Course Description

Instructor: Michael McDavid

Emory University’s Michael C Carlos Museum is one of Atlanta’s cultural gems. Its collections focus on ancient Egypt and the Middle East, Southeast Asia, arts of the Americas, ancient Greece and Rome, and Africa. In this course the instructor, a docent at the museum, will select one or more objects for each session. He will then construct a lecture on a more general topic based on the objects chosen. For example, he might select some Egyptian hieroglyphics or a cuneiform tablet and present a lecture on the history of writing systems. Each course session will be a stand-alone presentation. For the final session we will visit the Carlos and have a docent-led tour to view the objects studied during the course.

Note* The last session will be a visit to the museum for those students wanting to attend. 

Instructor Bio:
Michael McDavid has been interested in history since the second grade. Over the years his primary focus settled on European history, although if it happened in the past it was of potential interest. Michael majored in history as an undergrad at Furman University, then received master’s degrees in European history and library science from Emory University. To earn money, he was a library manager at Equifax Inc and Georgia State University. During this same time to satisfy his historical itch Michael taught history at Georgia Perimeter College as an adjunct faculty member. Now after retiring from the Boston Consulting Group, he is privileged to offer courses at OLLI on favorite topics such 19th century Europe and his favorite “sub-specialty”, the role of monarchy past and present.