Summer 2026 Sessions
CHILL at IPH
The Initiative
CHILL at IPH is a joint initiative between UNC Charlotte’s College of Humanities, Earth and Social Sciences and The Independent Picture House. We believe that higher learning belongs to everyone. This summer, from June through August 2026, we invite you to join us for 10 relaxed, discussion-based sessions designed for lifelong learners.
All sessions meet 4 times over a 2-week period, and are each 2 hours long from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm.
Registration is $150 per session, and participants enjoy a welcoming academic environment without grades and minimal homework. A dedicated “CHILL time” follows each session for informal discussion and community building. The program is open to all knowledge levels, fostering a welcoming space for curiosity and growth.
A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877
John David Smith, PhD | June 1, 3, 8, 10
Course Description ▾
Few subjects have captured Americans’ attention more than the Civil War and Reconstruction, events that ended African American chattel slavery and redefined American citizenship. President Abraham Lincoln and the Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass played central roles in the wartime process of emancipating the South’s four million enslaved persons, eliminating state sovereignty as a political force, and recasting the idea of American nationalism.
Participants in this course will examine how Lincoln and Douglass transformed the South’s 1861 rebellion from a conflict to keep the Union intact into a war of Black liberation. The first conversation will explore how Lincoln began the conflict determined to reunite the nation with or without slavery, while Douglass grasped the centrality of ending slavery to constructing a new nationalism including Black Americans. The second conversation will examine how the exigencies of internecine war prevented Lincoln from suppressing the South’s insurrection without freeing the slaves and making Black freedom a prerequisite for reunion. Viewing Edward Zwick’s 1989 epic Glory will illustrate aspects of the emancipation process.
The third and fourth classes will underscore how Lincoln’s successor President Andrew Johnson undercut the ideals of a new freedom for Black Americans, how radical Republicans triumphed during Congressional Reconstruction, and how reactionaries ultimately reversed course in 1876 and instituted Jim Crow. As W.E.B. Du Bois lamented in 1935: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”
Professor Bio ▾
John David Smith is the Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A Brooklyn, New York, native, he graduated with honors from Baldwin-Wallace College in 1971. He studied Southern and Civil War history at the University of Kentucky, receiving his Ph.D. in 1977. Smith has taught at several universities, including North Carolina State University and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München. He has lectured throughout the U.S. and in eleven foreign countries. Smith has written and edited thirty-two books. He has received many awards for his scholarship and teaching, including the Mayflower Society Award for Nonfiction and The Gustavus Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America. He currently is writing More than Forty Acres and a Mule: Racial Reparations in American History, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Jesus at the Movies
Kent Brintnall, PhD | June 2, 4, 9, 11
Course Description ▾
Efforts to depict the life of Jesus on film are almost as old as the medium itself. From the silent era through the age of classical Hollywood, from the height of independent filmmaking and into our current streaming age, filmmakers have been attracted to the words and deeds of this well-known figure of Western history. Like the gospel writers before them, each of these filmmakers have made an argument about who Jesus was, what he accomplished, and why his life mattered.
Like the gospel writers before them, their work responds to the cultural and political moment of its creation. In this course, we will discuss some key moments from the history of Jesus films to think through the ways that in the hands of filmmakers “Jesus” is a cipher for thinking about race, gender, sexuality, war, colonialism, and all manner of issues and questions. Participants will be given a selection of films they can consider screening outside of our time together.
Professor Bio ▾
Kent L. Brintnall is an associate professor at UNC Charlotte affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies, the Film Studies Program, and the Women’s & Gender Studies Program. His book Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure discusses the political operation of representations of suffering male bodies in film, religion, and visual art. He has been teaching and thinking carefully about Jesus films for the past two decades.
Writing Flash Memoir & Personal Stories
Mark Hall, PhD | June 15, 17, 22, 24
Course Description ▾
Are you ready to start writing your memoir or personal stories, but don’t know where to begin? This course will introduce you to a short form essay, called “flash.” Flash nonfiction is writing about actual people and events, defined by a small, narrow focus and extreme compression, just 750-1,000 words. Flash says what you've got to say using as few words, and as much beauty, as possible. An accessible, playful, potent form, flash nonfiction is growing in popularity, online and in print. Good flash, you’ll see, is like a lightning strike, providing readers a brilliant “flash” of insight.
During our two weeks together, you’ll study excellent examples of flash from leading literary magazines, such as Brevity, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hippocampus, Tahoma Literary Review, and The Citron Review. We’ll identify and practice various craft elements that make effective flash memoirs and personal stories. In this discussion-based writing workshop, you’ll begin four new pieces, share and discuss your works-in-progress with classmates, and learn about submitting your work for publication.
This course welcomes all writers (and aspiring writers), whether you're new to the form or finishing your first collection. Have you got a story to tell? Join us. Tell your story–in a flash.
Professor Bio ▾
For 35 years, Mark Hall has taught writing at eight different colleges and universities, from coast to coast. Currently, he teaches writing, rhetoric, literacy studies, and creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Around the Texts of Writing Center Work: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Tutor Education, winner of the 2018 International Writing Centers Association Outstanding Book Award. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Passengers Journal, Hippocampus Magazine, The Fourth River, Tahoma Literary Review, and others.
Goodbye, Lenin! and Hello, Berlin!
Heather Perry, PhD | June 16, 18, 23, 25
Course Description ▾
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was sudden, swift, and ... hilarious? Goodbye, Lenin!, the German blockbuster from 2003, is a satirical film telling the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic story of Germany's reunification after the Cold War. While most people welcomed the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, the reality of re-unification created numerous challenges for the two Germanys that had existed from 1949-1989.
This course starts with a screening of the internationally popular film -- and then uses the film as a lens through which to examine the collapse of the GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rocky reunification of two peoples and lands into the new Germany of the 21st century.
Professor Bio ▾
Heather R. Perry is an Associate Professor of History at UNC Charlotte whose research focuses on the social, cultural, and medical histories of modern warfare. She has published on the histories of war and medicine; technology and the body; disability studies; and most recently food, health, and nutrition on the German WWI home front. Her books include, Recycling the Disabled: Army, Medicine, and Modernity in WWI Germany, and the two co-edited volumes, The Central Powers in Russia’s Great War and Revolution: Enemy Visions and Encounters, 1914-1922 and Food, Culture, and Identity in Germany’s Century of War. Her ongoing work in Public History and Digital Humanities includes the international, bi-lingual project, The German Studies Collaboratory and Carolina in the Trenches – a digital project focused on North Carolina’s experiences during the Great War. She currently co-edits the journal First World War Studies and is researching the transnational experiences of German war-time internees.
Barbie: An American Icon
Sandra Watts, PhD | June 29, July 1, 6, 8
Course Description ▾
For six and a half decades, Barbie has served as a powerful cultural symbol reflecting changing ideas about social roles, beauty, work, and consumer identity in the United States. She’s also served as an ambassador of American culture worldwide. How can a plastic doll remain relevant across generations and borders for so many years? This course examines Barbie as a historical and cultural phenomenon who connects and reflects differing decades and generations of American experiences while somehow also remaining the same “person.” Situating Barbie within postwar American consumer culture, American social history, and film, we’ll explore how she has both reinforced and challenged social norms.
Through lectures, discussions, hands-on activities, and a make your own Barbie session, we’ll both analyze and play with ideas about Barbie. We’ll use video, film, print, and music to investigates major debates surrounding Barbie, including body image and beauty standards, women’s labor and ambition, globalization, and the role of play in American childhood. Whether you love her, hate her, or anywhere in between you’ll have space in this course to explore the context and concepts that keep Barbie in the public imagination as well as in museums, private collections, and children’s playrooms around the world.
Professor Bio ▾
Dr. Sandra Watts is Teaching Professor in Languages, Cultures, and Translation and Interdisciplinary Studies and the Academic Director of the B.S. in Professional Studies at UNC Charlotte. She holds an AB cum laude in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and Masters and PhD degrees in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan. As part of her dedication to lifelong learners she’s become deeply involved in online, professional, and continuing education programs that allow people to pursue career goals and personal enrichment at any age. And yes, she’s had a complex relationship with Barbie!
Wes Anderson’s Elaborate Archaeology of Moving Pictures
Will Davis, MA | June 30, July 2, 7, 9
Course Description ▾
Like his films, Texas-born Wes Anderson exists in a world all his own, somewhere between independent filmmaker, mainstream arthouse director and surprising cultural figure. In this course students will explore Anderson's cinematic evolution via feature-length films and stop-motion animation as well as through shorts, commercial and music video works. Blending his own lived experiences with a recurring cast of characters, students will discover filmmakers, photographers and writers in conversation with Anderson's works. Scanning characters donned in pastel uniforms captured with angular precision, the course will get to the core of Anderson's singular, methodical style blending dry humor and melancholic longing into worlds that carefully exist between childlike wonder and disillusionment.
Professor Bio ▾
William Stephen Davis is an educator, filmmaker, multimedia artist and musician from the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina. He has taught in the Film Studies Program at UNC Charlotte since 2008. His works have been screened in festivals and galleries including TS1 Gallery (Beijing, China), KIT Museum (Düsseldorf, Germany), Yale University, Hollyshorts, NewFilmmakers NY and Sidewalk Film Festival among others. He is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, multiple grant recipient from the Knight Foundation and Arts & Science Council and a Goodyear Arts collective member. He is Founder + Creative Director of production company Small Creatures and performs music under the moniker Rasmus Leon. More can be found at williamstephendavis.com.
Silver, Hook, and Sparrow: Disney and the History of Caribbean Piracies
Peter Ferdinando, PhD | July 13, 15, 20, 22
Course Description ▾
The Caribbean had successive waves of raiders, from privateers like Francis Drake and Piet Heyn to buccaneers like Henry Morgan and, of course, Blackbeard, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and other out-and-out pirates. These men and women were famous in their own times. Their exploits appeared in numerous published accounts that became best sellers of the day and are important primary source evidence for historians. Those same exploits remain hugely popular today, now mixed in with dashes of Hollywood fiction and pinches of Disney magic. From the gripping voyage of Jim Hawkins and the animated adventures of Peter Pan to a thrilling ride through the Pirates of the Caribbean, encounters with pirates are prominent in popular culture.
This class will take you through the history of Caribbean privateers, buccaneers, and pirates while at the same time sprinkling in that popular culture from then and now. Whether you cheered or booed Long John Silver, Captain Hook, and Captain Jack Sparrow, this class is for you. Watch ya step as you board the boat and ye be warned that you may get a little wet!
Professor Bio ▾
Peter J. Ferdinando is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He studies the history of the maritime Atlantic, especially the interaction of Europeans and Native Americans in the waters of Florida and the Caribbean. His current book project, “Rich from the Sea”: Indigenous Wrecking and Maritime Trade in the Atlantic World, examines how Florida’s Native Americans adapted their existing maritime skills as an effective strategy to exploit the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch vessels dashed on the rocks and reefs during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
AI: The good, the bad, and the ugly in Charlotte and around the world
Helen Davies, PhD | July 14, 16, 21, 23
Course Description ▾
AI is everywhere these days. A few questions plague most of us, such as;
“What on earth actually is AI?”
“What am I supposed to do with this? Should I be using this?”
“What is this new technology doing to our already fast-paced world?”
As much as I wish I could give you simple answers to all of these questions, I cannot. No one can. We will, however, touch on each of these subjects as well as the more lived experiences and personal questions that we grapple with in this new age. What does it mean to read, write, think, and create in this world of AI? Have these things shifted? How does AI affect our city?
We will briefly cover what this technology actually is and how it fits in with prior tech, and we will do some hands-on experiments with the technology. We will then step back and discuss the environmental implications, how we collectively feel it might affect Charlotte, and some potential ways it could impact our future. I will introduce you to stories, scientific ideas, art, and interviews as we grapple with how other people envision this future developing - and we will decide if we agree with them.
Professor Bio ▾
Helen Davies is an assistant professor at UNC Charlotte in the English department and is a joint faculty member in the School of Data Science. She currently has a Gambrell Faculty Fellowship through the Charlotte Urban Institute to look at AI usage in our city. Helen's work focuses on the intersection of digital humanities and medieval literature. She uses multispectral imaging, a technology originally designed for satellite imaging, to recover documents that you cannot otherwise see. As an expert in the digital humanities, Helen studies technology and its implications for society and vice versa. Her recent work can be found in Studi Francesi, Studia Celtica Fennica, Digital Philology, and Dark Archives.
What does Pinocchio still have to tell us?
Daniela Cunico Dal Pra, PhD | July 27, 29, August 3, 5
Course Description ▾
From a mischievous block of wood to a global cultural icon, the story of Pinocchio is far more than a children’s fable. We invite you to a 4-part seminar series, “What Does Pinocchio Still Have to Tell Us?” where we peel back the layers from Carlo Collodi’s 1883 masterpiece through some most significant cinematic evolutions, adaptations and interpretations.
This series offers a critical analysis of how Pinocchio’s journey reflects the anxieties, the culture and the values of different eras. We begin with Collodi’s original novel, exploring its dark, subversive roots in post-unification Italy; we then trace the puppet’s transformation through the Silent Era with Giulio Antamoro’s 1911 surrealist vision; the Golden Age, with Walt Disney’s 1940 moralizing American masterpiece; then with the Modern Reinterpretations of Matteo Garrone’s 2019 return to gothic and dark realism and Guillermo del Toro’s 2023 dystopic exploration of disobedience and fascism* (if we can use the term). Together, we will examine themes of pedagogy, authority, citizenship, fatherhood, and what it truly means to be “real” in an ever-changing world.
Professor Bio ▾
Daniela Cunico Dal Pra is a Teaching Professor in Italian. Currently she is the coordinator and advisor of the Italian Program and Film Studies at UNC Charlotte. She teaches Italian language, including upper levels, as well as translation; she designed all the topics in Italian courses currently offered at UNC Charlotte. Since 2014, she organized and lead the Spring Break Study Abroad to Italy Program; in 2018 she initiated the Summer in Rome Program, in collaboration with the College of Arts+Architecture. She collaborates with the UNC Charlotte Honors College. She is interested in Italian literature and film, Italian history with special focus on Italian and Italian-American Mafia, Migrations across the Mediterranean Sea, Italian Business, and European Art History. She also works on the translation of memoirs and novels from Italian to English. She promotes the Italian Culture at UNC Charlotte and within the community of Charlotte by organizing cultural events (Opera, arts events, films and lectures). She cooperates with Casa della Cultura Italiana of Charlotte. Through this partnership, each year one student of Italian at UNC Charlotte receives a scholarship of $2,000 to study in Italy.
Capitalism in Action
Jurgen Buchenau, PhD | July 28, 30, August 4, 6
Course Description ▾
A discussion of four important topics in the long and varied global history of capitalism. The first class examines the origins of capitalism in the early modern era (c. 1500-1800). The second discussion will introduce students to the rise of industrial capitalism and corporations in the nineteenth century. The third class will feature a discussion of the Great Depression as an example of boom and bust cycles in the twentieth-century capitalist economy, and the final class will present the students with an opportunity to talk about current trends, including financialization, the rise and decline of neoliberalism, and the role of new digital technologies. In all, attendees will get a good grasp of the major conceptual tools to understand capitalist economies and how they evolved over time. The instructor will provide students with short reading assignments to help prepare them for the classes.
Professor Bio ▾
Jürgen Buchenau is the Dowd Term Chair of Capitalism Studies and Professor of History and Latin American Studies at UNC Charlotte. He received his Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1993 and has taught at UNC Charlotte since 1999, serving as the founding Director of Latin American Studies, the long-term chair of the Department of History, and the director of the Capitalism Studies program. Buchenau has authored and edited thirteen books, including Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution (2007), winner of the Alfred B. Thomas Book Award of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social Upheaval and the Challenge of Rule since the Late Nineteenth Century (2013, with Gilbert M. Joseph), The Sonoran Dynasty in Mexico: Revolution, Reforms, and Repression (2023); and The United States and Mexico: Unequal Neighbors. Buchenau is the editor of the “Americas in the World” book series at the University of New Mexico Press and the editor-in-chief of The Latin Americanist. His research has been funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.
UNC Charlotte's College of Humanities, Earth and Social Sciences (CHESS) is the university's largest college, offering diverse programs in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and military science. It focuses on critical thinking, research, and community engagement, providing 46+ undergraduate degrees, 16 master's degrees, and 5 doctoral degrees.
The Independent Picture House is Charlotte's only nonprofit community cinema, dedicated to educating, engaging, and enabling individuals through the power of international, independent, and arthouse films.