OLLI at DU Central   

Astronomy is possibly the most rapidly developing of all the sciences. The past few years have seen quantum developments in our understanding of the universe. Unmanned astronomical spacecraft such as the James Webb telescope, Hubble telescope, Spitzer, Kepler, etc. have significantly expanded our knowledge, including the birth and existence of planets around other stars. This course, The Birth and Death of Stars, will describe how stars form, their life cycle, their eventual death process and the impact of the sun on life on Earth. We will also discuss what is known about the many exo-planets that have been found around neighboring stars.

Required Book: Kenneth R. Lang. The Life and Death of Stars, (Cambridge University Press), New York, 2013.

Ecological overshoot can be defined as exceeding the carrying capacity for a given species in a certain geographic area, with carrying capacity meaning the maximum permanently supportable load. (To illustrate-- how many cows could you permanently support in a given size of a pasture? What would be the impacts of exceeding that number?) We will expand on this definition to include the carrying capacity of the earth, humanity’s role in exceeding it, and the likelihood of us causing overshoot. Each session will examine an aspect of human activity, including energy, food, economics, and technology, then showing its relationship to ecological overshoot. Weaving these aspects together, we will discover the possible impacts to our collective future. Then we can speculate on whether this may force humanity to objectively face the destructiveness of our current living arrangements. Could this lead to a nature that we realize includes us? This course is meant to be thought-provoking and not necessarily prescriptive. Key components will be introduced to the class through lectures, video interviews, and documentary film clips, with ample time for questions and discussion. Optional readings and video links will be emailed to members between class sessions

Explore and learn about the history and development of classical music from small ensemble to the symphony orchestra, with a Colorado Symphony musician/educator.  Discover, explore, and compare music-making techniques of master composers from every major era, including women composers and composers of color.  We will listen to, discuss, and make observations about different instruments and compositions.  This class will enhance your understanding and appreciation of classical music.  OLLI students will learn the basic history of classical music, listen to and compare/contrast examples of music from all major historical periods and learn about composers from each of those periods. This class will enhance your understanding and appreciation of classical music.  Whether you’re a novice or a classical music afficionado, get ready to expand your knowledge and experience all sorts of new, cool information from a professional musician and educator!

The saying that history is written by the victors is quite true of the American Revolution where what is called the “Patriot” perspective is universally assumed to be the “right” one. But every conflict between human beings contains contrary points of view, where well-meaning participants see things from completely different perspectives. It is estimated that a full one third of the American population identified themselves with the Loyalist perspective, yet they have been largely vilified in nearly every historical account. This class will use the historical fiction novel, Distant Thunder, by facilitator, Timothy Krueger, based on the actual experiences of an American clergyman from Portland, Maine who gradually found himself sympathizing with the Loyalist perspective, thus illustrating a unique and surprising aspect to this supposedly well-known era. A jarring resonance to our own time will be touched upon.

Required Book: Distant Thunder by Timothy Krueger, available on Amazon, Kindle

Great Decisions is a program of the Foreign Policy Association which is new each year. High quality educational materials are prepared and provided to discussion groups in cities and universities throughout the United States. On each topic there will be a chapter describing the current issues around the selected topic and a video of background information and relevant interviews with world leaders and scholars.

Required Book: Great Decisions 2024 Briefing Book, Please order from fpa/great-decisions/?act=gd-materials (select Great Decisions 2024Briering Book/EBookOptions)

“Place” is sometimes described as an additional character in novels, especially when an author develops a collection of characters in a specific location throughout a continuing series. Mysterious Places encourages some armchair travel while exploring various mystery series sets, in this case, in gardens. Marta McDowell’s Gardening Can Be Murder is our guidebook to mysteries from the Golder Age to contemporary, with plots using plant, dirt, and garden tools to nefarious ends. Authors or protagonists include old favorites such as Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, Susan Wittig, Albert’s Darling Dahlias, and some new to the genre. Join us for good reading and delightful discussions!

Recommended Reading: McDowell, Marta. Gardening Can Be Murder. 2023.

Why did the Founding Fathers create this country? Is the US exceptional, an empire, or socialist? Our past has been distorted by partisan pundits leading us to believe fiction over fact. MYTH AMERICA attempts to replace myths with research and reality in a series of essays on twenty common myths. These historians debunk narratives such as the failure of the New Deal, the idea that immigrants are hostile invaders, and that markets can regulate themselves. This class will explore 2-3 myths a week during vigorous discussions and sharing live experiences.

This course was previously offered in the 2023 Fall term.

Required Book: MYTH AMERICA: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies About Our Past by Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Basic Books 2022

This class will look at the Salem Witch Trials from the perspective of one of the most influential books written about that event. Exploring this interpretation will give us the opportunity to think about how historians “do” history and about how understandings and interpretations can evolve in many different directions over a long period of time. The book also gives us a look at how early New England towns functioned and how complicated these tiny communities could be.

Required Book: Boyer, Paul and Nissenbaum, Steven. (1974) Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Harvard University Press

Join us for our 3rd in a series of most highly rated and enjoyed films of a decade. Having done the films of the 1960s and 70s, this term we look at the films of the 1980s. In general, these films tend to be lighter than in previous terms. Examples are Back to the Future, Blues Brothers, Airplane! And The Princess Bride (a favorite of ours). There were also some wonderful and highly rated action/suspense films in the decade such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Die Hard. During the course, you will see many great actors and the work of great directors and writers. Check out our syllabus for a complete list of our movies and dates. Our format is to show the film, take a brief break, and have a discussion intended to be enjoyable and informative about the actors, directors, awards, and note-worthy characteristics of the movie. We strongly encourage your contributions to our discussion because they just make the course better. We have scheduled three hours for each class, but shorter movies will usually end earlier than that. We look forward to sharing the movies of the 80s with you.

In 1820, American Protestant missionaries from New England began arriving in the Hawaiian Islands. Seventy-eight years later, the United States officially declared the Islands a territory of the United States. In those 78 years, the missionaries were followed by whalers, planters, and workers from around the world to work on the plantations, and the ruling Hawaiian royal family was replaced by a transplanted American elite. This course examines the events that gradually transformed Hawaii from a unique, isolated kingdom in the Pacific to a vital part of the American empire. The class will use Sarah Vowell’s book, Unfamiliar Fishes, as its core text. Ms Vowell was a contributor and producer for the NPR show, This American Life, and a frequent guest on talk shows, especially The Daily Show. Her five books have been described as funny, quirky, biting histories. Recently, she’s used her unusual voice for characters in animated films, and she is a frequent op-ed columnist for publications such as The New York Times.

Required Book: Vowell, Sarah. Unfamiliar Fishes, Riverhead Books (Penguin). 2011.

Set in Montana, this is a story of how the West changed with the advent of post -World War II. “As well-crafted as the best carpentry, The Whistling Season does what [Ivan] Doig does best: evoke the past and create a landscape and characters worth caring about.” USA Today. We approach reading as discovery in a reading community; therefore, some of the reading is done in class so that, together, we encounter the text as a group.

PLEASE DO NOT START READING THE BOOK BEFORE CLASS BEGINS.

Required Reading: Please purchase the book, The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig, in advance of the class. We will use the Harvest Book/Harcourt, Inc. edition (paperback), ISBN 978-0-15-101237-4.