie, & innumerable other “post-moderns” are scarcely imaginable without Sterne.
Worlds Within Wellfleet, with David Wright: This course offers a chronological look at Wellfleet history, focusing on the various individuals and entities who have shaped the sensibility we share. What do we know of the original inhabitants? The English colonizers? What did the French Canadians bring? The Finns, the Portuguese, the Irish? What about the tribe of Summer People, the artists, the intelllectuals, the retirees? What were they looking for, and what were their contributions to the collective reality we call home? Grounding ourselves in historical texts, we’ll examine and discuss the worlds within Wellfleet.
Immigration and Its Discontents, with John Cumbler: Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We are a nation of immigrants.” But as in all things historical, the story is more complicated. Some of us were not immigrants at all, but indigenous to this continent at least for some 12 thousand years, some of us were forcibly brought to this continent, while others of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. And although many of us are descendants of immigrants, as a nation we have not often welcomed our fellow migrants with open arms. This course will explore--emphasis on explore --the history of American immigration. It will focus on the tensions around the need for labor within the white economy, the fear of loss of privilege, the exploitation of that fear for political gain, the demographic shifts which facilitate migration and the political and economic forces which propel it.
Fall 2019 courses
Tolstoy’s War and Peace with Rhoda Flaxman
“To live in truth in Russia—these were the questions of Tolstoy’s life and work, and the main concerns of War and Peace.”
Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance
Through a close study of War and Peace we will work together to achieve a deeper understanding of nineteenth-century Russian history and culture. Focusing on both the content and form of his great work, we will explore techniques by which this master of Realism was able to create art from life. Like Dickens and Eliot, whom he loved, Tolstoy believed art should be mimetic, should recreate reality, and reflect moral truth by reflecting relationships between individuals and society in contemporary times.
Though Tolstoy took five years to complete this novel, we will read it in five weeks, covering approximately 250 pages a week in the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007). available from Amazon and elsewhere. I suggest, for ease of reading, that you ask Staples to bind each of Tolstoy’s four volumes separately.
A Conversation About Proust and Food with Nathalie Ferrier
…D’où avait pu me venir cette puissante joie? Je sentais qu’elle était liée au goût du gâteau, mais qu’elle le dépassait infiniment, ne devait pas être de même nature. D’où venait-elle? Que signifiait-elle? Où l’appréhender?
Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?...
This course is a conversation about Proust, his time and the power of food memories. The course will be taught both in English and French. In order to enjoy the course fully, it is recommended that you have a solid knowledge of French, since we will be reading excerpts from Proust’s books, first in French and then in English.
In addition to reading Proust and learning about the times in which he lived and wrote, we will be learning about the history of the French cake called the madeleine, catalyst for Proust’s evocation of his past. We will also learn to bake this cake. While we bake and taste this treat we can discuss what constitutes your own “madeleine.” What kind of revelations have you experienced from food?
A Brief Big History of Everything with Jeff Tash
How comfortable are you with your own understanding of science and history? Do you feel you can intelligently explain how our world, and mankind, has gotten to where we are today? This course is about natural, biological, and cultural evolution. The goal is to help you re-explore all the science and history that you may have either already forgotten or never bothered to learn in the first place.
In each class we’ll present stories drawn from the works of three outstanding authors: David Christian, Yuval Noah Harari, and Leonard Shlain. Their books include the following: Origin Story, Sapiens, Homo Deus, Sex, Time and Power, and The Alphabet versus The Goddess. These historical narratives provide incredibly deep, yet easy-to-understand, scientific and historical explanations that describe virtually everything – from the moment our universe began – right on up to the present day political battles between the disillusioned and the deplorables.
Ancient peoples based their lives around mythology and religion. Even though those religions and myths are now thousands of years old, many of the ideas and concepts they put forth continue to persist today. Yet, beginning about 500 years ago, the world embarked on a scientific revolution. Science tells a pretty compelling story explaining who we are and how we got here – and that story is quite a bit different than the explanations provided by religions and myths. Are you ready for a new renaissance – a modern age enlightenment?
Think of this class as infotainment – kind of like sitting in front of your television watching PBS’s Nova but, instead, you’ll be sitting in a classroom listening to an impassioned lecturer tell stories. There is no requirement that students must read any of the aforementioned books. The presentation materials are drawn directly from the authors’ books.
The instructor for this course is Jeff Tash – an experienced storyteller. Back when Open University of Wellfleet was founded, Jeff taught a course where he told stories about the history of Wellfleet. In his professional career, before he retired to Wellfleet, Jeff was a technology architect who specialized in telling stories about computers and information technology.
How Musicians Make Music with Fred Magee
For many people, creativity can seem like a mysterious gift. For those not familiar with the craft of actors, painters or musicians it may appear that an artist or performer has some special innate talent that can’t really be described or explained. The endless hours of practice, trial-and-error, and repetition that goes into becoming an expert may be assumed, but doesn’t explain the decisions an artist makes in front of a blank canvas, an actor with a new script or a musician sitting down and preparing to play.
Musicians must make all kinds of choices in performance, whether as a soloist or in a group, that may only apply to that one occasion. In fact, depending on the style of music, a musician might use one performance to experiment with ideas that will be used or discarded in the future – all while seeming to be playing a song or composition as if it were fixed in his/her mind. This is especially true for styles that require improvisation, like jazz or rock or blues. In nearly all cases, the musicians are remembering past performances, calling on current skills (or chops) and thinking in real-time as they play.
In this course, we’ll follow the thought process of making music from considering how to use the basic building blocks of rhythm, melody and harmony and applying them to the requirements of styles as diverse as jazz, blues, standards and classical music. We’ll think along with a musician in the process of writing music, performing and collaborating with other musicians – and with the audience. The goal is demystify the process of musicianship and give participants a new tool to better appreciate performance across the spectrum of musical styles.
The course will be taught in five sessions that are designed to remove some of the mystery about how musicians think and perform – from applying the basic building blocks like rhythm and harmony to various styles of music to the challenges musicians face in songwriting, improvisation and performance.
The History and Ecology of Wellfleet’s Herring River with Barbara Brennessel, Alice Iacuessa, and John Portnoy
Share the history, share the journey, share the momentous advent of the restoration of Wellfleet’s Herring River. This important waterway flows from Wellfleet’s famous kettle ponds into Wellfleet Harbor. The course will provide an overview of the history of the Herring River from the post-glacial formation of the Herring River valley to modern initiatives to restore tidal flow to the River and its estuary. With a mixture of classroom presentations and field trips, this team-taught course will feature some of the important ecological issues and historical events that shaped the present state of Herring River and current initiatives that will restore it to a healthy ecosystem.
O’Casey and Synge with Ed Golden
Not only premier Irish playwrights, Sean O’Casey and J.M. Synge rank unquestionably in the highest echelons of world drama. O’Casey the realist and Synge the romantic, seeming opposites, are nevertheless firmly linked by an underlying assumption that O’Casey expressed in a comment about life itself: “ Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” You will be captivated by the splendid prose poetry of the dialogue, the indelible characters, and the unforgettable stories they have to tell, laced with wrenching pathos and the most glorious comedy.
We will have time to read two full-length plays, both the most popular of their works: O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock,”and Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World.” In addition, please read two short pieces for the first class: O’Casey’s “Bedtime Story” and Synge’s “Riders to the Sea.” All these scripts are widely available, and I am requesting the Wellfleet Library to put copies on reserve for us.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series Part Three with Robert Rindler
This series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinary fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment. We will hear from 8-10 local and noteworthy Fine Art makers, (TBA) from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand.
FALL 2019 GUEST ARTIST ROSTER
MONA DUKESS, NATHALIE FERRIER, JO HAY, PETER HOCKING, GRACE HOPKINS, TIMOTHY HORN, IRENE LIPTON, SUSAN LYMAN
and BERT YARBOROUGH
Dance History II: Five More Choreographers with Marc Strauss
The Fall 2019 course for Open University of Wellfleet entitled Dance History II: Five More Choreographers will focus on the choreography and major dance companies of Jerome Robbins (1918 - 1998; United States), Twyla Tharp (b. 1941; United States), Mats Ek (b. 1945; Sweden), Jiri Kylian (b. 1947; Holland), and Mark Morris (b. 1956; United States). Taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre and Dance, Holland College of Arts & Media, Southeast Missouri State University, Dance History II focuses on five more major 20th and 21st century choreographers who have created hundreds of dance works over nearly 80 years in genres as diverse as classical & contemporary ballet, jazz, modern dance, and on Broadway, around the country and throughout the world. We will study, view and discuss numerous dances from each choreographer: Robbins' work for New York City Ballet & on Broadway/film, Tharp's multiple styles (modern, jazz, ballet) on her own company & on Broadway/film, Ek's contemporary work in Sweden and around the globe, Kylian's work for Netherlands Dance Theatre and beyond, and Morris' contemporary work for his own company and beyond. With historical context provided on all dances presented via DVD and video, Marc will lead discussion in ways that will allow students to better understand and appreciate the styles, training, concerns, and philosophies of five more of the most important choreographers on the planet.
Spring 2019 courses
Decoding Virginia Woolf, with Jeanne McNett and Rhoda Flaxman
Join us to explore the varied themes and techniques in Woolf’s pioneering novel, Mrs. Dalloway, as well as her extended essays, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. In the time since she wrote, feminists have debated the women’s issues her writing evokes, critics have studied her innovative stream of consciousness technique, and readers have been inspired by her attention to the social and political issues of her times and their relevance to ours. We will delve into her fiction and essays to contribute our ideas to the ongoing fascination with Woolf, her life, and her writings.
This course will be conducted in the active learning tradition by two instructors, using short lectures, focused discussions, and other activities. There are several edited versions of Mrs. Dalloway available. We will use the Harcourt, Brace & World Harvest and the Cambridge editions. Any edition will be fine, with edited editions having the advantage of criticism and commentary. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas are available in combined editions. All of these works are now in the public domain, so they can be found on line gratis at several sites, including Feedbooks (.com) and the virtual library (.org). You are encouraged to have access to the text for reference in class.
Community Journalism and Its Discontents, with Ed Miller
Local newspapers, especially small-town weeklies, have traditionally played a central role in community life in the U.S., but the internet and corporate consolidation now pose serious threats to their existence. We will read about and discuss the history, current state, and future of newspapers, including examples of how stories are being reported—or not reported—in our local press. There may be one or more guest speakers.
Modern Photography in New England, with Lewis Shepard
Modern Photography in New England will be a lecture and discussion class examining the work of photographers who worked in the many modes of expression. We will see how abstraction, documents, portraiture, surrealism, the natural world and commercial usage provided a basis for the greatly diverse presentation of many artists.
New England has been a center for the growth of photographic technology, from the use of daguerreotypes, stereo views, strobe lighting, instant cameras and now the digital age. Photography has enjoyed and employed these technical advances with enhanced results.
From Barter to Bitcoin: A Short Economic History of the U.S., with John Cumbler
This course will look at the development of the American economy from the colonial period to the end of the 20th century. It will begin with the collapse of feudalism and the emergence of commercialism and how that ties into the white colonial expansion into North America. It will the provide a short overview of the development of commercial capitalism and then industrial capitalism. Along the way, we’ll try and familiarize ourselves with the basic ideas and concepts of classical economics from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes. The course will end with a discussion of the modern transnational economy, and its penetration into ever deeper layers of everyday life.
On Stage: From Oklahoma! to Osage County with John Anderson
This class will focus on drama set in Oklahoma by tracing the development of a now-obscure play into the beloved 1943 musical Oklahoma! (opening on Broadway in March in a newly imagined revival) as well as exploring the 2008 Pulitzer-Prize-winning comedy-drama August: Osage County (on stage at the Provincetown Theater in May).
In 1930, a gay, part-Cherokee playwright named Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) wrote Green Grow the Lilacs, a folk-play set in pre-statehood “Indian Territory” in 1900. It played on Broadway for two months and was a finalist for the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II followed Riggs’ work closely when they adapted it into a now-classic musical in 1943. Hammerstein acknowledged that “Mr. Riggs’ play is the well-spring of almost all that is good in Oklahoma! The ground-breaking musical integrated music and dance with Riggs’ folk-play in an innovative way that revolutionized the form of musical theatre.
Set in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, August: Osage County is an intense comedy-drama about the Weston family confronting various crises in the wake of the disappearance of the family’s patriarch. Author Tracy Letts (born in 1965), a native Oklahoman, is a long-time member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where the play premiered in 2007 before opening on Broadway the following year, winning the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The class will have opportunities to see the Provincetown Theater production of August: Osage County, directed by David Drake and the Broadway revival of Oklahoma! at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Politics in Fiction and Film: Plots, Patterns and Playbooks, with Linda B. Miller
How do novelists and authors of short stories mirror their own times while exercising “poetic license” in order to dramatize individual lives, when citizens must cope with the shifting playbooks of democratic and more authoritarian political leaders? What patterns of response are then reflected in literature? What are the consequences of “unreliable narrators” in the spheres of politics and the arts? How and when, if at all, do national or regional settings and stereotypes matter?
Selected Buildings: An Architect’s Choice, with John Thornley
What makes a building special? Where did the idea come from? What were the forces that shaped it?
Our course will cover a series of successful buildings – works of architecture. Each will be examined from many points of view, including program, structure, aesthetics, technology, and its relationship to other preceding and subsequent structures. We will span time and geography by looking at works ranging from the Cape Cod House to Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water.” Along the way, we will examine the Duomo (Florence), Durham Cathedral (England), Hagia Sophia (Istanbul), the Pantheon and Saint Ivo (Rome), the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), and other works, as time allows.
Winter 2019 courses
Aspects of the American Revolution, with Jim Sefcik
When most of us first studied the American Revolution, courses focused primarily on battles, politics, and Great White Men, and mainly from the Colonists’ point of view. That is no longer the case. Instead, historians are presenting fresh, sometimes provocative interpretations challenging those of the past. One recent book is entitled WHOSE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS IT?: HISTORIANS INTERPRET THE FOUNDING (2011).
I propose to explore some of these topics to both stimulate further interest in the period as well as to provide more recent viewpoints that students of the era are being exposed to today. These will include the Causes of the American Revolution; the Loyalists; Who fought and Why did they?; Why the British lost; and the Results of the War for Independence.
Cape Cod Contraband: Rum Running and the Era of Prohibition, with Don Wilding
The course will consist of five two-hour lectures, with dozens of PowerPoint images to go along with each session.
During the era of Prohibition (1920-1933), rum running was big business on Cape Cod. Farmers and fishermen of the Cape took to the seas, heading offshore to "Rum Row" to bring the criminal yet coveted alcohol to the mainland under cover of darkness, while the possibility of being caught by the Coast Guard was always present. Busy harbors and remote estuaries, many of which are now popular tourist destinations, were all game for bringing the contraband ashore, while local law enforcement officials often turned a blind eye.
Join Cape Cod historian Don Wilding for this comprehensive look at Prohibition, its history, the connection to organized crime, and how "the Noble Experiment" turned into a profitable and potentially dangerous undertaking for many of the Cape's residents.
Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, with Bob Chibka
In 1719, a 59-year-old Englishman with a résumé full of bankruptcies, imprisonments, and pilloryings both literary and literal began writing books we call novels but some of his contemporaries condemned as fake news.
Three years after Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe published one Disney never adapted for children: “The FORTUNES and MISFORTUNES Of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate,* and during a Life of continu’d Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother) Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.” That spoiler of a full title says a lot about the novel’s contradictory aims. Capitalizing on a hunger for salacious “true crime” stories as well as a thirst for high-purposed “spiritual autobiographies,” Defoe paints the respectable façades and criminal undergrounds of late-17th-century society through one woman’s rollercoaster life. Realistic and contrived, harrowing and hilarious, Moll Flanders is a case study in problems of narrative tone and structure, an important text for students of gender and class inequalities, and just a weirdly good read.
We’ll also read “Fantomina, or Love in a Maze,” a near-contemporary shorter story by Eliza Haywood featuring a wildly different female shape-shifter, and a smattering of literary criticism.
Dance History: Five Seminal Choreographers with Marc Strauss
The 2019 Winter Session course for Open University of Wellfleet entitled Dance History: Five Seminal Choreographers will focus on the choreography and major dance companies of the Russian-American George Balanchine (1904 – 1983), Martha Graham (1894 – 1991), Merce Cunningham (1919 – 2009), Paul Taylor (1930 – 2018), and Alvin Ailey (1931 – 1989). Taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre and Dance of the Holland College of Arts & Media at Southeast Missouri State University, these five choreographers had created over 1000 dance works over a roughly 60-year period during the 20th and 21st centuries. Their work lives on in their continuing companies after their death as well as their student and dancer companies We will study numerous dances from each choreographer: Balanchine’s neoclassical ballets, Graham’s modern dance ballets, Cunningham’s neoclassical dances of serendipity, Taylor’s alternately lively and dark modern works, and Ailey’s blues and jazz-inflected dances of unity. With historical context provided to all dances presented via DVD, Marc will lead discussion in ways that will allow students to better understand and appreciate the styles, training, concerns, and philosophies of five of the greatest choreographers on the planet.
Winter 2021
A.R. GURNEY’S LITERARY DRAMATURGY with John Anderson and John Shuman
The late A. R. Gurney (1930-2017) is best known as the author of popular plays such as Love Letters, The Dining Room, and others that explore the decline of the ascendancy of WASP culture. Gurney was also a professor of literature and the humanities, who taught at MIT for several decades. His experiences teaching classic texts are evident in the plays this class will cover: Another Antigone, The Grand Manner, The Golden Age, Later Life, and The Fourth Wall. Each week, the class will read a literary work that inspired Gurney to write a given play, see and hear the Gurney play read by experienced actors, and then discuss the two works. The literary works include Antigone by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, “The Aspern Papers” and “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, and Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw.
Gurney said in an interview that he “lean[ed] on these older stories as a way of trying to sound chords with the audience, build a relationship with an audience, a communality, by telling a story which they already knew but telling it in a new way.” These plays, while standing on their own, become richer and more expansive experiences through familiarity with the source texts. Gurney’s love of theatre is evident in these plays, the first two of which focus on the study and performance of plays and the last two self-consciously play with theatrical conventions by having actors play multiple roles (Later Life) and have the characters confront their own presence on a stage (The Fourth Wall). The course will be team-taught by John Dennis Anderson and John Shuman.
Remembering the Long Point Gallery with Grace Hopkins
The Long Point Gallery was founded in 1977 by thirteen active Cape Cod artists. It quickly became an important gallery that revitalized the historic but static Provincetown art colony. The innovative cooperative was the catalyst for numerous new galleries and workspaces, attracted artists both prominent and promising, drew art dealers and art collectors to the area, and helped to reestablish the outer Cape as a vital hub and heart for New England art.
Today the relevance and reputation of Provincetown continues to grow. The legendary Hans Hofmann taught in Provincetown for nearly four decades. In 2010, Provincetown was formally recognized as the “nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. P’town was a cradle and crux for the Abstract Expressionism movement as it outgrew Manhattan and the New York School. Franz Kline and Mark Rothko taught in Provincetown; When Robert Motherwell relocated to the outer Cape, he joined the group that founded the Long Point Gallery.
Grace Hopkins is an accomplished Wellfleet artist with intimate connections to the Long Point Gallery. A passionate student of art, Hopkins brings an encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth century American art, Abstract Expressionism, Cape Cod art and artists, and the Long Point Gallery. She is the director of the Berta Walker Gallery, the daughter of Long Point Gallery founder Budd Hopkins, and the daughter of art critic and art historian April Kingsley. Her course will draw on her long friendships with Long Point Gallery artists and an expertly curated field of artwork by Long Point Gallery artists.
Sailing into 2021 through "Moby Dick" with Elissa Greenwald
This whale of a book is about the American enterprise: the capacity of individuals for self-invention, the relationship of human beings to nature, the need for community among people of different backgrounds. As these issues take on new urgency in the 21st century, we will look at Melville's 1851 novel as drama, philosophy, and manual for living. For the first class, please read Chapters 1-23, pp 19-123 in the Signet Classics edition (ISBN 978-0-451-53228-2), which I recommend and is available online or through your local bookseller, though any edition will do. Welcome, all “thought-divers!"
Confronting Capitalism, with George Swope
Milton Friedman, the laissez-faire capitalist professor, argued that “Capitalism has been a success story in improving the lives of people. Capitalism has delivered more growth and freedom than any other system.” Yet in the recent 20th annual Edelman Trust Barometer — an annual survey of 34,000 people across 28 countries that measures the public's trust in NGOs, business, government, and media — most people believe that modern day capitalism "does more harm than good in the world.” This divide is certainly reflected in our current political climate.
Capitalism--spanning a spectrum from laissez faire to authoritarian--shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. But does that mean it is perfect as is, and that we would not all benefit from an honest evaluation and reconstruction of the free market system that has shaped our country’s way of economic growth. The truth is capitalism needs to address its many issues. For instance, in the US, Europe, and Japan, economic growth has slowed down. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few; natural resources are exploited for short-term profit; and good jobs are hard to find.
Our text will be Philip Kotler’s Confronting Capitalism (available on Kindle). Using it as our guide, we will examine 14 major issues challenging capitalism, including: • Persistent and increasing poverty • Automation’s effects on job creation • High debt burdens • Steep environmental costs • Boom-bust economic cycles• and more. Each
week we will collectively discuss several of the issues Kotler identifies and his suggested resolutions, as well as our own thoughts and recommendations for a better economic system that yields more shared prosperity and equity.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley with Marc Strauss
Busby Berkeley (1895 – 1976) was a dancer, singer, and choreographer of elaborate designs for Broadway musicals in the 1920s before moving to greater fame in 1930s Hollywood. He developed unique film techniques such as his parade of faces and kaleidoscope effects by transforming dozens of dancers, mostly female, into fascinating geometric patterns, often shot from a crane high above the sound stage. Beginning in the Great Depression and continuing into the 1960s with numbers as varied as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “By a Waterfall,” “The Lullaby of Broadway,” and “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,” Berkeley brought spectacle and fantasy in film to a whole new level of artistry.
The Dance Artistry of Busby Berkeley will be taught by Marc Strauss, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University. Marc will introduce and lead discussion on dozens of song and dance videos, both famous and rare, excerpted from Berkeley’s 50+ movie musicals beginning with his first, Whoopee!(1930) through his last, Jumbo (1962). With detailed historical contexts and multiple anecdotes, come relive the Hollywood days of yesteryear through dance and song as set to many Great American Standard tunes by songwriters such as Harry Warren, Al Dubin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and many others.
Fall 2018 courses
The Cinematic Innovations of Gene Kelly with Marc Strauss
Energetic and athletic dancer, film/stage/television actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer Eugene “Gene” Curran Kelly (1912 – 1996) brought his artistry to dozens of movies, Broadway and television shows, including nearly thirty film musicals. He became popular for his good looks, dancing skills, and the generally likable characters that he played on screen—although, as is not commonly known, he also played villains and dark characters—as well as his unique contributions to the art of film, of which he was given an honorary Academy Award in 1952. This course will involve a close examination of numerous Kelly innovations onscreen through the showing and analysis of five of his famous, and not as well-known, movies between 1944 and 1955, as well as the occasional short clip from other films both popular and unknown. Through historically contextualized introductions and post-film discussions, Marc Strauss will lead the student to a richer understanding of Kelly’s contributions to film from both a choreographic and directorial perspective.
The National Seashore Revealed: 25 Outstanding Places, People, Facts, Oddities and Stories You Need to Know. With Bill Burke
This is a fast moving survey of the stories and places that define Cape National Seashore, our backyard treasure..Tucked away in the corners of Wellfleet and beyond within the National Seashore are both famous and obscure historic sites, evocative landscapes and vistas, old houses, archeology sites and stories of triumphs failures and controversies that collectively define this superb unit of the National Park Service family. Each week will feature suggested readings focusing on five distinct topics. First, we will review the birth pangs and development of the national seashore from the 1930s to present, including a rundown of how internally the park lives and breathes today. Then we'll have a look at ancient, old and new houses within the national seashore and visit a few nearby, Next, we will dive into the delightfully complex lore of the Dune Shacks pf Provincetown and Truro and what the latest plan is for their use and preservation The fourth session will cover a list a Bill favorite historical oddities, and a look at the archeological surveys conducted over the years, including the massive McManamon survey of the late 1970s's and the most recent survey at the Great Island Tavern site this past summer by a crew from UMASS Boston. The finale will be a behind the scenes field trip to a park facility, perhaps our museum collection warehouse in Truro.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series (Part 2) Curated by Robert RindlerThis series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinarily fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of the five weeks, we will meet, experience and explore the work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years. These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives of how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment. We will hear from nine local and noteworthy art makers from different media disciplines who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first-hand.
Modern Architecture: Origins & Key Players in Europe & America with Julie Mockabee
This course will discuss the origins of Modern Architecture during the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America. We will look at the architects that started the shift away from the Beaux-Arts Style and how the men they mentored would become the pioneers of this Modernist movement. These pioneers will eventually teach an entire new crop of architects in America thus expanding this modernism across the country throughout the 20th Century. Our main players will be Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe and Le Corbusier. These 4 men will change architecture throughout the world.Through the teachings of Gropius, Mies and Wright many architects also adopted their modernist style and have continued the ideas started at the end of the 19th Century through to today. We will look at examples of this modernist style in areas such as Germany, Chicago, New York, Connecticut and even Cape Cod. Classes will include slide lectures, hand-outs to take home, hands-on experiments and discussions. We will also try to schedule a field trip to visit a modern home nearby in the area and also have the possibility of guest speakers. Participants will be encouraged to bring their imaginations and also be ready for discussion.
James Joyce’s Dubliners, with Rhoda Flaxman
This semester we explore the short fiction of James Joyce. Often avoided by readers due to his reputation of being difficult to understand, his short stories are neither impenetrable and humorless, nor experimental. His short story collection offers us an accessible introduction to this iconic modernist, and a chance to dig into the riches of Irish history, myth, religion, and human relationships. Together, the stories trace a trajectory of life, starting with childhood. Many critics consider “The Dead,“ the last story in the collection, to be the greatest short story ever written. We will want to decide whether we agree.
Spring 2018 courses
The Music of the Sixties: From Top to Bottom and End to End, with Fred Magee
People sometimes think of music in terms of the decade it was created, a trait that makes it easy to wall off and overlook the social and political trends that led up to and influenced the musicians of the time. The 1960s were perhaps the best example of this tendency in the past 100 years.
The sheer diversity of the music, from folk to surf music, Motown to the British Invasion, Soul to jazz, and the blurring of lines between genres has defined that decade in the minds of many as a time when music was its most creative, as well as a decade that seems to stand by itself.
In fact, many of the artists, songs and styles that seemed to burst out spontaneously were influenced by the history and social movements of the previous 20 years. This course, which focuses primarily on the music, will also draw out ideas about how the 1940s and 1950s influenced the creation of Rock & Roll, protest music, soul, and the emergence of the most influential creative voices who included Joan Baez, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane and the scores of other musicians and performers who came of age in the 60s, but whose music germinated in the decades before.
A History of Eastham, with Don Wilding
First known as Nauset, Eastham was home to the Nauset tribe for thousands of years before exploration by Champlain and the Pilgrims, and it is now known as the “Gateway to the Cape Cod National Seashore.” Whether it’s the U.S. Lifesaving Service and its shipwreck rescues, Cape Cod’s oldest windmill, the revival meetings of “Thumpertown,” the Cape’s most iconic lighthouse, or tales of sea captains and rum runners, Eastham is truly rich in history and tradition. In these lecture sessions with historic photos, Don Wilding wanders back in time through the Outer Cape’s back roads, sand dunes and solitary beaches to uncover Eastham’s fascinating past.
Transitioning Into Sound: Early Film Comedians, with Marc StraussFilm comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Abbott and Costello began their careers on the Vaudeville, Music Hall, and Burlesque stages during the 1910s. With the advent of silent pictures mid-decade and sound in the late 1920s, many of these performers were able to bring their routines to the screen in ways that simultaneously honored their early work as well as successfully adapted to the new art forms. Via footage of excerpts and entire films from the sound era, the course Transitioning into Sound: The Early Film Comedians will provide students with a clear understanding of the historical context and enduring artistry of nearly a dozen film comedians from the late 1920s through the early television age. Background information filled with cultural and social details will precede each film and excerpt showings followed by group discussion. Marc Strauss’ enthusiasm for and knowledge of his subjects provide a nurturing atmosphere for novices and experienced students to engage in and contribute to a fun and dynamic educational class experience.
A Shaw Sampler, with Ed Golden
Three comedies by George Bernard Shaw: Two full-length, “Pygmalion” and “Major Barbara”, and a one-act, “Don Juan in Hell". Widely acclaimed as second only to the works of Shakespeare among English language playwrights, the plays of G.B.S. continue in constant revival on stages around the world. Together let’s relish the splendid wit of this irreverent Irishman as he skewers foibles, hypocrisies, and wrong-headed thinking in language rarely equaled. It’s all there: politics, war, love, marriage, sex, the family, religion, class war and more transformed by this master into some of the most brilliant comedies ever written.
Revising The Bill of Rights with Judith Blau
The 1791 American Bill of Rights (penned by James Madison) along with the 1789 French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen launched the modern era, clarifying the rights and freedoms of individuals. The American Bill of Rights and the French Declaration had much in common. For example, both guaranteed the right to a fair trial and freedom of speech. What they did do was to clarify protections for civil and political rights, but they did not address and guarantee peoples’ security or what we now call, ‘human rights,’ including the right to food, education, and housing. Nor did they spell out the rights of women, indigenous people, racial minorities, elderly,on and revised the French Constitution to include such rights, but not America and the U.S. Bill of Rights. We will!
Politics in Fiction and Film: Rediscovering Vietnam? with Linda B. Miller
Why do superficially similar eras of political dysfunction, with often competing demands for “accountability” and “transparency” evoke comparisons with earlier historical periods? Why do anniversaries of complex events like the Vietnam War spark competing generational memories in fictional and non-fictional accounts? Which literary or film creations and recreations are worth our attention? Does it matter whether personal stories are “reliable” in short stories or novels or documentaries?
Absalom , Absalom! : Faulkner’s Masterpiece , with John Dennis Anderson and Rhoda Flaxman
When William Faulkner finished writing Absalom, Absalom! in 1936, he told a Hollywood colleague it was “the best novel yet written by an American,” and many critics consider it his greatest work. Absalom, Absalom! explores the curse of slavery against the backdrop of the Civil War, but more than that it interrogates the very process of historical narrative and the elusive nature of truth. The novel moves back and forth among versions of the story of Thomas Sutpen's family and the attempts by five narrators to understand it. Faulkner submerges the known facts of their story in a sea of speculation that colors the story with the biases of the narrators. The novel invites the reader to sift through the competing interpretations, like a detective story in which the mysteries at the center are the taboos being protected from exposure. Our class will be conducted as a collaborative conversation about questions about the novel’s historical context, characters, narrative structure, rhetoric, and style. The class should buy the Vintage International edition of the novel.
Studying the artSTRANDers with Grace Hopkins
artStrand was a unique endeavor in Provincetown from 2005- 2016, a gallery owned and managed by the artists themselves rather than by a director or collective choosing the artists and works. They described themselves as: “a cultural cross section of a Provincetown generation. We all have a stake in the town's legacy, its relevance and its future as a pillar and certain haven for the creative jumble we call the Art World.”
During its heyday, artSTRAND served sophisticated art lovers and offered its six male and six female artists unusual aesthetic freedom, longstanding friendships and creative ties. Inheritors of the creative spirit of Long Point Gallery, artSTRAND took on the mission of re-invigorating Provincetown’s artist colony with annual projects and a collective economic philosophy that allowed artists to show what they wanted. A cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation, artStrand was a catalytic focus for the best American artists have to offer, many of these same figures still working today.
The Cinematic Innovations of Gene Kelly with Marc Strauss
Energetic and athletic dancer, film/stage/television actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer Eugene “Gene” Curran Kelly (1912 – 1996) brought his artistry to dozens of movies, Broadway and television shows, including nearly thirty film musicals. He became popular for his good looks, dancing skills, and the generally likable characters that he played on screen—although, as is not commonly known, he also played villains and dark characters—as well as his unique contributions to the art of film, of which he was given an honorary Academy Award in 1952. This course will involve a close examination of numerous Kelly innovations onscreen through the showing and analysis of five of his famous, and not as well-known, movies between 1944 and 1955, as well as the occasional short clip from other films both popular and unknown. Through historically contextualized introductions and post-film discussions, Marc Strauss will lead the student to a richer understanding of Kelly’s contributions to film from both a choreographic and directorial perspective.
The National Seashore Revealed: 25 Outstanding Places, People, Facts, Oddities and Stories You Need to Know. With Bill Burke
This is a fast moving survey of the stories and places that define Cape National Seashore, our backyard treasure..Tucked away in the corners of Wellfleet and beyond within the National Seashore are both famous and obscure historic sites, evocative landscapes and vistas, old houses, archeology sites and stories of triumphs failures and controversies that collectively define this superb unit of the National Park Service family. Each week will feature suggested readings focusing on five distinct topics. First, we will review the birth pangs and development of the national seashore from the 1930s to present, including a rundown of how internally the park lives and breathes today. Then we'll have a look at ancient, old and new houses within the national seashore and visit a few nearby, Next, we will dive into the delightfully complex lore of the Dune Shacks pf Provincetown and Truro and what the latest plan is for their use and preservation The fourth session will cover a list a Bill favorite historical oddities, and a look at the archeological surveys conducted over the years, including the massive McManamon survey of the late 1970s's and the most recent survey at the Great Island Tavern site this past summer by a crew from UMASS Boston. The finale will be a behind the scenes field trip to a park facility, perhaps our museum collection warehouse in Truro.
Contemporary Artists of Cape Cod: Guest Lecture Series (Part 2) Curated by Robert RindlerThis series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinarily fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited, intelligent and illuminating dialogue. For each of the five weeks, we will meet, experience and explore the work of artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years. These transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continue to expand our perspectives of how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment. We will hear from nine local and noteworthy art makers from different media disciplines who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first-hand.
Modern Architecture: Origins & Key Players in Europe & America with Julie Mockabee
This course will discuss the origins of Modern Architecture during the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America. We will look at the architects that started the shift away from the Beaux-Arts Style and how the men they mentored would become the pioneers of this Modernist movement. These pioneers will eventually teach an entire new crop of architects in America thus expanding this modernism across the country throughout the 20th Century. Our main players will be Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe and Le Corbusier. These 4 men will change architecture throughout the world.Through the teachings of Gropius, Mies and Wright many architects also adopted their modernist style and have continued the ideas started at the end of the 19th Century through to today. We will look at examples of this modernist style in areas such as Germany, Chicago, New York, Connecticut and even Cape Cod. Classes will include slide lectures, hand-outs to take home, hands-on experiments and discussions. We will also try to schedule a field trip to visit a modern home nearby in the area and also have the possibility of guest speakers. Participants will be encouraged to bring their imaginations and also be ready for discussion.
James Joyce’s Dubliners, with Rhoda Flaxman
This semester we explore the short fiction of James Joyce. Often avoided by readers due to his reputation of being difficult to understand, his short stories are neither impenetrable and humorless, nor experimental. His short story collection offers us an accessible introduction to this iconic modernist, and a chance to dig into the riches of Irish history, myth, religion, and human relationships. Together, the stories trace a trajectory of life, starting with childhood. Many critics consider “The Dead,“ the last story in the collection, to be the greatest short story ever written. We will want to decide whether we agree.
Spring 2018 courses
The Music of the Sixties: From Top to Bottom and End to End, with Fred Magee
People sometimes think of music in terms of the decade it was created, a trait that makes it easy to wall off and overlook the social and political trends that led up to and influenced the musicians of the time. The 1960s were perhaps the best example of this tendency in the past 100 years.
The sheer diversity of the music, from folk to surf music, Motown to the British Invasion, Soul to jazz, and the blurring of lines between genres has defined that decade in the minds of many as a time when music was its most creative, as well as a decade that seems to stand by itself.
In fact, many of the artists, songs and styles that seemed to burst out spontaneously were influenced by the history and social movements of the previous 20 years. This course, which focuses primarily on the music, will also draw out ideas about how the 1940s and 1950s influenced the creation of Rock & Roll, protest music, soul, and the emergence of the most influential creative voices who included Joan Baez, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane and the scores of other musicians and performers who came of age in the 60s, but whose music germinated in the decades before.
A History of Eastham, with Don Wilding
First known as Nauset, Eastham was home to the Nauset tribe for thousands of years before exploration by Champlain and the Pilgrims, and it is now known as the “Gateway to the Cape Cod National Seashore.” Whether it’s the U.S. Lifesaving Service and its shipwreck rescues, Cape Cod’s oldest windmill, the revival meetings of “Thumpertown,” the Cape’s most iconic lighthouse, or tales of sea captains and rum runners, Eastham is truly rich in history and tradition. In these lecture sessions with historic photos, Don Wilding wanders back in time through the Outer Cape’s back roads, sand dunes and solitary beaches to uncover Eastham’s fascinating past.
Transitioning Into Sound: Early Film Comedians, with Marc StraussFilm comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Abbott and Costello began their careers on the Vaudeville, Music Hall, and Burlesque stages during the 1910s. With the advent of silent pictures mid-decade and sound in the late 1920s, many of these performers were able to bring their routines to the screen in ways that simultaneously honored their early work as well as successfully adapted to the new art forms. Via footage of excerpts and entire films from the sound era, the course Transitioning into Sound: The Early Film Comedians will provide students with a clear understanding of the historical context and enduring artistry of nearly a dozen film comedians from the late 1920s through the early television age. Background information filled with cultural and social details will precede each film and excerpt showings followed by group discussion. Marc Strauss’ enthusiasm for and knowledge of his subjects provide a nurturing atmosphere for novices and experienced students to engage in and contribute to a fun and dynamic educational class experience.
A Shaw Sampler, with Ed Golden
Three comedies by George Bernard Shaw: Two full-length, “Pygmalion” and “Major Barbara”, and a one-act, “Don Juan in Hell". Widely acclaimed as second only to the works of Shakespeare among English language playwrights, the plays of G.B.S. continue in constant revival on stages around the world. Together let’s relish the splendid wit of this irreverent Irishman as he skewers foibles, hypocrisies, and wrong-headed thinking in language rarely equaled. It’s all there: politics, war, love, marriage, sex, the family, religion, class war and more transformed by this master into some of the most brilliant comedies ever written.
Revising The Bill of Rights with Judith Blau
The 1791 American Bill of Rights (penned by James Madison) along with the 1789 French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen launched the modern era, clarifying the rights and freedoms of individuals. The American Bill of Rights and the French Declaration had much in common. For example, both guaranteed the right to a fair trial and freedom of speech. What they did do was to clarify protections for civil and political rights, but they did not address and guarantee peoples’ security or what we now call, ‘human rights,’ including the right to food, education, and housing. Nor did they spell out the rights of women, indigenous people, racial minorities, elderly,on and revised the French Constitution to include such rights, but not America and the U.S. Bill of Rights. We will!
Politics in Fiction and Film: Rediscovering Vietnam? with Linda B. Miller
Why do superficially similar eras of political dysfunction, with often competing demands for “accountability” and “transparency” evoke comparisons with earlier historical periods? Why do anniversaries of complex events like the Vietnam War spark competing generational memories in fictional and non-fictional accounts? Which literary or film creations and recreations are worth our attention? Does it matter whether personal stories are “reliable” in short stories or novels or documentaries?
Absalom , Absalom! : Faulkner’s Masterpiece , with John Dennis Anderson and Rhoda Flaxman
When William Faulkner finished writing Absalom, Absalom! in 1936, he told a Hollywood colleague it was “the best novel yet written by an American,” and many critics consider it his greatest work. Absalom, Absalom! explores the curse of slavery against the backdrop of the Civil War, but more than that it interrogates the very process of historical narrative and the elusive nature of truth. The novel moves back and forth among versions of the story of Thomas Sutpen's family and the attempts by five narrators to understand it. Faulkner submerges the known facts of their story in a sea of speculation that colors the story with the biases of the narrators. The novel invites the reader to sift through the competing interpretations, like a detective story in which the mysteries at the center are the taboos being protected from exposure. Our class will be conducted as a collaborative conversation about questions about the novel’s historical context, characters, narrative structure, rhetoric, and style. The class should buy the Vintage International edition of the novel.
Studying the artSTRANDers with Grace Hopkins
artStrand was a unique endeavor in Provincetown from 2005- 2016, a gallery owned and managed by the artists themselves rather than by a director or collective choosing the artists and works. They described themselves as: “a cultural cross section of a Provincetown generation. We all have a stake in the town's legacy, its relevance and its future as a pillar and certain haven for the creative jumble we call the Art World.”
During its heyday, artSTRAND served sophisticated art lovers and offered its six male and six female artists unusual aesthetic freedom, longstanding friendships and creative ties. Inheritors of the creative spirit of Long Point Gallery, artSTRAND took on the mission of re-invigorating Provincetown’s artist colony with annual projects and a collective economic philosophy that allowed artists to show what they wanted. A cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation, artStrand was a catalytic focus for the best American artists have to offer, many of these same figures still working today.
Wintersession 2018 Courses
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones with Bob Chibka
What are novels good for? In 1740s Britain, it was a live and loaded question. Driven from a successful playwriting career by political censorship, tempted to prose fiction by the pious moralizings of Samuel Richardson’s wildly popular Pamela, Henry Fielding embraced the satiric tradition of Don Quixote; but the narrator of Fielding’s masterpiece, Tom Jones (1749), calls himself “the Founder of a new Province of Writing.” We’ll make a five-week survey of this province’s entertaining topography.
The 1930s: Fred & Ginger at RKO with Marc Strauss
The team of Fred Astaire (née Frederick Austerlitz; 1899 – 1987) and Ginger Rogers (née Virginia Katherine McMath; 1911 – 1995) almost single-handedly—well, with some help from Shirley Temple and a few other Hollywood performers—brought cheer and artistry into the lives of millions of Depression-era movie viewers the world over. With the support of some of the greatest song composers of the Golden Age—Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields, and George and Ira Gershwin—as well as Art Deco designer Van Nest Polglase and Costume Designer Walter Plunkett, RKO Radio Pictures brought to the 1930s movie screen unparalleled romantic comedy and musical fantasy.
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones with Bob Chibka
What are novels good for? In 1740s Britain, it was a live and loaded question. Driven from a successful playwriting career by political censorship, tempted to prose fiction by the pious moralizings of Samuel Richardson’s wildly popular Pamela, Henry Fielding embraced the satiric tradition of Don Quixote; but the narrator of Fielding’s masterpiece, Tom Jones (1749), calls himself “the Founder of a new Province of Writing.” We’ll make a five-week survey of this province’s entertaining topography.
The 1930s: Fred & Ginger at RKO with Marc Strauss
The team of Fred Astaire (née Frederick Austerlitz; 1899 – 1987) and Ginger Rogers (née Virginia Katherine McMath; 1911 – 1995) almost single-handedly—well, with some help from Shirley Temple and a few other Hollywood performers—brought cheer and artistry into the lives of millions of Depression-era movie viewers the world over. With the support of some of the greatest song composers of the Golden Age—Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields, and George and Ira Gershwin—as well as Art Deco designer Van Nest Polglase and Costume Designer Walter Plunkett, RKO Radio Pictures brought to the 1930s movie screen unparalleled romantic comedy and musical fantasy.
Fall 2017 Courses
A History of Provincetown with Don Wilding
The course will consist of five two-hour lectures, with dozens of PowerPoint images to go along with each session:
The Earliest Settlers: A look at visitors before the Pilgrims, the Mayflower in Provincetown Harbor; how Provincetown was once part of Truro; and through the 1800s, including the introduction of the railroad;
Graveyard of Ships: Lifesavers and Lighthouses, Wrecks and Rescues: Over 4,000 ships ran aground off Cape Cod’s Outer Beach, many of them along Race Point and the treacherous Peaked Hill Bars. The Lifesaving Service (later the Coast Guard) and the lighthouses of the Cape Tip saved countless lives;
Artists and Writers: A look at the creative geniuses of the Cape tip, from Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams to Charles Hawthorne and Hans Hofmann;
Kingdom of the Dunes: The landscape of Provincetown is highlighted by its spectacular dune country, which has been home to the dune shacks and its unique culture;
The 20th Century: The modern era of Provincetown, from the construction of the Pilgrim Monument to the arrival of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Cape Cod Contemporary Artists with Robert Rindler
This series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinary fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited and illuminating dialogue.
For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the art of 2 new artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
This new generation of emerging, transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continues to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local and noteworthy art makers, from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand. Other guest critics, curators and gallerists will often be included to add an experienced perspective on the current state of fine arts.
Cape Cod: Land and Sea with John Cumbler
This course will look at the environmental history of the Outer Cape from the age of sail and wood to the age of steam, coal and iron. It will explore the emergence of the amphibious culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what happened to that world through the nineteenth century. The interaction between the people and the Cape environment will be the main focus of the course.
Interpreting The Turn of the Screw with John Dennis Anderson
The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story “beyond everything . . . for general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.” This is the warning of a mysterious storyteller to a group gathered around a fire in an old house on Christmas Eve in Henry James’s 1898 tale. The Turn of the Screw is a classic tale of horror and also a complex and ambiguous trap for readers, designed to make them “think the evil” for themselves. This class will join the long-standing, twisting critical debates on how to interpret this endlessly fascinating story of a governess to two children presumably possessed by the ghosts of dead servants.
We will read the story and explore its historical and biographical contexts for clues to its interpretation. These contexts will include the conventions of the ghost story genre, case studies of ghosts and other psychic phenomena documented by researchers when James wrote the story, the class structures constraining governesses and servants in Victorian England, and psychological theories of hysteria and sexual repression and feminist critiques of them.
The class will also examine adaptations of the story in various media (fiction, plays, films, television, and opera) as examples of a wide range of ways to interpret the text, including the film The Innocents, Benjamin Britten’s opera based on the story, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s stage version. The class should buy the Bedford St. Martin’s third edition of the text, edited by Peter G. Beidler, which includes biographical, historical, and cultural contexts, critical history, and essays from contemporary critical perspectives.
Politics is Personal: Alfred Hitchcock’s War Films with Marc Strauss
The Fall 2017 Open University of Wellfleet course Politics is Personal: Alfred Hitchcock’s War Films, taught by Marc Strauss, includes entire film screenings the night before class at the Riley Strauss Gallery & Gardens (45 Lawrence Road, Wellfleet), a home with a screening room, 65” large-screen TV, and comfortable seats which is located behind the Fire Station on the way up the hill to the Wellfleet Elementary School (parking available at both the home address & the school), followed the next day with a two-hour class meeting at the Wellfleet Council on Aging Conference Room that includes a half-hour lecture, film excerpts, a Question and Answer period, and discussion. Short readings will be required from one of Marc Strauss’ Hitchcock books—Hitchcock Nonetheless: The Master’s Touch in his Least Celebrated Films (2007; McFarland & Company), available for purchase in advance through amazon.com—as well as excerpts from other Hitchcock articles and books available via email attachments. The main theme of this course is explicitly stated in the title: Hitchcock’s “take” on war from three distinct eras addresses the impact that national and international actions have on the individual protagonists in the films (stand-ins for ourselves) as they struggle to achieve emotional growth on their own and in a close romantic involvement with another person. Marc Strauss’ teaching style involves rigorous academic research in a conversational and engaging manner. He works to draw out students’ own impressions, interpretations, and evaluations through an enthusiasm for his topic.
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles with Rhoda Flaxman
Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Hardy presents the gripping tale of “ a pure woman faithfully presented.” Tess exists as a figure in a predominantly rural landscape, Identified with nature, caught between a dying agricultural past and forces of modernism. Among other things she represents Hardy’s own ambivalence about the transformation of both urban and rural English life, the idealization of women, and cultural anxiety about changing sexual mores. Hardy’s novels, like Janus, look both ahead to Modernism and backward to the Victorian heyday of the realistic novel. A study of Tess will allow us to ask whether Hardy ultimately supports or undercuts those systems created by human beings to organize experience, be they religious, mythic, historical, folkloric, philosophical, scientific, psychological, or other. Our class will be conducted as a collaborative conversation about questions such as whether Tess is villain or victor, and how we would evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this beautiful novel.
A History of Provincetown with Don Wilding
The course will consist of five two-hour lectures, with dozens of PowerPoint images to go along with each session:
The Earliest Settlers: A look at visitors before the Pilgrims, the Mayflower in Provincetown Harbor; how Provincetown was once part of Truro; and through the 1800s, including the introduction of the railroad;
Graveyard of Ships: Lifesavers and Lighthouses, Wrecks and Rescues: Over 4,000 ships ran aground off Cape Cod’s Outer Beach, many of them along Race Point and the treacherous Peaked Hill Bars. The Lifesaving Service (later the Coast Guard) and the lighthouses of the Cape Tip saved countless lives;
Artists and Writers: A look at the creative geniuses of the Cape tip, from Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams to Charles Hawthorne and Hans Hofmann;
Kingdom of the Dunes: The landscape of Provincetown is highlighted by its spectacular dune country, which has been home to the dune shacks and its unique culture;
The 20th Century: The modern era of Provincetown, from the construction of the Pilgrim Monument to the arrival of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Cape Cod Contemporary Artists with Robert Rindler
This series is designed to introduce participants to extraordinary fine artists working among us on the Cape today, and to engage with them in a spirited and illuminating dialogue.
For each of five weeks, we will meet, experience, and explore the art of 2 new artists who have achieved significant success and acclaim in recent years.
This new generation of emerging, transformational leaders in the arts, deeply involved in creative inquiry, continues to expand our perspectives on how art is being redefined within our current cultural, social and political environment.
We will hear from 10 local and noteworthy art makers, from different media disciplines, who are now or have recently been exhibiting their work in local galleries and museums where we can see their art first hand. Other guest critics, curators and gallerists will often be included to add an experienced perspective on the current state of fine arts.
Cape Cod: Land and Sea with John Cumbler
This course will look at the environmental history of the Outer Cape from the age of sail and wood to the age of steam, coal and iron. It will explore the emergence of the amphibious culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what happened to that world through the nineteenth century. The interaction between the people and the Cape environment will be the main focus of the course.
Interpreting The Turn of the Screw with John Dennis Anderson
The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story “beyond everything . . . for general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.” This is the warning of a mysterious storyteller to a group gathered around a fire in an old house on Christmas Eve in Henry James’s 1898 tale. The Turn of the Screw is a classic tale of horror and also a complex and ambiguous trap for readers, designed to make them “think the evil” for themselves. This class will join the long-standing, twisting critical debates on how to interpret this endlessly fascinating story of a governess to two children presumably possessed by the ghosts of dead servants.
We will read the story and explore its historical and biographical contexts for clues to its interpretation. These contexts will include the conventions of the ghost story genre, case studies of ghosts and other psychic phenomena documented by researchers when James wrote the story, the class structures constraining governesses and servants in Victorian England, and psychological theories of hysteria and sexual repression and feminist critiques of them.
The class will also examine adaptations of the story in various media (fiction, plays, films, television, and opera) as examples of a wide range of ways to interpret the text, including the film The Innocents, Benjamin Britten’s opera based on the story, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s stage version. The class should buy the Bedford St. Martin’s third edition of the text, edited by Peter G. Beidler, which includes biographical, historical, and cultural contexts, critical history, and essays from contemporary critical perspectives.
Politics is Personal: Alfred Hitchcock’s War Films with Marc Strauss
The Fall 2017 Open University of Wellfleet course Politics is Personal: Alfred Hitchcock’s War Films, taught by Marc Strauss, includes entire film screenings the night before class at the Riley Strauss Gallery & Gardens (45 Lawrence Road, Wellfleet), a home with a screening room, 65” large-screen TV, and comfortable seats which is located behind the Fire Station on the way up the hill to the Wellfleet Elementary School (parking available at both the home address & the school), followed the next day with a two-hour class meeting at the Wellfleet Council on Aging Conference Room that includes a half-hour lecture, film excerpts, a Question and Answer period, and discussion. Short readings will be required from one of Marc Strauss’ Hitchcock books—Hitchcock Nonetheless: The Master’s Touch in his Least Celebrated Films (2007; McFarland & Company), available for purchase in advance through amazon.com—as well as excerpts from other Hitchcock articles and books available via email attachments. The main theme of this course is explicitly stated in the title: Hitchcock’s “take” on war from three distinct eras addresses the impact that national and international actions have on the individual protagonists in the films (stand-ins for ourselves) as they struggle to achieve emotional growth on their own and in a close romantic involvement with another person. Marc Strauss’ teaching style involves rigorous academic research in a conversational and engaging manner. He works to draw out students’ own impressions, interpretations, and evaluations through an enthusiasm for his topic.
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles with Rhoda Flaxman
Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Hardy presents the gripping tale of “ a pure woman faithfully presented.” Tess exists as a figure in a predominantly rural landscape, Identified with nature, caught between a dying agricultural past and forces of modernism. Among other things she represents Hardy’s own ambivalence about the transformation of both urban and rural English life, the idealization of women, and cultural anxiety about changing sexual mores. Hardy’s novels, like Janus, look both ahead to Modernism and backward to the Victorian heyday of the realistic novel. A study of Tess will allow us to ask whether Hardy ultimately supports or undercuts those systems created by human beings to organize experience, be they religious, mythic, historical, folkloric, philosophical, scientific, psychological, or other. Our class will be conducted as a collaborative conversation about questions such as whether Tess is villain or victor, and how we would evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this beautiful novel.
Spring 2017 Courses
"From Bauhaus to Cape Cod House " with Julie Mockabee
The German Art School, The Bauhaus, that existed between the two World Wars, was a melting pot of innovation in modern art and architecture.This course will take a look at the history The Bauhaus, its founder, Walter Gropius and his contemporaries. We will explore the International Style of Architecture and how it ultimately relates to America and Cape Cod. We will talk about the beginning of the modern style of architecture and how students and teachers of the Bauhaus eventually brought these modern ideas to America and how those ideas filtered through the country and what impact they had on Cape Cod.
Classes will include slide lectures, short films, hand-outs to take home, hands-on experiments in the International Style techniques and activities themed on the preliminary course ideas from the Bauhaus. Participants will be encouraged to bring their imaginations and also be ready for discussion. Along with learning the history of the Bauhaus the class will get to try some activities inspired by Bauhaus teaching methods such as color theory and basic design elements. We will also try our hand at creating International Style architecture models.
"BLEAK HOUSE" with Rhoda Flaxman
Mystery. Madness. Murder. Suspense. Theatricality. The Law. Social commentary. Patriarchy. Pollution. Contagion. Victorian childhood. Humor. Horror. Double narration. The urban poor. Government. Philanthropy. Medicine. Fairy tale. The comic imagination. Reform. London fog. Class, gender, sex. Love. Ideal womanhood.
Literary critics consider Bleak House to be Charles Dickens’ greatest novel. Certainly it encompasses all the topics listed above, and more. In this course we will attempt to put all these elements together, and members of the class can volunteer to report on one of these key themes. At the conclusion to the course, we’ll decide whether the critics are correct!
"Faulkner Goes To Hollywood" with John Dennis Anderson
Art vs. Commerce. Highbrow Novels vs. Lowbrow Movies. Modernist Masterpieces vs. Pop Culture. Until he won the Nobel Prize in 1950, William Faulkner struggled to balance his literary ambitions with writing work that would sell. In the 1930s, while revising the novel he considered the best book yet written by an American (Absalom, Absalom!), he was “slaving away” as a screenwriter in Hollywood on the Wallace Beery picture Slave Ship.
In this class, we will look at how highbrow met lowbrow in Faulkner’s career. We will survey his experiences as a screenwriter in Hollywood and read, view, and discuss works by Faulkner adapted for the screen. We will start with one of Faulkner’s most innovative novels, As I Lay Dying (1930), and the 2013 film adaptation by James Franco before considering Faulkner’s first stint in Hollywood in 1932 as a result of the notoriety of his scandalous gangster novel Sanctuary. The class will also read Faulkner’s 1948 novel Intruder in the Dust, an adolescent coming-of-age novel about race relations that anticipates To Kill a Mockingbird, and we will explore some of the live television adaptations of Faulkner’s work in the 1950s in the first Golden Age of Television.
"Long Point Gallery" with Grace Hopkins
Founded in 1977 by 13 Cape artists—and closed in 1998--this important co-operative gallery revitalized the Provincetown art colony, spawned new galleries, and attracted dealers and collectors in its heyday. Its importance grew with the importance of Provincetown, recognized in 2010 as “home of the nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In the mid-20th century the town became both cradle and hub of the revolutionary Abstract Expressionist movement. Having opened its first art school in 1899, the legendary Hans Hofmann taught here for 35 years , joined by artists like Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack. In time Robert Motherwell arrived, and became one of the founders of the Long Point Gallery.
Wellfleet abstract photographer Grace Hopkins is the daughter of one of Long Point’s founders, Abstract Expressionist Budd Hopkins, and April Kingsley, who wrote the definitive: The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art. Grace’s course will take advantage of her long friendships with important Provincetown artists and include visits to some of their studios. Text for the course is Long Point: An Artists’ Place, by Mary Ellen Ebell.
"Cape Cod History" With Don Wilding
Join historian and writer Don Wilding for a fascinating look at the hidden history and stories of the Outer Cape. Using historic images and video, Wilding, a local history columnist for Cape Cod newspapers and journalist for 30 years, wanders back in time to cover some of the great storms, shipwrecks, lifesavers, lighthouses, landmarks, and dune shack life from Provincetown to Monomoy. Wilding is a co-founder of the Henry Beston Society and is on the Board of Directors for the Eastham Historical Society. He is the author of two books, “Henry Beston’s Cape Cod,” for the Beston Society, and “A Brief History of Eastham,” due to be published this summer by The History Press.
"Fighting the Good Fight" with Seth Rolbein
A Trump presidency has moved many people to consider and reconsider their roles in the public, political, and civic process. For some, the election laid bare longstanding concerns about how our government works, who influences its decisions, and whether political power (like economic clout) has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. For others, dismay about the federal outcome suggests a "doubling down" on local and regional efforts to build strong communities, and coalesce grassroots response to achieve tangible results, and protest.
But what does that actually mean? What are the tactics, levers, and fulcrums that engaged citizens can employ, taking the next steps beyond marches and emotional expressions that might satisfy legitimate personal needs, but don't accomplish real change? Are there key issues locally that can become rallying and organizing points to build the kind of citizen power that redirects our government all the way to Congress and the White House?
The course will be driven by case studies intended to answer specific questions about both the issues facing our communities, and how public and political action can accomplish specific goals. The underlying issue will be to understand the difference between "identity politics," which focuses on individuals, personalities and elections, vs "issue politics," which focuses on building community strength around a winnable goal, then channeling political power in new directions going forward.
"Politics in Fiction" with Linda B. Miller
How do contemporary writers connect their personal stories to larger political events? How do the past, present and future appear in characters and plots that resonate with “dark” times, times that challenge them and us to question authority with its pretenses and vulnerabilities? What are the differences between fiction and film in shaping historical memories that may or may not be universal? Must we live with experiences that do not transcend cultural differences and heritages?
Explore these and other related issues in provocative readings drawn from: Umberto Eco, Numero Zero; Amos Oz, Judas; Magda Szabo, The Door; Kanan Makiya, The Rope; Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena OR The Tsar of Love and Techno; Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher; Kamel Daoud, The Mersault Investigation and Albert Camus, The Stranger; Philip Roth, American Pastoral; Hisham Matar, Anatomy of A Disappearance OR The Return; Ward Just, Forgetfulness.
A private visit to the Gropius House in Lincoln, MA and a walking tour of Six Moon neighborhood in Lexington led by Bruce Clouette with Betsy Bray
Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He designed Gropius House as his family home when he came to Massachusetts to teach architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. There will be a private tour of the house, (with photography allowed) lunch on your own at a local restaurant. There will be a 40 minute walking tour of Six Moon Hill, a neighborhood of mid-century modern homes in the afternoon lead by Bruce Clouette.
Fall 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
Earlier Courses
"Cape Cod Memoirs" with Rhoda Flaxman
One was a Wellfleet cop. One, a poet, lived in the Provincetown dunes with her new husband. One faced the problem of how to save his big, old family house on the Cape Cod Canal. And the fourth retreated to Dennis for a year of recovery.
What do these four memoirs have in common? How are they different? Through a combination of mini-lecture and open discussion we will try to explain how each writer makes art from life on Cape Cod.
"From Bauhaus to Cape Cod House " with Julie Mockabee
The German Art School, The Bauhaus, that existed between the two World Wars, was a melting pot of innovation in modern art and architecture.This course will take a look at the history The Bauhaus, its founder, Walter Gropius and his contemporaries. We will explore the International Style of Architecture and how it ultimately relates to America and Cape Cod. We will talk about the beginning of the modern style of architecture and how students and teachers of the Bauhaus eventually brought these modern ideas to America and how those ideas filtered through the country and what impact they had on Cape Cod.
Classes will include slide lectures, short films, hand-outs to take home, hands-on experiments in the International Style techniques and activities themed on the preliminary course ideas from the Bauhaus. Participants will be encouraged to bring their imaginations and also be ready for discussion. Along with learning the history of the Bauhaus the class will get to try some activities inspired by Bauhaus teaching methods such as color theory and basic design elements. We will also try our hand at creating International Style architecture models.
"BLEAK HOUSE" with Rhoda Flaxman
Mystery. Madness. Murder. Suspense. Theatricality. The Law. Social commentary. Patriarchy. Pollution. Contagion. Victorian childhood. Humor. Horror. Double narration. The urban poor. Government. Philanthropy. Medicine. Fairy tale. The comic imagination. Reform. London fog. Class, gender, sex. Love. Ideal womanhood.
Literary critics consider Bleak House to be Charles Dickens’ greatest novel. Certainly it encompasses all the topics listed above, and more. In this course we will attempt to put all these elements together, and members of the class can volunteer to report on one of these key themes. At the conclusion to the course, we’ll decide whether the critics are correct!
"Faulkner Goes To Hollywood" with John Dennis Anderson
Art vs. Commerce. Highbrow Novels vs. Lowbrow Movies. Modernist Masterpieces vs. Pop Culture. Until he won the Nobel Prize in 1950, William Faulkner struggled to balance his literary ambitions with writing work that would sell. In the 1930s, while revising the novel he considered the best book yet written by an American (Absalom, Absalom!), he was “slaving away” as a screenwriter in Hollywood on the Wallace Beery picture Slave Ship.
In this class, we will look at how highbrow met lowbrow in Faulkner’s career. We will survey his experiences as a screenwriter in Hollywood and read, view, and discuss works by Faulkner adapted for the screen. We will start with one of Faulkner’s most innovative novels, As I Lay Dying (1930), and the 2013 film adaptation by James Franco before considering Faulkner’s first stint in Hollywood in 1932 as a result of the notoriety of his scandalous gangster novel Sanctuary. The class will also read Faulkner’s 1948 novel Intruder in the Dust, an adolescent coming-of-age novel about race relations that anticipates To Kill a Mockingbird, and we will explore some of the live television adaptations of Faulkner’s work in the 1950s in the first Golden Age of Television.
"Long Point Gallery" with Grace Hopkins
Founded in 1977 by 13 Cape artists—and closed in 1998--this important co-operative gallery revitalized the Provincetown art colony, spawned new galleries, and attracted dealers and collectors in its heyday. Its importance grew with the importance of Provincetown, recognized in 2010 as “home of the nation’s oldest art colony” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In the mid-20th century the town became both cradle and hub of the revolutionary Abstract Expressionist movement. Having opened its first art school in 1899, the legendary Hans Hofmann taught here for 35 years , joined by artists like Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack. In time Robert Motherwell arrived, and became one of the founders of the Long Point Gallery.
Wellfleet abstract photographer Grace Hopkins is the daughter of one of Long Point’s founders, Abstract Expressionist Budd Hopkins, and April Kingsley, who wrote the definitive: The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art. Grace’s course will take advantage of her long friendships with important Provincetown artists and include visits to some of their studios. Text for the course is Long Point: An Artists’ Place, by Mary Ellen Ebell.
"Cape Cod History" With Don Wilding
Join historian and writer Don Wilding for a fascinating look at the hidden history and stories of the Outer Cape. Using historic images and video, Wilding, a local history columnist for Cape Cod newspapers and journalist for 30 years, wanders back in time to cover some of the great storms, shipwrecks, lifesavers, lighthouses, landmarks, and dune shack life from Provincetown to Monomoy. Wilding is a co-founder of the Henry Beston Society and is on the Board of Directors for the Eastham Historical Society. He is the author of two books, “Henry Beston’s Cape Cod,” for the Beston Society, and “A Brief History of Eastham,” due to be published this summer by The History Press.
"Fighting the Good Fight" with Seth Rolbein
A Trump presidency has moved many people to consider and reconsider their roles in the public, political, and civic process. For some, the election laid bare longstanding concerns about how our government works, who influences its decisions, and whether political power (like economic clout) has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. For others, dismay about the federal outcome suggests a "doubling down" on local and regional efforts to build strong communities, and coalesce grassroots response to achieve tangible results, and protest.
But what does that actually mean? What are the tactics, levers, and fulcrums that engaged citizens can employ, taking the next steps beyond marches and emotional expressions that might satisfy legitimate personal needs, but don't accomplish real change? Are there key issues locally that can become rallying and organizing points to build the kind of citizen power that redirects our government all the way to Congress and the White House?
The course will be driven by case studies intended to answer specific questions about both the issues facing our communities, and how public and political action can accomplish specific goals. The underlying issue will be to understand the difference between "identity politics," which focuses on individuals, personalities and elections, vs "issue politics," which focuses on building community strength around a winnable goal, then channeling political power in new directions going forward.
"Politics in Fiction" with Linda B. Miller
How do contemporary writers connect their personal stories to larger political events? How do the past, present and future appear in characters and plots that resonate with “dark” times, times that challenge them and us to question authority with its pretenses and vulnerabilities? What are the differences between fiction and film in shaping historical memories that may or may not be universal? Must we live with experiences that do not transcend cultural differences and heritages?
Explore these and other related issues in provocative readings drawn from: Umberto Eco, Numero Zero; Amos Oz, Judas; Magda Szabo, The Door; Kanan Makiya, The Rope; Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena OR The Tsar of Love and Techno; Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher; Kamel Daoud, The Mersault Investigation and Albert Camus, The Stranger; Philip Roth, American Pastoral; Hisham Matar, Anatomy of A Disappearance OR The Return; Ward Just, Forgetfulness.
A private visit to the Gropius House in Lincoln, MA and a walking tour of Six Moon neighborhood in Lexington led by Bruce Clouette with Betsy Bray
Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He designed Gropius House as his family home when he came to Massachusetts to teach architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. There will be a private tour of the house, (with photography allowed) lunch on your own at a local restaurant. There will be a 40 minute walking tour of Six Moon Hill, a neighborhood of mid-century modern homes in the afternoon lead by Bruce Clouette.
Fall 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
Earlier Courses
"Cape Cod Memoirs" with Rhoda Flaxman
One was a Wellfleet cop. One, a poet, lived in the Provincetown dunes with her new husband. One faced the problem of how to save his big, old family house on the Cape Cod Canal. And the fourth retreated to Dennis for a year of recovery.
What do these four memoirs have in common? How are they different? Through a combination of mini-lecture and open discussion we will try to explain how each writer makes art from life on Cape Cod.
"Wellfleet's History Revealed Through Stories and Pictures" with Jeff Tash
The story of Wellfleet follows an extraordinary historical thread that begins with the Pilgrims in 1620 and ultimately winds itself to our present day retirement community renown as an arts and intellectual center and as a refined tourist destination. From its beginnings our community, built on Narrow Land, had a founding experience that can best be explained as halfway between the Salem Witch Trials and Peyton Place! Our economy, like our tides, has ebbed and flowed through economic booms and busts. Meanwhile, our tiny little resilient town has a giant history that parallels the tale of America's past. The course will include a walking tour of Wellfleet's historic district.
"Field Trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's Zimmerman House and the Currier Museum" with Betsy Bray
The Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House (1950) was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Wright designed the house, the interiors, all the furniture, the gardens and even the mailbox. There is time to enjoy the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire.
"Two Architectural Geniuses: Frank Lloyd Wright and Charlie Zehnder" with Grace Hopkins and Betsy Bray
Did you know that the Outer Cape was home to an architect strongly influenced by the concepts and design aesthetic of Frank Lloyd Wright? Charles Zehnder designed more than fifty modern houses on the Outer Cape in the second half of the twentieth century, and Wright’s influence can be clearly seen in his structures. This course—the very first to explore the relationship between two architectural masters—will combine site visits to Zehnder houses and invited presentations by experts in the field. Cape Cod Modern, the first overview of our modernist houses, will serve as text.
"Diamondback Terrapins Field Research and Conservation" with Barbara Brennessel
Diamondback terrapins are a threatened turtle species in Massachusetts. We will get to know this charismatic turtle in its Wellfleet Harbor habitat, via field work, discussion and lecture. Our class project will be to capture and mark terrapins for the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary population study. We will also explore their aquatic and terrestrial habitats, find nests laid by female terrapins, and protect them with Predator Excluders (PEs). When we visit “turtle gardens,” we’ll learn how to contribute to efforts to protect their fragile nesting habitats.
"Artist Duos in Lower Cape Studios" with Grace Hopkins
Provincetown hosted America's oldest and most enduring art colony. Even today the Lower Cape is home to a vibrant art scene of studios and galleries. Join us in Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet for visits to studios where very different artists make art side by side. Meet the artists, love the paintings, sculpture and photography, and have as your guide, Grace Hopkins, Cape abstract photographer and daughter of Abstract Expressionist painter, Budd Hopkins, and art historian, April Kingsley.
"Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: People and Places" with Deborah Forman
Although Cape Cod has been attracting artists to this scenic wonderland for more than a century, many artists take another view and find their expression in creating portraits, figures, still lifes, and interior views. The course will cover the 45 artists Deborah Forman included in her book, Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: People and Places (Schiffer Publishing, 2014). The range of work, from traditional to more edgy creations, and the variety of the mediums (oil, acrylic, watercolor, drawings, prints and photography) displays a rich diversity of styles. Discussions will be based on your interpretations, feelings, and interest in the works. Comparisons of the artists’ inspirations, approaches, and styles should incite a lively interchange. The course will include presentations by several of the artists included in the book.
"Contemporary Writers With Cape Cod Connections: Short Stories" with Rhoda Flaxman
Cape Codders may be surprised to learn that contemporary authors such as Raymond Carver, Jumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood and Michael Cunningham have been associated with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. This course will explore the short fiction of some FAWC writers, emphasizing the Lower Cape’s long tradition of contributions from painting, literature and theater arts colonies.
"Microbes That Changed History" with Barbara Brennessel
Our seminar will trace the effect of microbes on human history and examine how our culture, environment and behavior have established, maintained and spread infectious diseases. We will sort out the microbes, good and bad and learn how their evolution and adaptations are intimately linked within an ecological framework. We will follow the trail of epidemiologists, our modern day disease detective, as they attempt to discover the source and routes of transmission of epidemics. And we will explore the medical, cultural and ecological approaches that are undertaken to prevent the spread of these deadly afflictions.
“Going to the Opera in Wellfleet” with Christopher Ostrom
So you think you hate opera? Join us for a five-week exploration of this often-misunderstood art form. We will explore opera from a musicological, dramaturgical, and historical perspective, and receive and insider's view into the creation of an original production. This course will complement the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcasts presented by Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.
“Versification: The Essentials” with Martin Edmunds
For practicing poets seeking a refresher on the essentials of versification in English, and for those who were never taught form and meter at all. We will take up masterly examples of formal verse as our inspiration and our models as we focus on work written during this class by the participants. Students will compose poems in several of the meters and forms under study including iambic pentameter, black verse, ballad stanza, sonnet, and villanelle.
“Cape Cod Artists’ Views of Land and Sea,” with Deborah Forman
Cape Cod has attracted artists to this grand land and its spectacular seas for more than a century. Many artists have created work that interprets their experiences o this place. This course will cover the fifty artists Deborah Forman has included in her recent book (see title above). Their range of work , from traditional to more edgy creations, displays a rich diversity of styles inspired by the Cape’s legendary beauty. Several artists included in the book will visit the class.
“Stories of Home on Cape Cod: A Literary Exploration,” with Rhoda Flaxman
How does establishing a home on Cape Cod differ from building a life anywhere else? This semester we will explore one classic text (Henry Beston’s The Outermost House), one set of linked stories that depict two hundred years of a house on the Outer Cape (Alice Hoffman’s Blackbird House) and one memoir (George Howe Colt’s The Big House). About each of these works we will ask how writers depict the joys and challenges of creating a home on Cape Cod, and whether being at home on this great edge of the world is different from being at home anywhere else.
“The Complete History of Wellfleet,” with Jeff Tash
This class, offered in three separate semesters, consists of five two-hour lectures where each week a different century is examined, starting in the 1600s. Each presentation is composed of pictures, videos, audio recordings, and , most importantly, storytelling. Come hear the Wellfleet story and learn about its amazing past.
“A View from Inside the Summer Plays at WHAT,” with Jeffry George
A parrot, a cabaret singer, a singing quartet and two couples needing an adjustment. An orphaned parrot raised by humans becomes an international fashion icon. As an American living in Berlin, Sally Bowles discovers her strength in war-torn Germany. After thirty years of singing together, a quartet of middle-aged men get their big break and are on their way to Nationals. Do two couples on Xmas Eve truly just need a period of adjustment to find their individual comfort zones? In this 30th Anniversary of Wellfeet Harbor Actors Theater we take a look at life from very different angles by analyzing the scripts in advance. Come and get a view from inside WHAT’s summer productions. Each course participant will receive two tickets to the Friday preview performance of each production this summer.
“Coastal Ecology of the Outer Cape,” with Gordon Peabody (Safe Harbor)
Explore the unique habitats, plants and animals along the coastline of the Outer Cape. Learn how our coastal resources systems are linked together, and look at how the Outer Cape’s landform is undergoing changes from wind, waves, and tide. Guest speakers and possible field trip.
“Narrowland and Sea,” with Barbara Brennessel
Building upon the inspiration of some of our greatest nature writers, we will explore the relationship between the lower Cape and the waters that surround it. We will take a virtual trip, beginning with the ancient glaciers that formed our Narrowland and ending in modern times, where the global repercussions of anthropogenic activities are causing changes at the local level. Some of the topics for discussion will be climate change, ocean acidification, the ‘balance of nature,’ the loss of biodiversity, fisheries in crisis, and the future of shellfish and shellfishing. There will be opportunities for field trips that highlight some of the concepts discussed in the course.
“Wellfleet’s History is America’s History,” with Jeff Tash
The story about Wellfleet is filled with drama.But reading history books can often be dry and laborious. This course strives to make our town’s history compelling and fun through a collection of stories, images, and other media that describe our colorful past including the many ebbs and flows of our economic development as well as the rich assortment of influential characters who over the centuries called Wellfleet their home.
“Theatre on Cape Cod,” with Jeff Zinn
We know there is a vibrant tradition of theatre on Cape Cod and has been for generations. But what exactly do we mean when we say that? When we look at, say the early Provincetown Playhouse dominated by Eugene O’Neill, or The Cape Playhouse in the heyday of the Straw-Hat Circuit, or the several incarnations of Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, or the community theaters that sprout and thrive like mushrooms, we see that “theatre on Cape Cod’ can mean many things. In this class/seminar we will answer the question by reading—or watching—a selection of plays chosen from the aforementioned theaters’ catalogues. We want to know what theater means to you, why you go, and what you look for in the experience Bring your opinions!
“Thinking About Wellfleet, The Romance and the Reality,” with Brent Harold
Wellfleet has long thrived on the romancing of it by residents and part-time visitors alike. Of what does this romance consist? And what are the contradictions and issues that lie beneath its surface? How we think about our town is crucial to the role we play in its ongoing history, We will consider such key concepts as ‘place’ and ‘change’ and such revolutions in our history as the advent of tourism the National Seashore controversy, the washashore invasion, the second home market-- as well as recent struggles over franchises, public water and sewage, regionalization, theater.
“Outer Cape Lit,” with Rhoda Flaxman
Our Outer Cape landscape has been the inspiration for many excellent writers from our earliest history to the present. For our first exploration of this theme, we’ll read contemporary writers who both live on and write about the Outer Cape. Sampling works in four genres, we will read and discuss Annie Dillard’s novel The Maytrees, Sinan Unel’s screenplay, Race Point, poetry by Mary Oliver and Marge Piercy, and selected essays by Robert Finch and others.
“Governing, Cape Cod Style,” with Seth Rolbein
If all politics are local, as House Speaker—and sometime Harwich resident—Thomas P. O’Neill famously said , then an appreciation of the strengths and success of local politics is key to understanding why the national version too often veers into dysfunction. This course will reach back to the Mayflower Compact, signed off our shores in 1620, to see if it is indeed the nation’s seminal document outlining our relationship with our government or not. From the egalitarianism and foibles of open town meeting to the rationale of a recent change in the structure of Cape Cod Boards of Selectmen ending with the question of why our towns are ‘strong’ but our county ‘weak,’ we’ll examine how structure can either inhibit or propel progress. Special guests, including Dan Wolf, will be invited.
“Creating a Wellfleet Historical ‘Map App,’” with Jeff Tash
Wellfleet’s history is America’s history. Pilgrims visited our shores even before they settled Plymouth. This Open University course is a ‘lab’ where students will conduct ‘history research’ culminating in a Wellfleet Historical Society web app using Google map technology. Students will pinpoint places of historical interest along with corresponding images and write-ups accessible via mouse clicks or pointing gestures on laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
“Perspectives on the Provincetown Art Colony,” with Deborah Forman
Join Deborah on 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 lool 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.
“Prose and Poetry of Cape Cod,” with Rhoda Flaxman
Cape Cod has always inspired writers to examine the human condition and , particularly, relationships between humans and the natural world. But do writings about the Cape constitute a unique tradition? Do writers who live and work among us emphasize recurrent themes, subjects, techniques, and visions? This semester Cape Cod Lit will explore this and other questions via poem, novel and memoir. As we read we will ask which concepts and questions about Cape writing are unique to our lives here and which are universal. The class will combine mini-lectures with directed discussion for a lively seminar experience appropriate to all ages and backgrounds.
The story of Wellfleet follows an extraordinary historical thread that begins with the Pilgrims in 1620 and ultimately winds itself to our present day retirement community renown as an arts and intellectual center and as a refined tourist destination. From its beginnings our community, built on Narrow Land, had a founding experience that can best be explained as halfway between the Salem Witch Trials and Peyton Place! Our economy, like our tides, has ebbed and flowed through economic booms and busts. Meanwhile, our tiny little resilient town has a giant history that parallels the tale of America's past. The course will include a walking tour of Wellfleet's historic district.
"Field Trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's Zimmerman House and the Currier Museum" with Betsy Bray
The Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House (1950) was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Wright designed the house, the interiors, all the furniture, the gardens and even the mailbox. There is time to enjoy the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire.
"Two Architectural Geniuses: Frank Lloyd Wright and Charlie Zehnder" with Grace Hopkins and Betsy Bray
Did you know that the Outer Cape was home to an architect strongly influenced by the concepts and design aesthetic of Frank Lloyd Wright? Charles Zehnder designed more than fifty modern houses on the Outer Cape in the second half of the twentieth century, and Wright’s influence can be clearly seen in his structures. This course—the very first to explore the relationship between two architectural masters—will combine site visits to Zehnder houses and invited presentations by experts in the field. Cape Cod Modern, the first overview of our modernist houses, will serve as text.
"Diamondback Terrapins Field Research and Conservation" with Barbara Brennessel
Diamondback terrapins are a threatened turtle species in Massachusetts. We will get to know this charismatic turtle in its Wellfleet Harbor habitat, via field work, discussion and lecture. Our class project will be to capture and mark terrapins for the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary population study. We will also explore their aquatic and terrestrial habitats, find nests laid by female terrapins, and protect them with Predator Excluders (PEs). When we visit “turtle gardens,” we’ll learn how to contribute to efforts to protect their fragile nesting habitats.
"Artist Duos in Lower Cape Studios" with Grace Hopkins
Provincetown hosted America's oldest and most enduring art colony. Even today the Lower Cape is home to a vibrant art scene of studios and galleries. Join us in Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet for visits to studios where very different artists make art side by side. Meet the artists, love the paintings, sculpture and photography, and have as your guide, Grace Hopkins, Cape abstract photographer and daughter of Abstract Expressionist painter, Budd Hopkins, and art historian, April Kingsley.
"Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: People and Places" with Deborah Forman
Although Cape Cod has been attracting artists to this scenic wonderland for more than a century, many artists take another view and find their expression in creating portraits, figures, still lifes, and interior views. The course will cover the 45 artists Deborah Forman included in her book, Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: People and Places (Schiffer Publishing, 2014). The range of work, from traditional to more edgy creations, and the variety of the mediums (oil, acrylic, watercolor, drawings, prints and photography) displays a rich diversity of styles. Discussions will be based on your interpretations, feelings, and interest in the works. Comparisons of the artists’ inspirations, approaches, and styles should incite a lively interchange. The course will include presentations by several of the artists included in the book.
"Contemporary Writers With Cape Cod Connections: Short Stories" with Rhoda Flaxman
Cape Codders may be surprised to learn that contemporary authors such as Raymond Carver, Jumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood and Michael Cunningham have been associated with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. This course will explore the short fiction of some FAWC writers, emphasizing the Lower Cape’s long tradition of contributions from painting, literature and theater arts colonies.
"Microbes That Changed History" with Barbara Brennessel
Our seminar will trace the effect of microbes on human history and examine how our culture, environment and behavior have established, maintained and spread infectious diseases. We will sort out the microbes, good and bad and learn how their evolution and adaptations are intimately linked within an ecological framework. We will follow the trail of epidemiologists, our modern day disease detective, as they attempt to discover the source and routes of transmission of epidemics. And we will explore the medical, cultural and ecological approaches that are undertaken to prevent the spread of these deadly afflictions.
“Going to the Opera in Wellfleet” with Christopher Ostrom
So you think you hate opera? Join us for a five-week exploration of this often-misunderstood art form. We will explore opera from a musicological, dramaturgical, and historical perspective, and receive and insider's view into the creation of an original production. This course will complement the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcasts presented by Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.
“Versification: The Essentials” with Martin Edmunds
For practicing poets seeking a refresher on the essentials of versification in English, and for those who were never taught form and meter at all. We will take up masterly examples of formal verse as our inspiration and our models as we focus on work written during this class by the participants. Students will compose poems in several of the meters and forms under study including iambic pentameter, black verse, ballad stanza, sonnet, and villanelle.
“Cape Cod Artists’ Views of Land and Sea,” with Deborah Forman
Cape Cod has attracted artists to this grand land and its spectacular seas for more than a century. Many artists have created work that interprets their experiences o this place. This course will cover the fifty artists Deborah Forman has included in her recent book (see title above). Their range of work , from traditional to more edgy creations, displays a rich diversity of styles inspired by the Cape’s legendary beauty. Several artists included in the book will visit the class.
“Stories of Home on Cape Cod: A Literary Exploration,” with Rhoda Flaxman
How does establishing a home on Cape Cod differ from building a life anywhere else? This semester we will explore one classic text (Henry Beston’s The Outermost House), one set of linked stories that depict two hundred years of a house on the Outer Cape (Alice Hoffman’s Blackbird House) and one memoir (George Howe Colt’s The Big House). About each of these works we will ask how writers depict the joys and challenges of creating a home on Cape Cod, and whether being at home on this great edge of the world is different from being at home anywhere else.
“The Complete History of Wellfleet,” with Jeff Tash
This class, offered in three separate semesters, consists of five two-hour lectures where each week a different century is examined, starting in the 1600s. Each presentation is composed of pictures, videos, audio recordings, and , most importantly, storytelling. Come hear the Wellfleet story and learn about its amazing past.
“A View from Inside the Summer Plays at WHAT,” with Jeffry George
A parrot, a cabaret singer, a singing quartet and two couples needing an adjustment. An orphaned parrot raised by humans becomes an international fashion icon. As an American living in Berlin, Sally Bowles discovers her strength in war-torn Germany. After thirty years of singing together, a quartet of middle-aged men get their big break and are on their way to Nationals. Do two couples on Xmas Eve truly just need a period of adjustment to find their individual comfort zones? In this 30th Anniversary of Wellfeet Harbor Actors Theater we take a look at life from very different angles by analyzing the scripts in advance. Come and get a view from inside WHAT’s summer productions. Each course participant will receive two tickets to the Friday preview performance of each production this summer.
“Coastal Ecology of the Outer Cape,” with Gordon Peabody (Safe Harbor)
Explore the unique habitats, plants and animals along the coastline of the Outer Cape. Learn how our coastal resources systems are linked together, and look at how the Outer Cape’s landform is undergoing changes from wind, waves, and tide. Guest speakers and possible field trip.
“Narrowland and Sea,” with Barbara Brennessel
Building upon the inspiration of some of our greatest nature writers, we will explore the relationship between the lower Cape and the waters that surround it. We will take a virtual trip, beginning with the ancient glaciers that formed our Narrowland and ending in modern times, where the global repercussions of anthropogenic activities are causing changes at the local level. Some of the topics for discussion will be climate change, ocean acidification, the ‘balance of nature,’ the loss of biodiversity, fisheries in crisis, and the future of shellfish and shellfishing. There will be opportunities for field trips that highlight some of the concepts discussed in the course.
“Wellfleet’s History is America’s History,” with Jeff Tash
The story about Wellfleet is filled with drama.But reading history books can often be dry and laborious. This course strives to make our town’s history compelling and fun through a collection of stories, images, and other media that describe our colorful past including the many ebbs and flows of our economic development as well as the rich assortment of influential characters who over the centuries called Wellfleet their home.
“Theatre on Cape Cod,” with Jeff Zinn
We know there is a vibrant tradition of theatre on Cape Cod and has been for generations. But what exactly do we mean when we say that? When we look at, say the early Provincetown Playhouse dominated by Eugene O’Neill, or The Cape Playhouse in the heyday of the Straw-Hat Circuit, or the several incarnations of Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, or the community theaters that sprout and thrive like mushrooms, we see that “theatre on Cape Cod’ can mean many things. In this class/seminar we will answer the question by reading—or watching—a selection of plays chosen from the aforementioned theaters’ catalogues. We want to know what theater means to you, why you go, and what you look for in the experience Bring your opinions!
“Thinking About Wellfleet, The Romance and the Reality,” with Brent Harold
Wellfleet has long thrived on the romancing of it by residents and part-time visitors alike. Of what does this romance consist? And what are the contradictions and issues that lie beneath its surface? How we think about our town is crucial to the role we play in its ongoing history, We will consider such key concepts as ‘place’ and ‘change’ and such revolutions in our history as the advent of tourism the National Seashore controversy, the washashore invasion, the second home market-- as well as recent struggles over franchises, public water and sewage, regionalization, theater.
“Outer Cape Lit,” with Rhoda Flaxman
Our Outer Cape landscape has been the inspiration for many excellent writers from our earliest history to the present. For our first exploration of this theme, we’ll read contemporary writers who both live on and write about the Outer Cape. Sampling works in four genres, we will read and discuss Annie Dillard’s novel The Maytrees, Sinan Unel’s screenplay, Race Point, poetry by Mary Oliver and Marge Piercy, and selected essays by Robert Finch and others.
“Governing, Cape Cod Style,” with Seth Rolbein
If all politics are local, as House Speaker—and sometime Harwich resident—Thomas P. O’Neill famously said , then an appreciation of the strengths and success of local politics is key to understanding why the national version too often veers into dysfunction. This course will reach back to the Mayflower Compact, signed off our shores in 1620, to see if it is indeed the nation’s seminal document outlining our relationship with our government or not. From the egalitarianism and foibles of open town meeting to the rationale of a recent change in the structure of Cape Cod Boards of Selectmen ending with the question of why our towns are ‘strong’ but our county ‘weak,’ we’ll examine how structure can either inhibit or propel progress. Special guests, including Dan Wolf, will be invited.
“Creating a Wellfleet Historical ‘Map App,’” with Jeff Tash
Wellfleet’s history is America’s history. Pilgrims visited our shores even before they settled Plymouth. This Open University course is a ‘lab’ where students will conduct ‘history research’ culminating in a Wellfleet Historical Society web app using Google map technology. Students will pinpoint places of historical interest along with corresponding images and write-ups accessible via mouse clicks or pointing gestures on laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
“Perspectives on the Provincetown Art Colony,” with Deborah Forman
Join Deborah on 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 lool 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.
“Prose and Poetry of Cape Cod,” with Rhoda Flaxman
Cape Cod has always inspired writers to examine the human condition and , particularly, relationships between humans and the natural world. But do writings about the Cape constitute a unique tradition? Do writers who live and work among us emphasize recurrent themes, subjects, techniques, and visions? This semester Cape Cod Lit will explore this and other questions via poem, novel and memoir. As we read we will ask which concepts and questions about Cape writing are unique to our lives here and which are universal. The class will combine mini-lectures with directed discussion for a lively seminar experience appropriate to all ages and backgrounds.