Winter Course: Southern Literature
The class will focus on the genius that is 20th century southern literature.
Tennessee Williams, along with Eugene O'Neill, ushered in a new age of tragedy,
the first since the early 1600's. Faulkner became THE American high modernist,
the literary model for the current crop of truly great writers, Toni Morrison and
Cormac McCarthy. Flannery O'Connor's horrific short stories re-invented southern
gothic literature and put religious irony at the center of everything. Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man stands as the giant African-American novel, a black Moby Dick for the
20th century. All are completely original and all re-invent their genres. The question
for the class: why did the South produce these remarkable geniuses?
Spring Course: High Modernism
The universe was re-invented between 1900 and 1940. Freud's disturbing ideas rumbled
through not only psychology, but through literature, art, and music, as well. Einstein
re-thought time and space, the twin fabrics of matter. Atomic theory entered the consciousness
of everyone. Eliot and Pound fragmented and re-ordered poetry, combining the principles of both
Freud and of Einstein. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner took experimental
narrative techniques and made them even more radically experimental. The dual offspring of time,
memory and experience became true streams of consciousness. The class will try to think through
these startling changes and to discuss the implications for the age-old philosophic question:
what is a human being and what, if anything, does life mean?
Summer Courses: The World's Religions
The class will examine Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. We will seek
commonalities and distinctions. We will seek to understand the basic terms, the rituals and
practices, and the meanings of each religion.
Creative Writing
There will be classes in both poetry and fiction writing.
Classes cost $375 and last for eight weeks, meeting Tuesdays from 7:00-8:30
The Southern Literature class begins January 15.
Class limit: 12 people
Classes will be held at
5 Oglethorpe Professional Blvd
For information or to enroll email: rebraithwaite@gmail.com