Scarsdale Adult School Catalog Spring/Summer 2024
Classics to Moderns with Nicholas Birns NICHOLAS BIRNS is an adjunct instructor at NYU, has taught at several other institutions in the New York area, and has lectured abroad in Sweden, Australia, and China. He covers classic and contemporary fiction as well as the major works of Western and world literature, on which he has written many books and articles, most recently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel (Cambridge University Press) and authoring The Hyperlocal In Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Literary Space (Lexington). He has contributed to The New York Times Book Review , Modernism/Modernity , Modern Language Quarterly , Partial Answers , and Studies in Romanticism . Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment (1866) was the first of Dostoevsky's four truly great novels and also, arguably, founded several modern genres, ranging from the psychological study to the urban noir to the detective story. In telling the story of the anguished Raskolnikov and the way he teeters between being noble soul and depraved criminal, Dostoevsky also portrayed an entire community in search of meaning. Disentangle the mysteries of this novel, which is both wrenching and humorous, satirical and scolding. Please use Michael R. Katz’s superbly fluid and accessible new translation (Norton 2019). 3 Sessions, starting Thursday, March 7 • 10:30am-12:00pm • Zoom • Course 12436 • $90 Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , composed in the last decade of the fourteenth century, are the first great work of the main tradition of English literature, and, in particular, launch the comic muse so characteristic of prose narrative in England. Examine the wide social and psychological diversity of Chaucer’s pilgrimages as they wend their way to Canterbury and tell their tales, focusing especially on the cosmopolitan Knight, the ribald Miller, the moralistic Clerk, and the inimitably individual Wife of Bath. Please use Neville Coghill's modern translation. 4 Sessions, starting Thursday, May 9 (no class 5/16) • 10:30am-12:30pm • Zoom • Course 12566 • $120 The Rainbow (1915) by D.H. Lawrence, a Modernist Family Saga D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915) chronicles three generations of an English Midlands family, the Brangwens, taking them from the Victorian age through changes in economic and belief systems to the modern era. The novel culminates in the saga of granddaughter Ursula Brangwen, a brilliant young woman who challenges convention of education, family, and English identity. Melding modernist innovation with the traditional narrative pleasures of the family, The Rainbow is an enjoyable and stimulating read. 2 Sessions, starting Thursday, June 20 • 10:30am-12:00pm • Zoom • Course 12628 • $60 Franz Kafka's Short Stories Franz Kafka, a German Jew living in the Czech capital of Prague, was one of the most ambitious and experimental short story writers of the modern era. Combining surreal, speculative philosophical dreaming and dark humor with a sharp awareness of the ravages of the totalitarian century, he continues to be at the core of innovative literary practice. Class will read "A Country Doctor," "A Hunger Artist," "The Hunter Gracchus," "In The Penal Colony," "Before the Law," "Josephine the Singer," and "The Metamorphosis." Please use the Schocken translation. 3 Sessions, starting Thursday, July 11 • 10:30am-12:00pm • Zoom • Course 12567 • $90
www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org • (914) 723-2325
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