Teaching Company

Presents a history and criticism of music and how to listen and appreciate it.

Learning how to appreciate the unmatched beauty, genius, and power of concert music can permanently enrich your life. Why is this so? As award-winning composer and Professor Robert Greenberg explains, Music, the most abstract and sublime of all the arts, is capable of transmitting an unbelievable amount of expressive, historical, and even philosophical information to us, provided that our antennas are up and pointed in the right direction. A little...

Interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of how the human brain is sculpted by evolution, constrained or freed by genes, shaped by early experience, modulated by hormones, and otherwise influenced to produce a wide range of behaviors, some of them abnormal. Explains how little can be explained by thinking about any one of these factors alone because some combination of influences is almost always at work.

Professor Muesse examines the four religious giants both separately and comparatively in an effort to grasp the essential features of their lives and to explore the factors that contributed to their greatness. He discusses the similarities and differences in their messages, in the patterns of their lives, and in the ways they impacted their followers and the rest of the world.

This course examines the ideas, events, and characters that molded Western political, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, scientific and economic history during the period from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

"When does the Jewish Sabbath begin? Who are Vishnu and Shiva? What are Buddhism's Four Noble Truths? What are the Five Pillars of Islam? These questions are more than an academic exercise. Religious belief has been innate to humans everywhere and in every age, from the time of the Neanderthals to the 21st century. It's also one of the strongest motivators of human behavior and has a profound impact on all aspects of our culture-- our spiritual beliefs,...

Explores the historical Jesus and traces how he was transformed from a Jewish prophet to God himself.

Professor Greenberg combines perceptive analysis of extensive musical excerpts with historical anecdotes, metaphors, and humor to show what goes on inside a musical composition: how it came to be written, how it works, and how, as is often the case with Beethoven, it may break all former rules to achieve a completely new and powerful effect. This course is somewhat technical and although musical knowledge is helpful, it is not a necessity.