Reel History: The American Journey in Eight Acts (In-person)
Winter (14+ hours) | Registration opens 11/24/2025 12:00 AM EST
This course explores the American experience through eight dramatic feature films, each representing a pivotal period in U.S. history, from colonial settlement to the present day. We’ll view and discuss films illuminating defining moments such as colonization, slavery, immigration, the Great Depression, civil rights, the Vietnam era, urban challenges, and contemporary social change. Here is the roster with the topics that each film addresses:
- The New World (2005) Native-European contact. 135 min. PG-13
- 12 Years a Slave (2013) Slavery. 134 min. R
- Lincoln (2012) Civil War leadership. 150 min. PG-13
- The Boys in the Boat (2023) Success in the Depression. 123 min. PG-13
- Selma (2014) The Civil Rights movement. 128 min. R
- The Deer Hunter (1991) Vietnam War. 183 min. R
- Hidden Figures (1991) Competency in the face of prejudice. 127 min. PG
- Nomadland (2020) Current economic displacement. 107 min. R
This course will consist of discussions between the Study Leader and participants.
Stephen Flanders
BS, MArch, M.I.T. School of Architecture; ME, Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering. Flanders is a retired research supervisory engineer from the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. Among his interests are editing and creating articles in Wikipedia—a topic he has presented in Osher classes, three times. More recently, he has presented film series on Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, on the films of Akira Kurosawa and their Western remakes, and on delectable food films.