Ilise Feitshans ’79

6 Sessions
Online on Zoom 

Wednesdays,
6 - 7:30 PM on October 8, 15, 22, 29 & Nov. 5, 12

Cost: $750

Beauty Babies & Dieting: The Impact of Nanotechnology on Women’s Health

This course will explore the impact of applied nanotechnology on reducing health disparities between men and women across the life cycle. We’ll discuss health (in culture and under law) and disability (from the standpoint of social mores), barriers to inclusion, and legal regimes designed to prevent discrimination that impacts men and women differently, with a focus on reproductive rights across the life cycle, including risk for cancer of reproductive organs among older women. We’ll also discuss key international and U.S. laws protecting women’s health, reproductive health for all, science and law enabling LGBTQI people to have their own biological children without having a heterosexual partner, reducing maternal mortality by offering safe and accessible technology-based care so that there is NO MOM LEFT BEHIND, national and global efforts to reduce maternal mortality (noting that women in the U.S. risk their lives to have a baby), and finally, parental leave policies, using the Bahamas as case study. 

Registration information is here.

Benjamin Breyer

4 Sessions
Online on  Zoom 

Sundays, 5-7 PM

Nov. 16, 23, 30 and Dec. 7

Cost: $500

Comic Book Metropolis: New York City and the History of the American Comic Book

No city has been more important in the development and history of comic books as New York City. Home for many decades to publishing giants Marvel Comics and DC Comics, among many others, New York City has attracted hundreds of artists, writers and editors who worked in the industry. This location would in turn exert a powerful influence upon their creativity. Will Eisner and Frank Miller drew upon their personal experiences living and working in the city when they pioneered the graphic novel form in their respective works A Contract with God and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Taking a historical perspective, this Enrichers course considers the ways that New York City can be said to occupy a central place in the history of American comic books and their successor graphic novels. We’ll look at selections from comics and graphic novels from different periods in the history of the medium and think about the ways that they reflect the influence of the city and its people. This in turn will allow for a greater appreciation of the contribution made by New York City to the history of comics.

Registration information is here.

Alexandra Watson

4 Sessions
Online on  Zoom 

Wednesdays,
6-8 PM

Sept. 10, 17, 24 & Oct. 1
 

Cost: $500

Writing Your Life Story
 

Everyone has, at the very least, one life moment they know is worth a story: that moment that changed everything, that moment that you can still call to mind, or that moment that wasn’t epic but was beautifully, blissfully ordinary. So why can it be hard to find the time, space, and energy to write it down? The trick is simply trying. In this class, that's exactly what we will do. We will use the structure of the personal essay in particular to help us write into life. Coming from the French “essai,” meaning attempt, the essay is a flexible form of writing that can help us give voice and narrative structure to our life moments, to take the large and small of our life and make it story-sized. We will read personal essays rather than argumentative essays and find in them sources of inspiration for our own stories. Phillip Lopate writes about the personal essay, “The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom.” Over four sessions, we will read such essays and tap into the stories, from gossip to wisdom to all moments in between, that are coming through us.

Registration information is here.