Get the latest on our spring planning.
New! This semester we are offering seminar topics at different times to accommodate a variety of schedules and time zones.
Saturday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1:30–3:30 p.m. (Eastern Time) Sunday, 10 a.m.–noon (Eastern Time)
Saturday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. and 3:30–5:30 p.m. (Eastern Time) Sunday, 12:30–2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)
All seminars will be held virtually using the Zoom platform.
To be added to the waitlist for any sold-out class, email annapolis.communityoutreach(at)sjc.edu
Register Now FOR FALL 2021 Weekend Classics
Tutor: Erica Beall Dates: September 18–19 Cost: $180 Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):
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:
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):
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.
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):
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.
Suggested text: Any text is acceptable.
Tutor: Nicholas Bellinson Date: October 2–3 Cost: $180 Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):
“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).
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):
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.
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):
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”.
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):
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.
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):
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.
Suggested text:
Tutor: Khafiz Kerimov Date: October 16–17 Cost: $180 Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):
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.
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):
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.
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.
Tutor: David Townsend Date: November 13–14 Cost: $180 Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):
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.
Tutor: Erica Beall Date: December 4–5 Cost: $180 Early Session, Eastern Time (ET):
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.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (entire)
Suggested text:
Tutor: David Townsend Date: December 4–5 Cost: $180 Later Session, Eastern Time (ET):
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.
Suggested text: Any editions are acceptable.
A full refund is provided should you cancel at least two weeks before the first seminar meets. No refunds are provided if you cancel less than two weeks before the seminar meets.
Should we need to postpone a seminar, you will be notified by email and the seminar will be rescheduled.
We reserve the right to cancel a seminar due to low enrollment.
Email Community Programs
410-626-2881
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401