Alumni College

Return to Learn at Alumni College!

Learn from some of the College’s finest faculty while enjoying delicious meals and spectacular views on our Bread Loaf campus. 

Alumni College takes place August 28–31, 2025. 

Registration opens April 9, 2025 at noon ET.

Event Highlights

• Cocktail hours outside the Little Theater
• Movie Night!
• Conversations over meals and evening receptions
• And five courses taught by some of Middlebury’s finest instructors

More details will be available on the Schedule page closer to the summer.

Pricing

ADA Accommodations

The Disability Resource Center (DRC) provides a range of supportive accommodations for students with disabilities at Middlebury. For ADA accommodations, please reach out to the DRC staff at ada@middlebury.edu.

Questions?

Email us at alumni@middlebury.edu or call the Alumni Office at 802-443-5183.

Course Descriptions

The English East India Company
Ian Barrow

*This class is now full.*

The English East India Company can be said to have been the most important company ever founded. In existence between 1600 to 1858, it ran a complex, highly integrated, and truly global trading network. 

It governed territories that far exceeded, in extent and population, the British Isles. It minted coins in its name, established law courts and prisons, sponsored scientific expeditions, prosecuted wars, and accounted for about 14 percent of all imports to Britain during much of the 18th century. It supplied the tea for Boston’s tea party, the saltpeter for Britain’s gunpowder industry, and the opium for China’s principal 19th-century addiction. 

In this course we will learn about this remarkable company’s astonishing rise, unexpected expansion, and ultimate decline.

• View or download welcome letter and homework for Ian Barrow.

Demystifying AI
Amy Collier

*This class is now full.*

Beyond buzzwords and technological promises lies a complex landscape of tools reshaping how we work, create, and connect. This course invites you to explore generative AI and to develop discernment for both its possibilities and problems. 

Through discussions and hands-on explorations, we’ll investigate 1) AI’s capabilities and limitations, 2) how AI is transforming industries, creative processes, and decision making, 3) ethical questions that arise as AI becomes more embedded in daily life, and 4) strategies for thoughtfully incorporating—or deliberately limiting—AI in your own life. 

No technical expertise required—this course is designed for curious minds seeking clarity amid AI hype. We’ll move past uncritical excitement and reflexive fear to develop nuanced, informed perspectives on this significant technological shift. Laptops or tablets (iPad or equivalent) required.

• View or download welcome letter and homework for Amy Collier.

Turkey’s Authoritarian Transformation: Lessons for Global Democracies
Şebnem Gümüşçü

In this course, we will trace global democratic recession through the example of Turkey. A NATO member and EU candidate, Turkey maintained strong ties with the West during and after the Cold War. A secular republic with democratic institutions since 1950, Turkey has been held up as a model for Muslim-majority nations. 

Turkey’s political trajectory has changed recently with Tayyip Erdoğan’s rise to power. In successive electoral victories since 2002, Erdoğan has amassed power, subverted Turkish democracy, and become a role model for aspiring autocrats. We will explore how Erdoğan undermined Turkish democracy, why people support him despite his authoritarian leadership, and the impact he has had inside and outside Turkey. We will discuss lessons from the Turkish case for well-established democracies.

• View or download welcome letter and homework for Şebnem Gümüşçü.

Visual and Literary Arts of the Harlem Renaissance and Its Aftermath
Jerry Philogene

*This class is now full.*

In this lecture and discussion-based course, participants will be introduced to some of the major intellectual and social issues of this period in American cultural history known as the “Harlem Renaissance” or the “New Negro Movement.” 

While exploring the rich visual arts of the era and through consideration of major visual and literary artists—painters, sculptors, and photographers, and writers, including Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois and Nella Larsen—the course probes the impetus behind and the meaning and legacy of a period in American history that saw a surge of African American artistic expressions. The course will conclude with a conversation on the literary influence of the Harlem Renaissance on James Baldwin.

• View or download welcome letter and homework for Jerry Philogene.

On Time: An Exploration of the History of Timekeeping
Susan Watson

*This class is now full.*

Time is at once familiar and confounding. After 60 years (1.9 billion seconds) or so of existence, you know it intimately. But what is time, really? The truth is, we don’t know. The most fundamental laws of physics don’t even include time, yet time is a constant presence in our lives. In this course, we explore the history of timekeeping, from sundials and mechanical clocks to modern atomic clocks capable of accuracy down to one ten-thousandth of a billionth of a second per day. Along the way, we will discuss the science underlying clocks as well as their impact on society. Readings will include excerpts from A Brief History of Timekeeping by Chad Orzel.

• View or download welcome letter and homework for Susan Watson.

Faculty Bios

Ian Barrow (The English East India Company)

Ian Barrow is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History and the outgoing director of the Axinn Center for the Humanities at Middlebury College. He has published three books on South Asian history, the latest being a history of the English East India Company. He is currently writing a textbook on the history of the independence of India and Pakistan. He has a side interest in numismatics and is researching colonial Indian currency and coinage. He teaches courses on South Asia, as well as seminars on broader subjects such as the Second World War, the 1970s, and Agatha Christie.

Amy Collier (Demystifying AI)

As Middlebury’s associate provost for digital learning, Amy Collier connects digital technologies to academic priorities and facilitates critical conversations about AI in education. She directs the Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ), which empowers faculty to explore technologies and pedagogies that enhance student learning. Amy cofounded Higher Education After Surveillance, an organization reimagining alternatives to exploitative data practices in education. Her thought leadership spans critical instructional design, data privacy, and design justice—creating frameworks for ethical approaches to digital learning while advocating for equity and student agency in technology-enhanced environments.

Şebnem Gümüşçü (Turkey’s Authoritarian Transformation)

Şebnem Gümüşçü is an associate professor of political science at Middlebury College. Her teaching and research interests include political Islam, democratic backsliding, and political parties in Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond. She is the author of Democracy, Identity, and Foreign Policy in Turkey: Hegemony through Transformation (2014) and Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia (2023). Her research has been widely published in academic journals, and her opinion pieces have appeared in The Washington Post and on the Wilson Center and German Marshall Fund blogs. She is often interviewed by various media outlets, including Le Monde, Vox, and BBC Türkçe.

Jerry Philogene (Visual and Literary Arts of the Harlem Renaissance)

Jerry Philogene is associate professor and director of the Black Studies Program at Middlebury College. Professor Philogene specializes in interdisciplinary American cultural history, art history, and visual arts of the Caribbean and the African diaspora with an emphasis on the Francophone Caribbean. Her publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues.

Dr. Philogene is also an independent curator. In 2023, she co-organized with Dr. Katherine Smith the Myrlande Constant: The Work of Radiance, an exhibition and accompanying catalogue on the contemporary textile works of Haitian artist Myrlande Constant at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Dr. Philogene is the recipient of a 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her current book manuscript, The Socially Dead and Improbable Citizen: Visualizing Haitian Humanity and Visual Aesthetics.

Susan Watson (On Time)

Susan Watson is an experimental physicist by training, with a BA in physics from UC Berkeley and a PhD in solid state physics from Cornell. Since arriving at Middlebury, she has mainly worked in the subfield of quantum device physics, exploring the ways in which quantum mechanics may be exploited to construct practical devices. Most recently Susan has enjoyed developing a series of experiments for our intermediate-level lab courses to introduce the strangeness of quantum mechanics to a new generation of students.