Tutor: Erica Beall
Dates: September 18–19
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

Each of these modern Ekphrastic poems takes up as its subject a portrait rendered on canvas by a renowned artist. These poetic portraits of portraits explore what it means to look at, see, and express a human being.

Reading Assignments:

1. Elizabeth Jennings: “Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits” (poem)
   Rembrandt: Self-Portrait at the Age of 63 and Self-Portrait at the Easel (paintings).
2. X. J. Kennedy: “Nude Descending a Staircase” (poem)
   Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (painting)
3. Adrienne Rich: “Mourning Picture” (poem)
   Edwin Romanzo Elmer: Mourning Picture (painting)

Suggested text: Poems and images to be provided before the first seminar.

Tutor: Adam Schulman
Date: September 18–19
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is a masterful diagnosis of the infirmities of American democracy, and what can be done to mitigate them. The mark of a great writer is when what he has to say seems a thousand times more pertinent today than it could possibly have been when he wrote it almost 200 years ago.

Reading Assignments:

1. Volume 1: Author’s Introduction, Part 1, Chapter 3; Part 2, Chapters 7–8
2. Volume 2: Part 1, Chapters 1–3; Part 2, Chapters 1–10
3. Volume 2: Part 2, Chapters 11–15; Part 4, Chapters 6–8

Suggested text: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (trans. H. Mansfield) Chicago. ISBN-10: 0226805360.

Tutor: Christopher Nelson
Date: September 18–19
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

Of Jane Austen’s six perfect novels, Emma is thought by many to be the most perfect of all. A benevolent comedy with one subject in mind, the happy union of the title character—a woman of good character, capable of improving upon it—with the one man who can see beneath the surface of Emma’s frivolity.

Reading Assignments:

1. Part I, Chapters 1–18
2. Part II, Chapters 1–18 (OR, if not divided into parts, chapters 19–36)
3. Part III, Chapters 1–19 (end) (OR, if not divided into parts, then chapters 37–55)

Suggested text: Any text is acceptable.

Tutor: Nicholas Bellinson
Date: October 2–3
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings….”

Shakespeare’s Richard is a king of deep feeling, tragic consciousness, and exquisite poetry. His downfall casts a long shadow over Shakespeare’s England and initiated the so-called Henriad (with both parts of Henry IV and Henry V).

Reading Assignments:

1. Acts I and II
2. Acts III and IV
3. Act V

Suggested text: William Shakespeare, Richard II. New York: Signet, 1999. ISBN: 978-451-52719-6.

Tutor: Khafiz Kerimov
Date: October 2–3
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

Hadji Murat, one of Tolstoy’s late works—with which he may have struggled the most, and was only published after his death—describes Russia’s imperial expansion into Caucasus in the 19th century. Hadji Murat is a rebel commander fighting against the Russian Empire; however, he is forced to join the Russian forces to save his family. In Hadji Murat, Tolstoy returns to the subject of history (treated earlier in War and Peace) and the place of the human being in it.

Reading Assignments:

1. Chapters 1–9
2. Chapters 10–18
3. Chapters 19–25

Suggested text: Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky). Vintage 2021. ISBN: 978-0307951342.

This session is FULL
To be added to the waitlist, email annapolis.communityoutreach(at)sjc.edu

Tutor: David Townsend
Date: October 2–3
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

We will share the terrible beauty of Leonard Cohen’s love lyrics, the wrenching agony of his whole-hearted prayers, and the deep fearlessness of his encounters with pain, suffering, and mortality. A true poet of song, faith, and uncompromising spirit, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame praises Leonard Cohen’s “deep and timeless humanity touching our very soul”.

Reading Assignments:

1. “Suzanne”; “So Long Marianne”; “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”; “Bird on a Wire”; “Famous Blue Raincoat”; “Love is a Fire”
2. “Chelsea Hotel”; “Who By Fire?”; “Dance Me to the End of Love”; “If it Be Your Will”; “Hallelujah”
3. “...First We Take Manhattan”; “Ain’t No Cure for Love”; “I’m Your Man”; “Tower of Song”; “Waiting for a Miracle”; “Thousand Kisses Deep”

Suggested text: Leonard Cohen, Poems and Songs. Everyman Library. ISBN: 978-0307-59583-6.

Tutor: Louis Petrich
Date: October 16–17
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

This French historical novel, published anonymously in 1678 (Madame de Lafayette is the purported author) is an early classic of psychological realism. It is a love story (painfully unconsummated) that takes place mostly in the court of King Henry II of France, around 1558.

Reading Assignments:

1. Pages 1–52
2. Pages 52–104
3. Pages 104–156

Suggested text: Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Clèves (trans. Terence Cave) University Press. ISBN-10: 978-0199539170.

Tutor: Christopher Nelson
Date: October 16–17
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

These three plays are the first, the last, and the best of August Wilson’s Century Cycle of 10 plays exploring the heritage and experience of African Americans, decade by decade, over the course of the 20th century. All three plays take place in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. They are moving, haunting, and exuberantly humorous all at once.

Reading Assignments:

1. Gem of the Ocean
2. The Piano Lesson
3. Radio Golf

Suggested text:

• Gem of the Ocean, Theater Communications Group: ISBN: 13:978-1-55936-280-1.
• The Piano Lesson, Theater Communications Group: ISBN: 978-0-452-26534-9
• Radio Golf, Theater Communications Group: ISBN: 978-1-55936-308-2

Tutor: Khafiz Kerimov
Date: October 16–17
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

Notes from Underground is one of Dostoevsky’s earlier and most sophisticated novels, in which most of the themes that he later treats in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov are tightly concentrated. In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky presents the reader with the picture of a man (an underground man) struggling to understand his individual existence in the midst of a society that is founded on conformity and a nature whose laws are immutable.

Reading Assignments:

1. Part 1 (entire)
2. Part 2 (entire)
3. Part 2 (entire)

Suggested text: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsy). Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 978-0679734529.

Tutor: Erica Beall
Date: November 13–14
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

Jung’s lectures are both a critique and an extension of Freud’s theory of the unconscious. His clarity of expression and use of empirical evidence ground a rich psychology that ultimately aims to establish the principles of human flourishing.

Reading Assignments:

1. Lecture 2: “The Theory of Infantile Sexuality”
   Lecture 3: “The Concept of Libido”
   Lecture 4: “Neurosis and Aetiological Factors in Childhood”
2. Lecture 5: “Fantasies of the Unconscious”
   Lecture 6: “The Oedipus Complex”

3. Lecture 7: “The Aetiology of Neurosis”
   Lecture 8: “Therapeutic Principles of Psychoanalysis”

Suggested text: Carl Jung, Jung contra Freud: The 1912 Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis, (trans. R.F.C. Hull). ISBN-10: 0691152519.

This session is FULL
To be added to the waitlist, email annapolis.communityoutreach(at)sjc.edu

Tutor: David Townsend
Date: November 13–14
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

This remarkable 100-page narrative is a great book. You will experience “the entrance to the hell of slavery” and the unbowed strength of human character.

Reading Assignments: Entire book to be read before the first class.

Suggested text: Any edition is acceptable.

This session is FULL
To be added to the waitlist, email annapolis.communityoutreach(at)sjc.edu

Tutor: Erica Beall
Date: December 4–5
Cost: $180
Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon

Nietzsche offers a rich philosophical account of tragedy as an aesthetic, and as truth, by exploring its origins in Ancient Greek drama and lyric poetry. Alongside selections from Birth of Tragedy, this seminar will discuss Aeschylus’s tragedy Prometheus Bound and poetic fragments of Archilochus.

Reading Assignments:

1. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, I–VI; selected fragments of Sappho and Pindar
2. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, VII–X

3. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (entire)

Suggested text:​​​

• Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (trans. Walter Kauffman). ISBN-10: 0394703693.
• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, (trans. Scully 7 Herrington). ISBN-10: 019561659.
• Lyric poems (fragments) to be provided before the first seminar.​

This session is FULL
To be added to the waitlist, email annapolis.communityoutreach(at)sjc.edu

Tutor: David Townsend
Date: December 4–5
Cost: $180
Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):

• Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m.

The voice of this Nobel laureate sounded with clarity in a disarmingly modest way. Whether writing about animals, philosophy, love, or public life, his ear was melodic and his language sure and luminous. Heaney’s work has long been highly praised by those who read purely for pleasure and also by professional literary critics.

Reading Assignments:

1. “Digging”; “The Otter”; “The Casualty”; “The Tollund Man”; “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”
2. “Act of Union”; “Bone Dreams”; “The Haw Lantern”; “Blackberry Picking”
3. “Lovers on Aran”; “From the Republic of Conscience”; “From the Frontier of Writing”; “Keeping Going”

Suggested text: Any editions are acceptable.