NEW This Penguin book collection is edited by Daniel Halpern. You will be guided by a list of dates and stories to be read. Receive a brief bio and interesting meaningful facts on the story. Discuss each one.

NEW A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a photographer, Welty’s texts offer insightful, clever, and realistic portrayals of life in the American south. Her work is often characterized by its modernist techniques, sharp wit, and profound understanding of human relationships. Read, view, and discuss a collection of Welty’s short stories and depression-era photographs, along with her philosophy that the act of writing is a "continuous thread of revelation" and “a process of becoming.”

NEW Using their combined backgrounds in folklore, folk art, and the fine arts, the Blyn sisters will re-examine the work of Henri Rousseau for those who may have missed the phenomenal exhibit at Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation. Is this art "true naïve," "faux-naïve" or "academic?" For those who did attend, we can share our recollections.

NEW Explore three of Shakespeare’s greatest and most influential tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. Examine how Shakespeare dramatizes ambition and revenge, madness and moral collapse, family conflict and political struggle. Pay close attention to the language of these plays as well as their historical context and the circumstances of their publication. Also consider their continued impact on theater and popular culture more than four centuries after Shakespeare’s death.

"What's it all about, then, eh?" asks a Monty Python actor at the end of The Meaning of Life. Philosophers have considered this question throughout the ages--from Plato to the present. And that is the question we, too, will address as we study Camus, Beckett, and Sartre. These writers will challenge our traditional assumptions, broaden our understanding of human existence, and invite us to formulate our own answer to "what's it all about?"

NEW Explore the poets not generally included in sweeping British and Irish Poetry classes. These are the voices of the Gaeltacht, the Irish speaking areas of Ireland, mostly on its west coast. Also included are Irish poets from today's CyberGaeltacht-the modern online Irish language community, with participants from around the world.

NOTE THE DATES HAVE CHANGED. THE CLASS BEGINS ON 10/7 AND ENDS ON 10/28. OTHER DETAILS REMAIN THE SAME.

NEW The stories of Samson, one of the favorite characters in the Hebrew Bible, appear in the Book of Judges, chapters 13-16. Take a look at various topics in the stories, such as historicity, style and genre, and humor. Is the saga of Samson a parody on demigods, an idea that was current in the ancient world (Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king, was 2/3 divine and 1/3 human, a mathematical combination I cannot figure out)?

NEW Robert Louis Stevenson penned a world-famous thriller in which Dr. Jekyll, convinced that all people have two personalities, concocts a drug to separate one person into two personalities and tests it on himself. Enter Mr. Hyde – Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego – who is as depraved and vicious as Dr. Jekyll is virtuous and kindly. Experience the eternal battle between good and evil.