Scarsdale Adult School Catalog Spring/Summer 2024
Book Discussion: Wuthering Heights Ever since its publication in 1847, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has shocked and enthralled, bewildered and enchanted readers in equal measure. Take a deep dive into one of the most compelling, enigmatic, and influential novels of all time: a story of passion and obsession, doomed love, innocence and experience, class and social tensions, ghosts and haunting, jealousy and revenge, the power of nature and the natural world. Consider its unreliable narration, its indebtedness to the Gothic tradition and Romanticism, its status as a Victorian novel, and its continuing presence in culture today. Recommended book edition to be listed in the near future. PRISCILLA GILMAN is a former professor of English literature at Yale University and Vassar College and the author of two acclaimed memoirs, The Anti-Romantic Child (Harper 2011) and The Critic’s Daughter (Norton 2023), a best book of 2023 for the Washington Post and a New York Times’ Book Critics’ Favorite Book of 2023. She teaches literature classes for Yale Alumni College, leads book groups, and is a sought-after speaker about literature, education, and the arts. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, Slate, the Daily Beast, MORE, Redbook, and Real Simple. 3 Sessions, starting Tuesday, June 11 • 1:00pm-2:30pm • Zoom • Course 12621 • $150
Novellas About the Shaping of Identity
Short Stories from Down Under Beyond geographical beauty, fine cuisine, wine, and complicated colonial history, Australia and New Zealand have thriving cultural variety. Their literature captures what is unique to their region and what is universal. Discover their distinctive short stories, including those by indigenous writers as well as by well-known authors such as Katherine Mansfield, David Malouf, Shirley Hazzard, and Peter Carey. Before the first class, read New Zealander Janet Frame’s "The Reservoir" (1963) and Australian Cate Kennedy’s "Black Ice" (2006). Students will receive PDFs of the short stories via email one week in advance of class and are asked to read once for story and a second time more closely. Students will receive discussion prompts and are encouraged to submit written responses to be shared prior to class. MARILYN DeRIGHT is an adjunct professor of English at Iona College, and has taught literature, film, and drama for SAS for many years. 6 Sessions, starting Monday, June 10 • 1:00pm-3:00pm • Zoom • Course 12624 • $180
Somewhere between the short story and the novel is the novella. Read and discuss The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark and then The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison. Tightly written and potent, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is set in Edinburgh in the 1930s where themes of obedience and obsession and personal attraction’s delights and costs are woven into a story of an unconventional teacher and the chosen students she has taken into her confidence. The second book, The Bluest Eye , is set in 1941 in Morrison's hometown of Lorain, Ohio, where the subjects are the danger of beauty, its allure, and its absence for a young Black girl. In these two works, both Spark and Morrison excavate how identity is formed and who shapes it. Please use the Penguin Modern Classics paperback international edition from 2000 of Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the Vintage International paperback edition from 2007 of Morrison's The Bluest Eye . Before the first class, read “Meet Muriel Spark” at the back (pp. 2-7) as well as chapters 1 and 2 of the book. Discussion prompts for analyzing the readings and shaping the class discussion will be emailed in advance. MARILYN DeRIGHT (see bio for “Short Stories from Down Under”). 7 Sessions, starting Monday, March 25 (no class 4/1, 4/22) • 1:00pm-3:00pm • Zoom • Course 12483 • $210
www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org • (914) 723-2325
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