The conference fee is $1,575 and includes all seminars below plus additional events. Classes are only offered when we’re at sea, between 8:30am and 7:30pm.
With a month go before before the presidential election, Joe Nocera surveys the economic landscape and gives his views on how the economic trends of the past few months have affected each of the candidates — and their party’s fortunes.
The last year has been consumed with fears about whether the European Union, born of such hope 20 years ago, can last. Joe Nocera offers a history of Eurozone, takes a close look at the sovereign debt problems that have created a crisis in Europe, and ponders its possible affects on America and the world.
You can scarcely open the sports pages these days without seeing some new scandal flaring: recruiting violations, under the table payments, even, last year, sexual abuse scandals at Penn State and Syracuse. Joe Nocera offers his view of why these scandals keep occuring — and how, ultimately, to clean up college sports. He will present his plan for paying college football and men’s basketball players — while also giving them more incentive to graduate.
During his tenure as executive editor, Bill Keller used to have two yearly sessions called Throw Things at Bill, in which New York Times staff members could ask him questions about anything. Borrowing from Bill’s bag of tricks, Joe will take on all comers, talking about life on the Op-Ed page, what it was like to write about Steve Jobs and T. Boone Pickens, who he admires (and who he doesn’t) in business — and anything else.
Trace the course of the new play development process, from inception to world premiere. Go behind the scenes and learn how theater is made, start to finish, focusing on the involvement of writer and director. You’ll take home lessons in collaboration, interdisciplinary thinking and managing creative minds.
Here are the slides (1mb file).
Using the lens of dramatic literature, examine seven global trends that are changing everything about the way we live and work. Learn how theater arts can help us understand and interact with contemporary global change in the realms of Population, Resource Management, Technology, Information Flow, Economic Integration, Conflict and Governance. We’ll discuss how story telling has become influential in a variety of sectors, including business, politics, advertising and science as a way to transmit information and facilitate actions as citizens of our country and the world.
‘Tis the season. We’ll examine the 2012 presidential election as theater, with critiques of the “performances” by the candidates. Break down the staging of political events, analyze the iconic imagery used around the candidates and discuss the role of the debate in the electoral process. Hone your ability to break political performance into its components, and learn to assess how effectively politicians make their case.
Ancient Greek drama, at its peak in the 5th century BC, continues to have a huge influence on the world. Explore the performance traditions that merged to create Greek tragedy and comedy. The lecture will help create a complete picture of what a performance of the plays of Aeschylus or Sophocles was like, including its cultural and political context at the time. Special emphasis will be placed on the history of the performance space, as we get ready to tour the amazing ruins at Ephesus. Though built by the Romans, these theaters are incredible examples of the Greek performance space.
Here are the slides (1mb file).
How are the presidential candidates and their advisors preparing for the last few weeks before the election? How have the strategic decisions they’ve made shaped the current political landscape? What lessons can be learned from recent political history about how this election may play out? Learn how politicians develop, adjust and deliver effective messages to the voters, and how their campaign teams move those messages through news, paid and online media. Hear what it’s really like inside a campaign strategy session when the stakes are at their highest.
Why are some voters more equal than others? How do candidates prioritize their time and money in a closely fought campaign? (And why does a presidential election always seem to come down to Ohio?) This session will focus on the means by which the two presidential campaigns are targeting the demographic, geographic and ideologic communities that will decide this election. Join a conversation that will outline how political strategists decide which voters to target, which states and communities receive the most attention and how critical voting blocs can impact an election’s outcome.
What are the consequences for democracy when voters can construct an information environment in which they only receive news and opinion with which they already agree? Online communications and the growing influence of social networking have allowed voters to have unprecedented levels of influence in an election campaign, but these tools have also made it easier than ever to avoid hearing from other points of view. How can voters navigate a political world dominated by Fox News and MSNBC? Share thoughts on both the benefits and downsides of technology on the way our campaigns are run, fought and won.
Once the dust from the campaign trail has settled, the next president and the new Congress will be forced to deal with an unprecedented array of global economic, security, environmental, and diplomatic challenges. Throughout our nation’s history, post-war and post-recessionary time frames have led to extended periods of inward focus. Can the U.S. afford a new isolationism in an era when the world continues to draw closer together? How would the two parties handle these challenges differently, and which issues are beyond partisanship? Discuss the path ahead for the country’s leaders — and for the rest of us — on issues ranging from trade to immigration to economic and cultural integration.
We live in an era of mind-boggling cultural abundance, with a dizzying array of products — movies, art, television, music, books, games — competing for our time, money and attention. Thanks to the Internet and social networks, there are also new ways to find consumer advice and exchange opinions. Does this mean that traditional criticism is now obsolete, or that everyone is a critic? Join a discussion of how criticism has and has not changed and its continued importance as a way of thinking about the arts and the larger world.
In honor of the impending election, we kick off a discussion of the frequently complicated relationship between Hollywood and Washington with a screening of a classic political film. The selection, like the election results, will be a surprise.
Foreign films account for a tiny fraction of the annual American box office, but we are living in an extraordinary era of global cinematic creativity. Political, economic and technological changes have spurred innovative storytelling — and in some cases a commercial revival — across Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa. We will survey this landscape, with attention to national cinemas (eg., Romania, Brazil, South Korea, Iran) and film-makers (Hong-Song Soo, Jia Zhiangke, Lucretia Martel, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes) who deserve to be better known to American movie-lovers.
In the 1980s, Pedro Almodovar played an important role in Spain’s post-Franco cultural awakening, winning a cult following for his irreverent and risque sex farces. In the decades since, as his mastery of filmmaking has grown, he has become a leading figure in world cinema, maturing as an artist without surrendering his taste for provocation. Our discussion of his remarkable career will include examinations of his early and later work, his collaborations with (and discoveries of) international stars like Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, and his explorations of the themes of love, sexuality, honor and revenge.
2012 marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments becoming a law. This legislation has been monumental in womens’ and girls’ sports participation. But can womens’ sports ever become a financially viable commodity on the sports landscapes in America? How do attitudes about women — by women and men — impact this viability? And does it help that many sports are inaccessible to the economically disadvantaged? While the enactment of a federal gender-equity law 35 years ago has spurred significant growth in women’ intercollegiate athletics, certain racial disparities persist. We’ll take a look at the persistent gender, economic, and racial divides that exist even as Title IX attempts to bridge the gap.
Intercollegiate athletics combines a test of body and mind and provides opportunity in the form of scholarships. College presidents and educators have failed to meet the challenge of bringing intercollegiate athletics into the academic mainstream, while using high-profile programs as cash registers and on-campus entertainment.
Academia does not respect intercollegiate athletics as a viable field of study that deserves — no, requires — its own department. Athletics shares a bond with drama, art and music in that each of those disciplines had to claw their way to respectability on liberal arts campuses.
We’ll discuss the roots of the siloed nature of college athletics and academics, what the nature of the problem is and its implications for all involved. You’ll find out how can athletics, both in practice and as an academic discipline, can become an integral, not reciprocal, part of college experience.
The recent lockouts of professional football and basketball players by their respective owners illustrated just how powerless professional athletes really are and how they all are voluntary residents of the sports plantation — black athletes, white athletes and everyone in between. African American athletes are merely symbols of that powerlessness. Focusing on African American athletes, we’ll take a look at the troubling dualities accompanying black participation in professional athletics, the “conveyor belt” that cultivates individual talent but often encourages a disconnect with communities from which they come.
Joe Louis, the former heavyweight champion of the world, was the first universally embraced black American hero. In a time of war, Louis united a divided country, not by words but with deeds. Is it possible for an athlete or entertainer to galvanize the country today? Denver broncos quarterback Tim Tebow struck a chord during the 2011 National Football League season. But Tebow&rsquop;s popularity ignited a national debate around religion and freedom of speech. Have we become a nation hopelessly divided by differences and distinctions, unable to agree upon an “All-American Hero”?
Every time you turn on the TV there is another recommendation. We are told to take aspirin and then told not to. We are told coffee and red wine are good for us and then we hear, well, maybe they are not. And it does not stop with health and medicine. By its very nature, scientific news keeps changing. But how are consumers and those who want to understand the latest findings supposed to deal with that shifting landscape? We will look at some of the biggest scientific mistakes and shifting advice, talk about how science reporters try to explain complicated material and give some tips on how to sort it all out.
Here are the slides (3mb file).
In the old days, covering a big story out of our nation’s capital was pretty straightforward. The New York Times and other media would mobilize their Washington bureaus to do a play-by-play of the legislative process, from introduction through passage to Supreme Court challenges. These days, it’s much more complicated, and when President Obama proposed overhauling the nation’s health care system, a host of journalists had to get involved — often in surprising ways. We’ll look at this huge, continuing story from the perspective of The Times’s science desk.
So they have good restaurants in New Jersey? What it was like to spend 10 years as a food critic for The Times — and why I gave up everybody’s dream job.
Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Times Journeys is produced by Insight Cruises.