I submitted a class for the Spring term titled Choral Masterworks. This class will have videos and discussion of great works of choral music spanning the period from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries. I continue to work on this class every day and have now completed five of the ten classes. Unfortunately, it now appears improbable that there will be a Spring term this year. Nevertheless, I will complete this course to be ready whenever classes resume.
At some time in the next year I will lead a repeat of The Empire of Cotton class. This class discusses the pivotal role played by a seemingly innocuous fiber in the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cotton textiles were once luxury goods because the manufacturing process was so labor intensive. This spawned the industrial revolution as a series of inventor found ways to create more fabric with lower cost. This had unfortunate consequences, first with the rise of huge factories with inhumane working conditions, and secondly a huge demand for raw cotton than inspired increased brutality on American cotton plantations to boost output.
There are several more coursed on which I have started work, but I will hold off describing them until the picture becomes clearer as to a possible date of classes resuming.
