Events Calendar

Bulldogs of the Last Decade

Stop by and enjoy a drink, snacks and learn about Yale in NYC with other recent graduates!

This event will feature alumni organizations including the Yale Alumni Association, Yale.NYC and more. Members will be on hand to share about their events and activities helping you to connect with fellow Yalies. This is a great opportunity to see what alumni opportunities are at your fingertips and how they can enrich your New York City experience.

Since ancient times, narratives of transformation have held a special fascination. From Greco-Roman myths via the Scriptures and on to medieval fairy tales, Gothic novels, and modernist short stories, literature has used the metaphor of transformation to address issues of gender, identity, social change, and the essential duality of human nature. Perhaps no era yielded greater tales of this sort than the Victorian Age, itself a period caught up in the throes of social, scientific, and industrial change. Join Professor Peter Conolly-Smith for a close reading of three classic tales of transformation from the height of Victorianism to the immediate post-Victorian era: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886); Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw, 1913); and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920). We will discuss these three marvelous texts in terms of their literary craft and in the context of their eventful times.​ 

Why is Dante the most celebrated Italian author? What is his lasting cultural impact on European literature? How does his work help readers understand Medieval History of XIII and XIV century? The course is a critical and interdisciplinary analysis of Dante's Paradiso, and his ascent through the ten Spheres of Heaven until his final encounter with "that love which moves the heaven and the other stars." As an introduction to the Divine Comedy's last cantica, the course pays close attention to Dante's crucial theological and philosophical concerns at play in his view of salvation and resurrection. Emphasis is on ethical, political, and religious sources of the Comedy and how they inform Dante's structuring of his work and his vision of the creation. A close reading of the text will allow us to acquire an in-depth understanding of how Dante's idea of Paradise is tied to his perception of the cosmos and the Ptolemaic conception of the universe. We will read Dante's idea of Paradise to comprehend his prophetic message and learn how this masterpiece of Italian literature can be read today.

This class will look at some of the most important strategic issues facing the world today. It will examine the history of debt and public finance in various countries and how these are connected across countries. The class will consider the importance of trade, aid, and human development in multiple parts of the world. It will look at the problems and prospects of inequality and inflation. It will investigate the history and analyses of booms and busts in various markets, such as stocks, bonds, housing, and commodities. It will take a hard look at the natural and other resources the world may need for the future and how they are interrelated, such as water, food, energy, minerals, metals, and land. The class will wrap up with a discussion on what we can do, as a world, at many levels of leadership, about the problems and opportunities given by the issues and opportunities discussed. Climate change, conflict, civil strife, and many other issues will also be discussed.
This practical class focuses on the real world, not a theoretical or wished-for one.
The class readings, audios, and videos are primarily short, practical, and packed with helpful information.

This class is a survey of American military history from the end of the wars with Native Americans to the conclusion of World War II.  Throughout the term we will look at the causes, course, and consequences of the wars (major and minor) that the United States fought during this period and discuss their relevance for current events.  Battles, tactics, strategies, and the evolution of the US military will play important parts in the story that we follow, along with a discussion of the impact that these have had on the military and the United States today.

When the Cold War ended, American foreign policy entered an entirely new era that required fresh thinking about the place of the United States in the world and of the international institutions created by the Second World War and its aftermath. Some experts proposed a return to an earlier concept for foreign policy: great power competition, as the best way to find a way forward. The attacks of 9/11 diverted the U.S. from this course, but with the death of Bin Ladin (and now the apparent defeat of the Islamic State), three administrations have chosen to craft foreign policies that use this concept. This course will look at “great power competition” as a way to organize American foreign policy—the good, the bad, and the ugly—through a historical framework. Beginning with its roots in the 19th century through to today, the course will examine how great power competition has influenced world affairs and the international system. Each week will not only discuss the historical issues raised by great power competition, but will also illuminate current crises involving Russia, China, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Iran. In the final class, we will ask ourselves if this is the right foreign policy choice for America.

This course covers the most significant major figures of the revolutionary generation for the purpose of illuminating the principal issues associated with the nation’s founding.  It is not a course in biography.  And its subject may appear anachronistic in that its principal dramatic personae are all white, all (save one) male, and all dead. But the course doesn’t aim to cover the entire history of the nation’s founding or its entire population.  Instead, it aims to draw historical knowledge from coverage of the most significant friendships and enmities among the revolutionary generation’s leaders and to focus on some of the enduring issues with which they grappled. The principal actors in that drama were George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.  Two significant other figures will put in appearances: Aaron Burr (not only because he killed Hamilton) and Abigail Adams—the latter not only the sole woman in the group but a formidable and influential character in her own right.  In focusing on the duos (friendly and oppositional) among them, we’ll address such historical issues as honor, leadership, race, political parties, international relations, governance, class, society, and legacy.  Yet while examining the past in all its pastness, we’ll keep an eye on how that past echoes in our time.  In short, this will be relevant history.

Sixty years ago, in the early postwar period, Eliot was the poet of choice. Before accusations of antisemitism, misogyny, and suspect politics tarnished his reputation, he enjoyed widespread eminence and authority. His daunting work -- Modernist, highly allusive, often seeming to resist interpretation rather than invite it—made “difficulty” the mark of high art. In response, academic critics have excavated his myriad sources and often approached his poems as problems to be solved. Others have traced his spiritual development from despair to faith, from The Waste Land’s cry of “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” to the hard-won affirmation of Four Quartets’ “all shall be well.” Our seminar will approach the major poetic works with no one methodology in mind. Looking for a way to read together, we will enjoy the process of group discussion, joining literary analysis to considerations of meaning.

This course will consider major themes in Rousseau's thought beginning with his "Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts," a work that set off a controversy throughout Europe. We will read the Discourse and some of Rousseau's responses to critics. Then we will turn to letters he wrote over the next couple of decades including a letter to Voltaire, letters to a woman with whom he was in love, letters to the head of the French agency charged with censorship, and a letter to a young man who wrote to him asking for advice. These letters address the issues of philosophy, morality, and religion that are at the core of Rousseau's thought.