Literature Classes in NYC, New York

Homer’s Odyssey tells the tale of a mortal who suffers and who comes to know the “cities and minds” of humans. The travels and ordeals of Odysseus, as he moves from the ruins of Troy to the new civic possibilities of Ithaca, elaborate two constitutive myths: the first is the tale of the hero’s homecoming—the nostos, or “mindful...

Complete Course Title: A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing: an Introduction to Marx In the mid-nineteenth century, a young Karl Marx wrote, in the form of a published open letter to Arnold Ruge: “But if the designing of the future and the proclamation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realize all the more clearly...

Examine art inspired by fairy tales, folklore and Biblical stories in this workshop focusing on English Language Arts (ELA). Hear from Nina Jaffe, children’s book author, storyteller and bilingual special educator and explore the exhibition, Rachel Feinstein: Maiden, Mother, Crone through the lens of literacy and storytelling. Price includes light...

Join charismatic actor and teacher Leo Schaff as he breathes life into Shakespeare’s words, acting out portions of the play and offering illuminating insights into the Bard’s language, plot lines, historical context and eternal relevance, all with a generous sense of humor. The Tempest - January 8 The magic hand of Prospero guides us through...

Join us for an evening of poetry, music, and art celebrating radical urban Indigenous resistance, resilience, and activism. Big Fun takes its name and shape from the title of a poem by Diane Burns (Anishinaabe/Chemehuevi), published in her 1981 chapbook, Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II Publications).  Connecting back and looking forward...

What kind of writer was Philip Roth? His fiction deals unquestionably with problems of Jewish cultural difference: parochialism, assimilation, conversion, anxiety, whiteness. Yet, Roth famously disavowed the categorization “Jewish-American.” For others, Roth is a quintessentially all-American literary icon—a novelist who, in dealing forcefully...

Join Jamie Warren for an Olio dedicated to analyzing and discussing Michel Foucault’s much-celebrated essay, “What is an Author?” We will learn about Foucault’s concept, “the author function” and its chilling role in the production of ideology and power. At one point in history, the writer acted as a menace, her words possessing tangible...

Work through selected chapters of Ulysses and discovery what makes the novel resonate today, with Michael Groden, editor of the James Joyce Archive

Shakespeare began his career with a sequence of romantic comedies: Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. In the first of these plays, the lovers lament that, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and it certainly goes haywire in all these plays as a result of the love drug in Midsummer and gender disguise in...

From zero-sum games and the “prisoner’s dilemma” to rational actors and the Nash equilibrium, game theory has grown from a bold conjecture into a deeply influential mode of analysis in political science, economics, psychology, business, mathematics, and even military strategy. Based on a theory of simple card games developed by John Von Neumann...

The world is not usually imagined for the benefit of women. What can feminist science fiction tell us about these oppressive arrangements and how the world might be otherwise? What makes a work of science fiction feminist? From utopia to dystopia, satire to space opera, in what ways does science fiction hold up a mirror to difficult realties?...

Forgiveness and the Unforgivable: Religion, Literature, Philosophy What constitutes an apology? Are certain kinds of acts unforgivable—and, if so, why? Who, indeed, has the power to forgive? In this course, we’ll set these questions in historical context, beginning with Bishop Joseph Butler’s eighteenth-century sermons, then exploring discussions...

From Hegel to Deleuze, many political thinkers have employed the language of dominance and submission within the tradition of Western political thought. How does the language of Sado-masochism shape the way we think about desire and political recognition? This course will look at how the erotic language of S&M is embedded in the theoretical frameworks...

Ovid begins his Metamorphoses, “My soul would speak of bodies changed into new forms,” and it is the great theme of physical transformation that unites the poem’s many myths: humans becomes animals and plants, and vice versa; humans becomes stones and constellations; and humans change their sex.  No poem from antiquity has so influenced...

Composed sometime between the seventh and eighth centuries B.C., Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest works of world literature and the ancestor of virtually every narrative that involves a difficult journey home. The longing to return home is for Odysseus is the longing of a man to recover his identity as a king, husband, and father after having...