Instructor: Dr. Morgan Moroney (Near Eastern Studies)

About: We eat to live, but we also eat to share community and family, renew traditions, restore health, and celebrate. Breaking bread for the ancient Egyptians was no different. This Blast course will investigate aspects of ancient Egyptian society related to food and drink during the pharaonic era (ca. 3000–30 BCE). “1000 Bread, 1000 Beer: Food & Drink in Ancient Egypt” will introduce students—in weekly lectures and virtual, live discussions—to one slice of the world of food studies, using evidence ranging from archaeological remains to historical texts to modern scientific studies. From feasts to famines, festivals to fish dinners, we will uncover how food and drink present ways to access the daily life practices of Egyptian kings and farmers alike. This class will feature optional “experimental archaeology,” offering ancient (and a few modern) recipes, snacks, and drinks for students to try at home and to share with the class. Come learn about the lives of the ancient Egyptians, from their work to their health to their storytelling, setting an ancient table with “1000 Bread, 1000 Beer.” Together, we will discover what food and drink says about a society, its members, and its history even after thousands of years.

Format: Monday (video to watch) + Friday (Q&A video)

Instructor: Juan Dopico (Classics)

About: Why should we care about conspiracies? How can understandings of real (and imagined) plots help us better understand the narratives about insurrection and conspiracy that continue to show up today? In this Blast course, students will examine how conspiracy narratives and theories have been a part of the Western tradition as far back as Ancient Rome. In weekly lectures and live (virtual) discussions, we will explore the long history of influential conspiracies, beginning with Ancient Roman stories about how different groups come to occupy rival sides on issues of political power, information, and social norms. After our weeks on Rome, we will turn to some famous conspiracies in modern America: the assassination of JFK; conspiracy theories concerning small elite groups (e.g., “QAnon”); and others emerging from social media. Together, we will ask how we can become careful critics of recurring narratives of indoctrination and paranoia, as well as what lies beneath some of the most dangerous conspiracy theories of our time. [Students are not expected to be familiar with ancient works or languages to take this course. Nevertheless, an interest in modern and/or ancient history and politics would be helpful.]

Format: Tuesday & Wednesday (videos to watch) + Friday 3-4pm EDT (LIVE virtual discussions)

Instructor: Alison Wilkinson (Near Eastern Studies)

About: What can we learn from fragments of the past? How can re-discovered ancient traces still reveal new discoveries about people who lived, worked, worshipped, played, married and divorced, raised children, and died more than 3,000 years ago in the Valley of the Kings? What even were ancient Egyptian ideas of norms and social expectations, and how do these compare to our societies’ today? This Blast course will jump into the social lives of ancient Egyptians, using primary sources, both artistic and textual (in English translation), as part of our discussion of how we use evidence to learn about past societies. Students will have the chance to see some surprising artifacts—from stone tablets detailing divorce cases, to a papyrus with an ancient joke, to personal accounts of visions of gods and goddesses—and even dive into virtual 3-D models of a preserved workers’ village. Together, we will ask how these voices and slices of life from long ago and far away can make us think differently about the past and, perhaps, see our own present-day social lives with new eyes.

Format: Tuesdays (videos to watch) + Fridays (Q&A videos to watch)

Instructor: Brad Harmon (German/Modern Lang. & Lit.)

About: What does extinction mean now? What does the extinction of other species say about our human existence? And what can films reveal about how to answer these questions? Like climate change and Deep Time, extinction occurs on a scale that defies human comprehension. Despite knowing about the extinctions of the dinosaurs, Dodos, or woolly mammoths, humankind has yet to confront the meaning of extinction, both other species’ and our own. Though sometimes frightening, these ideas animate many recent films and cinematic TV shows, all tackling the feeling that there is “no future”—and how we might adjust our sense of “now.” This Blast course focuses on cinema as a medium which tries to represent climate change, extinction, and bleak or even apocalyptic futures. Films/shows to be discussed: Children of Men (2006); Aniara (2018); The Wall (2012); First Reformed (2017); and The Last of Us (2023). [Students will be encouraged, but *not* required, to watch these independently outside of class.] This asynchronous course offers the opportunity, as Donna Haraway says, to “stay with the trouble” and discomfort by exploring these questions, their answers and non-answers, in a new community with fellow dwellers in this world of both dread and—together—potential. 

Format: Mondays (videos to watch) + Fridays (Q&A videos to watch)

Instructor: Martin Michálek (Classics)

About:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet…

…so William Wordsworth described his nature walks through the ruins round Tintern Abbey in the early 19^th century, as greenery reclaimed manmade ruins and industrialization took over England. Wordsworth, like all great poets, was sensitive to humanity’s ever-changing relationship with nature. In this class, we will read a series of poets across centuries, nations, ethnicities, genders, and beliefs to better understand how the natural world has influenced poetry around the world. In addition to reading broadly, we will supplement our readings with theories of poetry by Ezra Pound, Mary Oliver, and Don Paterson. We have two principal aims: First, in this class we will become better readers of poetry by learning how poets manipulate sounds, words, and images—how they use various rhyme schemes, meters, language, and allusions—to write about nature. Secondly, this course aims to reconnect participants with nature through poetry—a thing increasingly difficult to do in our high-pitched and noisy age of urbanization, commuting, truncated attention spans, and the proliferation of screens.

Format: Mondays (videos to watch) + Thursdays 6:30–7:30 pm EDT (LIVE Zoom discussion groups)

Instructor: Meghaa Ballakrishnen (Art History)

About: Why did painting—the production through ink, water, oil, pigment, and graphite of a world on a flat surface—suddenly flourish after 1500 in the Indian subcontinent? What does its history have to do with the region’s cross-cultural formation, power struggles, and self-representation? This Blast course will focus on three themes that motivated painting in India: power, pleasure, and personhood. We will move from Indo-Islamic Mughal and Hindu Rajput court paintings, through popular bazaar and “company” paintings during British colonization, to modernism after decolonization in 1947. We will ask why painting was important to royals, bureaucrats, lovers, artists, art historians, and other viewers, and what historical painting offers us in our present moment. Students will be introduced not only to a complex, and misunderstood, region, but also to the resources and methods of the discipline of art history. Art historians look closely at visual materials to analyze the social, political, and ethical significance of works of art—and over five weeks, we will break down how and why they do so. Lectures present students with artworks and how to approach them; live seminars will practice reflecting, discussing, and understanding them together (including instructor feedback on optional written responses).

Format: Mondays (videos to watch) + Fridays 10:30–11:30 am EDT (LIVE Zoom discussion groups)

Instructor: Luke Beller (German/Modern Lang. & Lit)

About: What’s the difference between reform and revolution? How have great thinkers in history understood these ideas? This Blast course introduces students to historical analysis and literary interpretation by focusing on the idea of striving for freedom—especially how this quest for freedom appears in literature and political realities. We will explore political revolution, its sometimes-disastrous consequences, and how rebellion continues to captivate the popular imagination. Together, we will trace some of the historical ideas of revolution: from Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, to two German writers, poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller and political activist Rosa Luxemburg, and finally to American filmmaker George Lucas. In lectures and virtual discussions, we will also look at the German reaction to the 1789 French Revolution, as well as the 1918 November Revolution in Germany (which led to new nations and further uprisings). By the end, students will connect stories like Star Wars: A New Hope to centuries of writings about tyranny and domination, human rights, and rebel resistance. By examining political crisis, disaster, and rebellion, this course aims to understand notions of political freedom and how they can spark greater self-understanding, as well as to inspire an informed sense that a freer, more just world is possible.

Format: Mondays (videos to watch) + Thursdays 4–5 pm EDT (LIVE Zoom discussion groups)

Instructor: Paige Paulsen (Near Eastern Studies)

About: This Blast course explores how maps and history are intertwined. But what is a map’s purpose? What can a map tell us about places or ways of life that no longer exist? How do different kinds of maps tell different stories? We want to know about the past, but it doesn’t exist for us to study, so instead archaeologists study what we do have: the records of peoples and places. Maps thus raise interesting questions about the similarities of ancient landscapes to present ones, how maps both record evidence and then become evidence themselves in archaeological arguments, and the tricky process of reconstructing the past with any methods, including cartographic ones. In this course, we will compare what we can see on certain maps—and how modern borders sometimes mislead us in understanding history. Students will get a chance to create their own maps of places that are important to you, then reflect on how your experiences translate onto the page. By exploring the theories and the practices of map-making, this course offers an introduction to how archaeologists construct historical interpretations, the costs and benefits of different technologies, and the practical and imaginary tools for telling stories through mapping.

Format: Monday (video to watch) + Friday (Q&A video)

Instructor: Samantha Neugebauer (Writing Seminars)

About: [Creative writing course] Environmental change is all around us, affecting people from all walks of life. As a result, ecopoetry – that is, poetry that is environmental and environmentalist – is for everyone. But how do we actually begin to write it? What techniques and practices might we use as part of the craft of making poems? In this Blast course, students will read contemporary ecopoetry as the inspiration for writing their own creative work in response to the environmental changes they see in their local community. No previous poetry/creative writing training is required! While focusing on past examples of ecopoetry and poetics, we will also consider the relationship between the human and nature, the human and the city (from Baltimore to wherever you are), humans and other non-human animals, and finally, discuss the purpose and value for all of us in writing (and reading) ecopoetry generally. 

Format: Monday (videos to watch) + Thursday (response/reflection/activity videos)