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The Encore Series

Bringing You the Best of Brandeis

Through shared learning with the Brandeis University community, The Encore Series utilizes videotaped presentations of renowned Brandeis faculty and guest speakers discussing a variety of subjects — programs that appeal to the student in each of us.

The DVDs can be screened in a small-group setting or can easily be projected for a larger group. The Encore Series includes the DVD and discussion questions.

The Places in Between
By Rory Stewart

In 2002, in the midst of war and a typically harsh winter, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamets burned and emptied by the Taliban and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals and listened to ther stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way, he met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers.

Through these encounters, Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between. 

Old School
By Tobias Wolff

"Old School" is a celebration of literture and a delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art. Set in a New England prep school in the early 1960s, the novel imagines a final, pastoral moment before the explosion of the civil-Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the suicide of Ernest Hemingway.

Polio: An American Story
By David M. Oshinsky, PhD'71

Historian David M. Oshinsky won a Pulitzer Prize for his portrait of American's polio scare. Oshinsky dramatically recounts our country's unparalleled mobilization againt the 20th century's most feared disease. Materials include author's presentation and questions for discussion.

How to Read the Bible
By Marc Brettler, Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies

Watch the author's presentation in the student campus center before discussing his questions. Read the interview on NPR's "Fresh Air."

Zabelle
By Nancy Kricorian

This is the story of a family's discovery of its Armenian heritage and clutural identity through the passing of the family matriarch, Zabelle. The book touches upon the theme of identity, the complexity of human interactions, coming to terms with one's own identity and finding a place in a larger community.

Yellow
By Don Lee

Set in the fictional California town of Rosarita Bay, Don Lee's "Yellow" explores what it means to be Asian in America through the postimmigrant examination of identity, race and love. In this provocative collection, Korean, Japanese and Chinese Americans flirt across and within racial lines, and end up racking not only fears of being ethnically "yellow," but also the universal terror of failure and abandonment.

Profiles in Courage Series

Revisit the popular television series based on JFK's memorable book by Thomas Doherty, professor of American studies.

• Appointment of Louis Brandeis as the first Jew to the United States Supreme Court during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.
• The Leo Frank Story

Episodes are on DVD and accompanied by questions for discussion.