Film noir (“dark cinema”) is defined by a distinctive visual style, edgy themes, violent plots, and bleak urban settings. The classical period of film noir spanned the 1940s and ’50s, although its influence remains strong even today. This fourth and final CCA of the 2021-2022 academic year will consider the history and elements of film […]

Since the founding of the first universities in the West in the eleventh century, the study of ancient Greece and Rome has been a central element of a liberal arts education. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, spurred largely by the influence of historicism, the serious study of the classics began to decline. Today it […]

The modern pharmaceutical industry has in many ways proved itself a great benefit to mankind, making health- and life-saving drugs and vaccines widely available. But its reputation has come under attack in the wake of America’s opioid epidemic and the COVID pandemic. This fourth and final CCA of the 2022-23 academic year will consider the […]

Intelligence gathering has been an essential part of U.S. defense and foreign policy since the American Revolution.

This second CCA of the 2023-2024 academic year, co-sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series, will examine this debate by exploring the lives and ideas of some of history’s most influential economists.

Lytton Strachey referred to the art of biography as “the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing,” adding that “it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.” This third CCA of the 2023-2024 academic year will consider biography in general and specific recent biographies through the eyes of their authors.

The heyday of the American musical began in the late 1920s and lasted into the 1960s. The music that came out of Broadway and Hollywood during that period represents one of the pinnacles of American popular culture. This fourth and final CCA of the 2023-2024 academic year will consider the history and character of the […]