Current Courses
Our goal is to enhance the intellectual, social, and cultural life of adults by providing challenging, diverse, and relevant courses on academic topics. Most of our classes are four to six weeks long and meet once a week for 1-1/2 or 2 hours. Our volunteer instructors are motivated by their desire to share their knowledge and facilitate thoughtful discussions on academic topics.
We have two semesters: Fall and Winter/Spring.
If you would like to take a course that is full, please add your name to the waitlist, and we will contact you if a seat becomes available. Please do not contact the instructor directly.
Fall 2020 Current Courses
All our Fall 2020 courses will be offered ONLINE only. Each course meets as a video conference on a Zoom platform. To ensure a pleasant experience with your Zoom course, we encourage you to download and install the free Zoom Application now. Click here for instructions.
Check out the great courses below and click here for instructions on creating a DavidsonLearns account, joining DavidsonLearns, and registering for Fall courses.
Registration for Fall 2020 courses opens August 10 at 10:00 AM. Because we have a limited number of courses for Fall, please do not register for more than one course until after 10:00 AM Wednesday, August 12
Registration for Winter/Spring 2021 courses opens December 7 at 10:00 A.M. Please check back with us closer to that date for detailed information about our upcoming courses.
Status: Closed
Beginning Genealogy
This course is an introduction to genealogical research and is suitable for those who have never tried genealogy or who have dabbled in it but have not made much progress. The emphasis will be on learning some enduring principles of genealogy and on getting guidance on applying these principles to your own project.
*This course requires a minimum of 6 to a maximum of 12 students.
Suggested Readings
A bibliography of suggested articles, texts, and videos will be emailed to registrants before the first class meeting.
Cost
$55
Time
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Zoom Orientation
Monday, Sep. 7, 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Location
Online
Day
Tuesday
Dates
Sep. 8, 15, 22, 29; Oct. 6
Status: Closed
Connections and Conflicts in the Humanities: The Body
This year-long course examines connections and conflicts in the humanities under the broad theme of the body. The lecture-based course runs parallel to Davidson College’s Humanities Program and is based primarily on approximately 20 public faculty lectures and on other college-sponsored public events. All course lectures and events this year will be fully online, mostly asynchronous and recorded. The DavidsonLearns course consists of both those events and 9 seminar-style class discussions each semester led by Professor Scott Denham.
The humanities course syllabus is dynamic, sometimes unpredictable, and requires students to watch the schedule to know what great lectures are happening and when they occur. See http://hum.davidson.edu/ for the faculty lecturers for 2020-21. All DavidsonLearns course participants share common email threads to keep in touch over the semester.
The course fee is for the Fall term only. There will be a second registration for the Winter/Spring term. Participants who registered for the Fall term will have priority registering for the Winter/Spring term.
*This course requires a minimum of 8 to a maximum of 30 students.
Suggested Readings
Readings are optional, though encouraged. Most of the reading material is available through online sources (Dropbox, websites, the course pages, email).
Cost
$88
Time
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Zoom Orientation
Tuesday, August 18, 3:00 – 4:00 PM
Location
Online
Day
Wednesday
Dates
Aug. 19; Sep. 2, 16, 30; Oct. 14, 28; Nov. 11; Dec. 2, 16
The Evolution of US Trade Policy
This course will examine and discuss the following: 1. A history of US trade policy focusing on the US role in building the modern international trading system to the apparent collapse of “multilateralism” today. 2. The advent of free trade agreements — what they are intended to achieve and why the United States enters into them. 3. The emergence of China as an export powerhouse, and the US response. 4. Trump’s NAFTA revision and trade issues with other major powers. 5. How the US uses trade restrictions to protect itself against unfairly traded imports. 6. What US trade policy should look like in the future.
*This course requires a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 20 students.
Required Readings
None
Cost
$66
Instructor: Joe Papovich
Time
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Zoom Orientation
Wednesday, September 23, 2:30 – 3:30 PM
Location
Online
Day
Thursday
Dates
Sep. 24; Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
Status: Closed
The Future of the American Health Care System
The delivery of an effective, equitable system to protect and provide the health of the American people is a great challenge. The clamor about accessibility, affordability, and accountability cries out for evolution, if not revolution, of our current system. This course reviews the origins and concepts of the American health care system, the stakeholders of the system, and the emerging strategies being proposed to improve the system. Some of those strategies include disease prevention, cost containment (medical services, pharmaceuticals, insurance rates), and universal coverage vs. Medicare for All. These themes will be prominent in the political dialogue for the 2020 general election.
*This course requires a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 25 students.
Required Readings
Shi, Leiyu and Douglas A. Singh. Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach. Jones & Bartlett, 2019.
This book may also be available from other sources.
Cost
$66
Instructor: Joe Konen, MD, MSPH
Time
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Location
Online
Day
Tuesday
Status: Closed
Zoom Orientation
Monday, October 5, 7:00 – 8:00 PM
Dates
Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27; Nov. 3, 10
Scarlet A+: Revisiting Nathaniel Hawthorne
Perhaps you read The Scarlet Letter in high school and have forgotten its meaning. Now is your chance to enjoy and understand what is widely viewed as the first great American novel and also read six remarkable short stories that led up to and illuminate it. We will begin with a lecture on the life of Hawthorne and continue with a combination of lecture and discussion of the stories and the novel.
*This course requires a minimum of 12 to a maximum of 15 students.
Required Readings
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne's Short Stories. Vintage Classics, 2011.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, any edition. (Hyperlink goes to the free Project Gutenberg version.)
These books may also be available from other sources.
Cost
$55
Instructor: Tony Abbott, PhD
Time
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Location
Online
Day
Thursday
Status: Closed
Zoom Orientation
Wednesday, September 16, 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Dates
Sep. 17, 24; Oct. 1, 8, 15
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was a war of ideologies pitting supporters of the Catholic Church, monarchists, landowners, and fascists against the Republic, trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, and communists. It also served as a battleground for Germany, Italy, and the USSR to test new weapons and tactics prior to World War II. We will explore events in the 19th and 20th centuries that led to deep divisions within Spanish society and explain how a planned coup d’état escalated into civil war. Covering major military campaigns, we will learn how divisions within the Republic led to a civil war within a civil war and the defeat of the Republic. The ruthless aftermath by General Franco’s united rebel forces continues to impact Spain today.
*This course requires a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 20 students.
Suggested Readings
Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Penguin, 2006. (best book for details on the various battles and military strategy)
Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2005. (less information on leaders; stresses conflicting ideologies)
Hochschild, Adam. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. (wonderful account of the journalists, intellectuals, and the International Brigades)
These books may also be available from other sources.
Cost
$66
Instructor: Deborah Fosberg Nelson, MA
Time
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Location
Online
Day
Monday
Status: Closed
Zoom Orientation
Friday, October 2, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Dates
Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26; Nov. 2, 9
Understanding Visual Forms in Film, Television, and Beyond
In our increasingly digital world, images have become an omnipresent mode of conveying meaning. Just as we need to think about how words express overt and subtle messages, images always resonate beyond their face value appearance. This class will approach visual forms with nuts and bolts terms and basic concepts that address how they are constructed, framed, stylized, edited together, etc. In addition, we will consider the larger context in which images appear, which can be social, cultural, or historical, as well as how they relate to our own identities. Media forms addressed include film, television, art, photography, and social media.
*This course requires a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 20 students.
Required Readings
There is no required reading, but students will watch one movie to prepare for each meeting. All movies will be available online.
Cost
$66
Instructor: Maggie McCarthy, PhD
Time
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Location
Online
Day
Tuesday
Status: Closed
Zoom Orientation
Monday, October 12, 4:00 – 5:00 PM
Dates
Oct. 13, 20, 27; Nov. 3, 10, 17
Instructor: Christopher J. Ritz, PhD
Instructor: Scott Denham, PhD