"Uncanny Voyages" with Phil Weinstein Begins January 26th

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present  a seven-part seminar "Uncanny Voyages," that will center on writers who explore extreme situations. According to Professor Weinstein, "in these readings we enter spaces where common sense collapses. Kafka prized those books “that affect us like a disaster...like being banished into forests far from everyone... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within.” To travel with such texts is to encounter the bracing shock of uncanny voyages."

Hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore and Vineyard Haven Public Library, the class will take place every two weeks on Wednesdays from 7:00-8:30 pm, January 26th - April 20th, 2022. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session on January 26th. To register through the library, visit https://bit.ly/3mCbuds

Class dates and reading selections appear below. 

7pm Wednesday January 26, 2022
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

7pm Wednesday February 9, 2022
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

7pm Wednesday February 23, 2022
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

7pm Wednesday March 9, 2022
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents & Essay, "The Uncanny"

7pm Wednesday March 23, 2022
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, & Stories (selections below)

• The Judgment
• In the Penal Colony
• A Report to an Academy
• A Country Doctor
• A Starvation Artist
• Jackals and Arabs

7pm Wednesday April 6, 2022

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

7pm Wednesday April 20, 2022
Flannery O'Connor, Stories (selections below)

• A Good Man is Hard to Find
• The Life You Save May Be Your Own
• The River
• The Displaced Person
• The Artificial Nigger
• Good Country People
• Greenleaf
• Everything that Rises Must Converge
• Revelation