courses.thomasmore.qc.caFall 2023 - Courses Thomas

More More Fall 2023 Winter 2024 Spring 2024 Contact Us Back to Main Website Fall 2023 Course offerings for the Fall Term 2023 include selections in Classics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Writing. Courses may take place in person, on Zoom, or in a hybrid format where participants can choose whether to participate in person or on Zoom for the same course. The location listings on this page will remain up-to-date. ART HISTORY Through the Kaleidoscope of Colours 12 weeks, Mondays, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. **Atwater** Scientists and artists have been fascinated by colour and its properties for centuries. Is colour an objective property of things, or of the light that bounces off them? We know that without light there is no colour. This course will explore the following beguiling questions about colour: What is synesthesia? That is, why do some people see colours when they hear music, as the artist Wassily Kandinsky did? How does a painting that consists of swaths of colour on a large canvas bring us to reflect on the sacred as Mark Rothko’s paintings do? How have colours inspired poets, writers, painters, and filmmakers? Would a Wes Anderson film look the same without its daring use of colour? Why is the colorization of black and white classic movies controversial? Why do some cultures only have a handful of names for colours, and does this affect their perception of colours? What impact might this have on their experience of poetry that references colours? THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. Please call 514-935-9585 or e-mail info@thomasmore.qc.ca if you are interested in being added to the waitlist for this course. You will be contacted if space opens up. Read Course Details CLASSICS Julius Caesar and Augustus Transform Rome: The Fall of the Republic 12 weeks, Tuesdays, 6:15 to 8:15 p.m. **Atwater** The first part of this consideration of the dynasty of the Caesars in ancient Rome looks at Julius Caesar’s role in the fall of the Roman Republic. Who was Julius Caesar? How did he bring down the Roman Republic, which had survived many centuries of turmoil? Was the Republic really corrupted beyond redemption, as he and his allies claimed? Who were the republican leaders at the time of Caesar’s rise? Were the Roman citizens better off with Caesar than with the republicans? What were the exact circumstances of Caesar’s revolution? By looking at Caesar’s Commentary on the Gallic War , Suetonius’s and Plutarch’s Lives , and the political speeches of Cicero and other contemporary poets and writers like Lucan and Catullus, we will examine what led to the end of 600 years of a political regime that created institutions still with us today. Read Course Details HISTORY Love in the Italian Renaissance: From Dante to Tasso 12 weeks, Thursdays, 6:15 to 8:15 p.m. **Atwater or Online** Love can be seen as a defining feature of what it means to be human. As relational beings we seek to love and be loved by those in our lives. Th is is no more evident than in the works of the poets, authors, and philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Th is course will explore the ideals of Italian humanism.Why was there such a division in perceptions of love, with some seeing it as an illness to be overcome and others as a means of transcendence and apotheosis? Did these authors classify love as an experience thrust upon us without our control, or see it as an emotion that could be tempered? Does the nature of the love depicted, whether mutual or unrequited, change the impact of the work? What are the implications of writing works of love dedicated to someone who does not requite it? Finally, how did the sharing of ideas, and the patronage by the wealthy, help foster a culture that critically engaged with, and expressed, such personal aspects of life? Read Course Details LITERATURE Mayhem and Murder: The File on Philip Marlowe 12 weeks, Thursdays, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. **Atwater** Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” The man in question is the tough yet chivalrous private eye Philip Marlowe who lives on the pages of the hardboiled novels of his creator Raymond Chandler. The novels evoke the mayhem and murder in the Los Angeles of the nineteen thirties and early forties. In creating Marlowe and his milieu, Chandler shifted the emphasis in the detective novel from solving a mystery to confronting the ambiguities and uncertainties of the chase. What prompted Chandler to consciously transform this lesser genre? How did his innovative treatment of ambience, character, and everyday lingo—still imitated in fiction and film—elevate its tone? Is it his literary achievement or is it his bleak but powerful—even prophetic—vision of American society that sustains our interest in his work today? Read Course Details Modernism in Literature: 1910-1960 12 weeks, Thursdays, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. **Zoom** The writers of the Modernist movement of the early and mid 20th century changed the face of literature forever. Stylistically, Modernist writing featured an emphasis on experimentation, objectivity, and a multi-layered, symbolic reading of texts. Philosophically, the writers focused on the individual by exploring the psychology of the self and by foregrounding the existential concerns relating to one’s place in a fragmented and absurd universe. This course will explore the following questions: What are some of the similar concerns in the works of the early Modernists and later writers? What characterizes the psychological dimensions of a work of Modernist literature? How does Modernist writing reflect the Weltanschauung of the time, brought about particularly by World War I and World War II? Does a dichotomy exist between the objectivity of the early Modernists (Pound, Eliot, Williams) and the subjectivity of the other writers of that period (Woolf and, later, confessional poets like Plath and Sexton)? THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. Please call 514-935-9585 or e-mail info@thomasmore.qc.ca if you are interested in being added to the waitlist for this course. You will be contacted if space opens up. Read Course Details Out of Africa: East African Politics and Displaced Communities in the Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah 12 weeks, Tuesdays, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. **Atwater** In his novels, Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah is concerned with themes of exile, displacement, and belonging as related to colonialism, war, and emigration. Winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, Gurnah was singled out for his compassionate representation of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” In this course, we will read three of his novels, all exploring these themes under diff erent guises: Paradise (1994), By the Sea (2001) and Afterlives (2020). We will ask a variety of questions as we read: How are origin stories complicated by leaving one place and going to another? How is identity fractured by the empire-building of colonialism—and then by emigration? What situations are responsible for states of displacement? Is fi ghting for your conqueror an act of desertion? How do you retrieve your past without denying or negating your present—and your future? THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. Please call 514-935-9585 or e-mail info@thomasmore.qc.ca if you are interested in being added to the waitlist for this course. You will be contacted if space opens up. Read Course Details MUSIC Music in Montreal: An Ongoing Tour, Part I 12 weeks, Mondays, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. **Online** Join us, this year, as we will be closely following the concerts of the main orchestras of the city, as well as chamber music groups, baroque ensembles, choirs, and a smattering of jazz and music from various traditions. Th e post-pandemic era is an exciting time to be following these concert programs for many reasons: Ensembles are presenting concerts with a renewed energy, and the current social climate has prompted a renewal of the sometimes-staid repertoire of...