Joslin Memorial Library

As six Californians get together to form a book club to discuss the novels of Jane Austen, their lives are turned upside down by troubled marriages, illicit affairs, changing relationships, and love.

Isolates the artistic element of story, what is happening in a painting, and discusses how story contributes to a work of art through several examples from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Austen tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature.

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel. With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture David), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the vast ceiling while the power politics and personal...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes a novel portraying a sibling rivalry which compels us to reconsider the uses and misuses of imagination.
"Complex and thoughtful."—The Times Literary Supplement

When they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now the sisters are grown, and hostile strangers—until...

Isolates the artistic element of shape, discusses what visual ideas and effects can be conveyed by different shapes, and examines how they contribute to a work of art through various examples from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In canvases of Millet, Courbet, and Manet, observe the Realist ideals of honesty, simplicity, and descriptive colors in revealing contemporary experience. Then, explore the phenomenon of Impressionism, highlighting Renoir, Monet, and Degas - their fascination with natural light, quest to capture the moment, and iconic subject matter of middle-class leisure life.

This lecture integrates elements including color, line, shape, composition, light, symbolism, point of view, and focal point. Using the viewing tools you've developed, look deeply at four diverse masterpieces, including a sculpture by Thorvaldsen, a "vanitas" still life by Van Oosterwyck, a lithograph by Bonnard, and a painting by Van der Weyden.

Across the centuries, self-portraits fascinatingly reveal the changing role of the artist. Follow this progression, from Renaissance painters subtly placing themselves within large compositions, to self-portraiture's emergence as a major form of self-revelation, noting many dramatic and colorful traditions within the form.

Many of us are terrified of public speaking, let alone performing! COMPOSED explores the many ways we experience and face performance anxiety, through the experiences of professional musicians. Faced with the judgment of peers, the audience, and themselves, these musicians spend years trying to understand and overcome their anxiety. Through their stories we find that we are not alone with our fear of failure.