“We are in the business of making sure people live their happiest, most intellectually engaged lives,” says 92NY Director of Continuing Education Melanie Macchio. “Roundtable allows that to happen at a scale we never could have dreamed of even a couple of years ago.” Created during the pandemic as a learning platform to help people connect with some of the most respected experts in the world — and one another — over a shared intellectual passion, Roundtable has become an online learning destination like none other — and as we head into our 150th anniversary season, it continues to evolve.
From the beginning, Macchio and her colleagues have curated courses with a distinctly interdisciplinary spirit. One class might explore Leonardo Da Vinci’s connection to scientific innovation; another might examine how Mars has been represented in literature and film. “Roundtable is built on the assumption that real-world knowledge and curiosity grows from intellectual cross-pollination,” says Macchio. “We want you to not only understand the world around you, but to see it in a new light. We’re trying to alter and widen your perspective.”
This fall, that spirit of intellectual cross-pollination is front and center. You can discover how post-WWII British culture led Ian Fleming to create the character of James Bond — and what 007’s evolution over the years can tell us about our own changing culture — with historian Jeremy Black. You can unearth both the archeological and pop cultural underpinnings of the Book of Exodus — from ancient Egypt to Hollywood — with Jewish studies expert Gary A. Rendsburg. In celebration of our 150th anniversary, you can delve into how poet Emma Lazarus’ work teaching English to new immigrants at 92NY inspired her to write “The New Colossus,” immortalized on the Statue of Liberty, with biographer Esther Schor. You can read literary classics with award-winning authors like Lila Azam Zangeneh and Tessa Hadley. And this barely scratches the surface of Roundtable’s stunningly robust, diverse roster of upcoming courses.
But Roundtable has long had even bigger ambitions, and they’re starting to come to fruition. This year, Roundtable CEO Rolando Nuñez Baza and his team have introduced partnerships with a plethora of top-tier arts and culture institutions. It means that you can learn directly from the experts at places like Storm King, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Bronx Zoo, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and many others, giving you firsthand access to a treasure trove of materials and expertise that exists nowhere else — just as your own intellectual universe is always expanding, Roundtable is here to match it with the help of its partner institutions.
Beyond its grand intellectual ambitions, Roundtable is grounded by a passionate, tightly bound community of learners. “There’s an intimacy that comes from online learning,” says Macchio. “It allows people to ask questions more openly, and instructors play upon it too — often from their own offices, or their homes. It creates an atmosphere of warm, casual rigor. The people in these classes gather to discuss this material because they care about it on a very personal level.”
As we celebrate 92NY’s 150th anniversary, Macchio contends that one of the best gifts that Roundtable can offer is the city our beloved institution calls home. “Not everyone in the world has New York City at its fingertips,” she says. “We’re here to offer everybody entry into everything this incredibly complex, vibrant city has to offer. We’ve been doing this in the heart of Manhattan for 150 years. Now we’re amplifying it all over the world.”
To learn more about this season’s offerings, visit Roundtable.org.