NICE
The Norton Institute for Continuing Education (NICE) announces its liberal arts offerings for the fall 2017 semester. The four following courses will be held at Wheaton (Norton, MA) College and the Edgewood Church of Christ in Mansfield, as indicated.. The courses are $40.00 each and require pre-registration.??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
The Art of the Bow: Violin Virtuosity from Corelli to Joshua Bell ?? ???? (six sessions)
Mondays, October 16 – November 20 ?? ?? ?? ??10:00 – 11:15 am?? ?? ?? ?? Wheaton College
This course will survey famous violinists and the music written for them, ranging from Corelli to jazz violinist Stephan Grapelli, the great 20th century violinist Jascha Heifitz ??and today’s beloved Joshua Bell. Classes will include lecture, listening and viewing of film clips, as well as some surprise live performances.??
Taught by Ann Sears, PhD, Professor of Music at Wheaton College
Profiles in Courage ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??(five sessions)
Friday, October 27, Monday November 6, and Fridays, November 10, 17, and December 1??
Taught 10:00 – 11:30 am ?? Edgewood Church of Christ, Mansfield, MA ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ????
In this course, historians Gary Hylander and William Hanna work together to present the pioneering works of innovative individuals whose endeavors in their fields earned them places in American History.
Hylander: Fri Oct 27: Eugene Debbs, American Union leader;??
Hylander: Mon, Nov 6: Alice Paul, Suffragist, feminist, and women’s rights activist; ??
Hanna: ?? ?? Fri, Nov10: Abraham Lincoln and his interest in science;
Hanna: ?? ?? Fri, Nov 17: Abraham Lincoln’s complicated relationship with the press;??
Hylander: Fri, Dec 1: Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in professional baseball.
Taught by Gary Hylander and William Hanna, who both earned their PhD’s at Boston College????
??R. R. Tolkien’s Invention of Fantasty ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??(six sessions)
Wednesdays October 11 – November 15 ?? 11:30 ??am – 12:45 pm ?? ?? Wheaton College????????????????????????
Most famous for writing The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien was also a highly respected Oxford professor who studied Beowulf, Chaucer and old ??Norse language and literature. In this course there will be a number of Tolken readings that illustrate how his creative phantasy arose directly from his scholarship, seeing how he sometimes “solved” problems in medieval literature by writing his Middle-earth stories.??
Taught by Michael Drout, PhD, Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval Degree, Wheaton College??
Rise of the First Civilization: The Archaeology of the Earliest States ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??(six sessions)
Mondays, October 16 – November 20 ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 2:00 – 3:30 pm ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? Wheaton College??????
This course focuses on what archaeology tells us about why and how the world’s first civilizations rose and developed. ?? We will begin by discovering how both one of the world???s ???oldest professions??? ??? farming ??? along with the rise of the first cities acted as the key factors to the founding of civilizations in Asia, Africa, and North America. We will proceed to define what ???civilization??? means and then discuss each of the earliest states, starting with the first urban civilization of Sumer, which developed sometime around 4000 BC in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the so-called ???Cradle of Civilization???. After Sumer, we will consider the beginnings of pharaonic Egypt, the first Indus Valley (Pakistan/India) urban centers, and the Olmec state, the earliest civilization in the New World.??
Taught by Alex Trayford, Senior Associate Dan of Studies at Wheaton College ????
??NICE, a non-profit affiliate of the Road Scholar Institute Network and a collaborative effort of Wheaton College and Wingate Residences at Norton, provides non-credit nominally-priced college-level courses and free lectures for over-55 year-olds living primarily in the Norton, Attleboro, Mansfield, Sharon, Foxboro, Taunton, Stoughton, Easton, and Canton areas.
For complete details of these courses??plus other information, please consult NICE Curriculum Chair Martin Aronson at 781-784-8548 or the NICE web site at??www.nicecourse.org?? On the web site you will be able to print out a registration form and send it in with your enrollment check. Enrollment deadline for this semester’s fall courses is September 20, 2017.