2022
History of Jazz/Rock Music
Course Instructor: Dr. Larry Barnes
Location: Memphis, TN
Course Description:
This course examines the unique development of American popular music from 1900 to the present. Beginning with African, European and Caribbean roots, the course explores important popular musical styles including the blues, New Orleans jazz, swing, the jazz avant-garde, the seminal elements of Rock music and the most important shifts and trends of the latter part of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that lead to the most global and influential popular music of today. Students will visit the Rock and Soul Museum, the Civil Rights Museum, Sun Records recording studio, the Graceland home of Elvis Presley, and take in a live show and BBQ on Beale Street. Counts as an Area V writing intensive course.
The German American Experience
Course Instructor: Professor Matthew Bauman
Location: Lexington & Louisville, KY/Cincinnati, OH
Course Description
Who or what is German? Who or what is American? How do the two converge in Kentucky? This course seeks to explore the German heritage and history of Kentucky and its surrounding areas both in historic and contemporary terms while examining the visible as well as the hidden connections between the two. This course considers these issues through a number of lenses beyond ancestry, including historical events, geography, architecture, art and media, food, religion, cultural traditions, memory and academic research and documentation. Following an on-campus introduction to the history of German-Americans in the U.S., and a look at the German-American presence in Lexington, the class will travel to the two major German-American centers for Kentucky (and the country as a whole), Louisville and the Greater Cincinnati area to explore how German-American immigrants helped to shape the history of the two cities and experience firsthand how their influence continues to be felt today.
2019
Travel and Tourism
Travel Dates: May 19-22
Instructors: Julia Poynter
Location: Chicago, IL
Course Description
Principles and practices of domestic and international tourism and leisure travel industries including cultural aspects, economic and social dimensions, marketing, and research.
2017
Travel and Tourism
Travel Dates: May 21-24
Instructors: Julia Poynter
Location: Chicago, IL
Course Description
Principles and practices of domestic and international tourism and leisure travel industries including cultural aspects, economic and social dimensions, marketing, and research.
2016
History of Jazz/Rock Music
Travel Dates: May 12-14
Instructors: Larry Barnes
Location: Cleveland, OH
Course Description
Explores the special cross-cultural development of American popular music since 1900. From African and European roots, this music evolves into the blues, New Orleans jazz, swing, the jazz avant-garde, and current jazz styles. The course then considers the ’language of rebellion’ as a seminal factor in the rapid development of Rock to present day. Rock styles presented will include electric blues, rockabilly and the British invasion; acid rock and psychedelic blues; corporate rock, metal, and punk; grunge, rap and industrial; current mainstream and alternative styles; and the development of popular music since the 1990s in response to the internet revolution. Requires library research of special period, topic, style, or artists, as approved by instructor, to result in a formal research document. When taught in May term, students travel to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to undertake a portion of this research.
Sapient Sapiens
Travel Dates: May 9-23
Instructors: Jack Furlong
Location: Louisville, KY
Course Description
Nonhuman minds are shaped for the wild, yet many are captive-this disconnect generates important questions: Can we ensure that such complex minds are suitably engaged and challenged in captive environments? Do we have an ethical duty to ensure that they are? And, if so, does this duty extend to all species, not just those that look like us (primates) or captivate us (elephants, seals, bears), but those that bore, scare, or annoy us (insects, bats, snakes)? We will spend two weeks at the Louisville Zoo designing cognitively appropriate enrichment for primates, other large gregarious species, and nongregarious species. We will conduct research to explore two questions: Would treating these animals to cognitive challenges allow them to lead more species-typical lives in captivity? And might such enrichments be a way to treat these wild minds more ethically? Approved as an elective in the ENVS minor.
2015
It’s All About the Bike
Travel Dates: TBA
Instructor: S. Brown
Location: Kentucky
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Communities and universities across the country are investing in creating bike-friendly communities to support active transport as a means to improved health and to reduce our carbon footprint. We will examine the physiological adaptations and health benefits of cycling, how cycling contributes to our efforts to create more sustainable sources of energy and the impact the bike is making on improved access to health care, opportunities for employment and increased gender equity for millions of people in the developing world.
Ape Sapiens
Travel Dates: TBA
Instructor: J. Furlong
Location: Louisville, KY & Nicholasville, KY
Course Description
We will explore two questions and their interrelation: what is the extent of primate cognitive capacity? And what kind of ethical call should they elicit from humans? Here we rely on an evolutionary and comparative approach to non-human primate cognition. Emphasizing how differences in evolutionary pressures across species lead to differences in cognitive capacities allows us to explore the specific psychological needs of each species. Primate minds are shaped for the wild, but those we will study are captive. That disconnect between wild minds and their captivity generates our major ethical question: how is it possible to treat such complex minds with the appropriate dignity while in captivity? We will spend several days at the Louisville Zoo and the Primate Rescue Center, working with chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, siamang, several species of monkeys, and lemurs, designing cognitively appropriate enrichment items for these species and conducting research to explore the effectiveness of our enrichment items. Might such enrichments be a way to treat these wild minds with dignity? This course will be team-taught across two campuses, ours and Transylvania University’s, and is especially recommended for psychology, biology, pre-vet, and philosophy majors. Travel to Louisville Zoo and Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, KY