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In this course, participants will learn how the Csomay Center strives to connect, contribute, and create the future of aging. Through outreach, education, and partnerships at the University of Iowa and in the community, the center provides research, resources, and ways to reduce risk factors in aging. Topics that impact and interest older adults include dementia; tech, AI, and aging; brain health; sleep; livable communities; and death literacy. Participants will leave class with a sense of what it means to "optimally age."

INSTRUCTOR: Jen Jones is the outreach, education, and programming coordinator at the Csomay Center for Gerontological Excellence at the University of Iowa. Jen loves sharing the mission and vision of the Csomay Center and connecting older adults to the resources that serve them. Her favorite question to ask is "How are you optimally aging?"

This course focuses on three key moments for the study of Egyptian art and archaeology: the kingly pyramid complexes at Saqqara and Giza in the 3rd and 4th Dynasties (ca. 2649-2467 BC), the funerary complexes in the Valley of the Kings for kings and elites in the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1550-1307 BC), and Amarna, the short-lived capital city of Akhenaten (1353-1335 BC). Examination of the historical and religious contexts of the sites and monuments will focus on how they were made, who made them, and how they relate to Egyptian ideas of kingship and the Egyptian view of the world.

INSTRUCTOR: Brenda Longfellow is the Roger A. Hornsby Professor in the Classics in the University of Iowa’s School of Art, Art History, and Design. She holds a Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology, and she teaches classes on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art.

Hydrology is the science of how water moves over and through the ground. Since Euro-American settlement of Iowa two centuries ago, this movement of water has been intentionally and radically modified to suit the needs of the people living here. This has had profound consequences for Iowa’s wildlife, culture, health, urban design, water and soil quality, and agricultural production. The course will study Iowa’s major rivers and their tributaries, watershed characteristics, natural and human-made lakes, and the ways that restoring natural hydrology could mitigate the modern problems of pollution and flooding while improving the quality of life in our state.

INSTRUCTOR: Chris Jones is a retired research engineer with IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa. His research focus has been contaminant hydrology in agricultural landscapes. Chris has published 60-plus journal articles and several book chapters and is the author of The Swine Republic, Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. He makes otherwise dense scientific material accessible to laypeople in ways that drive the narrative for some of the state’s most pressing environmental problems.

The course will take a deep look at a women’s college basketball program, including a general look at the landscape of college and professional women’s basketball and the history of both. Participants will explore the recruiting process for young athletes, the staff makeup of most major college programs (and each staffer’s role), team travel, scouting/game preparation, analytics, season and tournament structure, and what a calendar year looks like for a coach. Guest speakers will include current Iowa players, coaching staff members, and possibly alumni who played professionally after their time at Iowa.

INSTRUCTOR: Kathryn Reynolds attended Iowa, lettering in women’s basketball and majoring in business administration, and later attending the UI College of Law. She worked on the Iowa women’s basketball coaching staff for six seasons. She now serves as president of the Northwoods summer collegiate softball league and is the color analyst for Iowa’s basketball games on the radio.

Aging is inevitable—but how we age is something we can define. This course explores how movement and exercise support strength, stability, and brain health. Each session includes one hour of lecture and discussion followed by one hour of guided movement and exercise appropriate for all fitness levels. Weekly topics include building better bones, why muscle matters, improving balance, and supporting cognition through physical activity. Whether you’re new to exercise or already active, this course will equip you with the knowledge and tools to confidently shape your aging experience—one step, squat, and stretch at a time.

INSTRUCTORS: Jake Raecker is a board-certified geriatric physical therapist and founder of Age On, a gym for people 55+. He believes movement is a source of hope and that strong older adults make strong communities. With national conference speaking experience, Jake brings energy, clarity, and inspiration to each session he leads. Corrigan Goldsmith is an occupational therapist with a background in inpatient rehabilitation, where she specializes in serving people with brain injury. She works in home health, helping people transition to their living environments after injury. She’s passionate about helping older adults stay strong and independent at every age.

What are the rules for writing a good musical adaptation? How does the story function in going from one medium to another, and what types of songs tell that story? How do some of the best artists break the rules? To get at the answers to these questions, we will examine four musicals: An American in Paris, Carousel, Shrek the Musical, and Merrily We Roll Along. These shows are currently available for viewing at home through a paid streaming service or for listening on CDs. If any show becomes unavailable for streaming by the time the class begins, a substitute production will be chosen.

INSTRUCTOR: Christopher Okiishi is a writer, performer, director, and producer of theater. He and his husband, Patrick Du Laney, founded Crooked Path Theatre in 2015. His work has been seen at City Circle Theatre Company, SPT Theatre, Theatre Cedar Rapids, Coe College, Cornell College, Riverside Theatre, Los Angeles’s Odyssey Theatre, and the New York Film Academy. He has written scores for nine theater and film projects. He is also a practicing psychiatrist who lectures locally and nationally.

This vividly illustrated course will focus on the art, craft, and history of black-and-white film photography as it enters the color-filled digital age. Students will explore the styles of such iconic American photographers as Ansel Adams and Margaret Bourke White and their impact on the evolution of art as well as photojournalism. They will actively apply concepts of photography by contributing their own images to be part of a group critique within the class and use these images to create a poster. They will investigate the process of self-publishing, the ways that galleries give voice to artists, and the contributions that photography and other art forms make to communities.

INSTRUCTOR: Bob Campagna is a fine art photographer, educator, and publisher. As an artist-in-residence, he has taught photography and digital design in the United States and abroad. He designs and publishes books, calendars, posters, and cards of his work and co-owns the Abbe Creek Gallery, a fine art gallery in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

Out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, altered states of consciousness—these are some of the more popular understandings of otherworldly journeys. This course will focus on the origins of these mythical journeys in ancient Mediterranean cultures and the intersection of these ideas between Asian and western classical worlds. We will examine stories from Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian cultures. We will explore the meanings behind these journey accounts, including descriptions of heroic actions, quests for secret knowledge, and explanations of what awaits the faithful beyond death.

INSTRUCTOR: Robert Cargill, Roger A. Hornsby Associate Professor in the Classics at the University of Iowa, is a biblical studies scholar and archaeologist. His research includes study of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha, and the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean.

Transformations abound in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, literally in the case of Puck, the mischievous fairy, placing an ass’s head on Bottom the weaver, or figuratively as a love potion changes the romantic feelings of both human and fairy lovers. The play challenges our imagination with four contrasting couples, magic (and sometimes invisible) characters, endearingly dense amateur actors, and a final scene, which transforms the central subject of thwarted love into high comedy. It is Shakespeare’s most widely performed play and often a first experience with staged Shakespeare. We’ll look closely at the text and various productions, and look forward to Riverside Theatre’s production in City Park this summer.

INSTRUCTOR: Miriam Gilbert is professor emerita of English, having taught at the University of Iowa from 1969 to 2013. She still enjoys studying and teaching Shakespeare and going to see Shakespeare in performance, especially in her second home, Stratford-upon-Avon.

As energy production and consumption accelerate worldwide, we are witness to many threats to human health and damage to our planet. The path to making our energy sustainable and keeping our present consumption from jeopardizing future generations is an arduous one. This course will use a social science perspective to study the global transition to sustainable energy systems. Topics will include various energy systems: fossil fuels, hydropower, geothermal, nuclear, solar, and wind. We will study examples from different countries and regions—using a sociological perspective on how human society functions—to better understand the challenges and opportunities presented by sustainable energy goals.

INSTRUCTOR: Bodi Vasi is the Daniel McLean Research Fellow and associate professor with appointments in the UI Tippie College of Business and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Sociology. His recent book, Winds of Change: The Environmental Movement and the Global Development of the Wind Energy Industry, will soon be joined by one titled, Turning the Energy Titanic: Collaboration, Conflict, and the Global Transition to Renewable Energy Systems.

The radical wing of the Reformation produced several groups that believed only adults should be baptized, killing another human being was always wrong, church and state should be separate, and church authority should be lodged in all members. These beliefs brought severe persecution, and several thousand were killed in the decades following the movements’ beginning in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525. This course will examine the evolution of the Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites, their distinctive practices, and their influence in society. Small in number, they attract attention because of their unusual lifestyles.

INSTRUCTOR: Frank Yoder grew up on a farm near Kalona and attended a one-room country school. He earned a degree in history and religion from the University of Iowa and advanced degrees in history from the University of Chicago. He taught courses in American history, including a course on the Amish.

Like the prairie itself, this course will attract the naturalists, conservationists, writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, and outdoor enthusiasts among us. The course’s two instructors hope to inspire new understandings of the midwestern tallgrass prairie by encouraging students to appreciate the prairie through the heart, the mind, and the senses. Class discussions will center around themes in the instructors’ book; works by other prairie writers, artists, and ecologists; and a broad sharing of art and photography. Weekly topics include cultivating a sense of wonder, using the prairie to inspire change, restoring prairie ecologies, and exploring the diversity of prairie plants.

INSTRUCTORS: Cindy Crosby is the author of Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History; Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit with Thomas Dean; and The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction. Thomas Dean is the senior presidential writer and an editor at the University of Iowa, where he also teaches interdisciplinary humanities and writing courses. In addition to the book Tallgrass Conversations, he has published essays in national and regional publications, as well as a book of essays titled Under a Midland Sky.

This course offers a critical overview of singer-songwriter (and 2016 Nobel Prize winner) Bob Dylan’s seven-decades-long career, with a special emphasis on his persistent engagement with many aspects of American history and culture. The course will proceed in a loose chronology, with sessions devoted to major "eras" of his elusive persona (as folk singer, rock star, minstrel/preacher, and historian/archivist), examining key songs and events within each period. Film and television clips will help trace Dylan’s shifting career, and recommended readings drawn from the vast literature on Dylan will be provided.

INSTRUCTOR: Corey K. Creekmur will retire in 2026 as associate professor in the Departments of Cinematic Arts, English, and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the UI. He has served as president of the Comics Studies Society and on the executive boards of the Society for Cinema Studies and FilmScene. His teaching and research often focus on the relationships of popular music and film.