History and Literature Classes
Look for new history and literature classes in late summer, early fall 2021. The fall semester runs from September 20 to December 11, 2021.
Past History and Literature Classes
The Poetry, Prose, and Plays of W.B. Yeats. Learn how William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), shaped Irish national consciousness with a mystical symbolism combined with a mythological method as he progressed and transformed as a poet.
The Passion of Parnell. This course places Parnell within his social, political, and cultural contexts while paying particular attention to his love affair with Kitty O’Shea and his legacy as an inspirational figure for James Joyce and William Butler Yeats in the Irish Literary Revival.
The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Playful, lyrical, and ironic, F.Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is the most refreshingly sophisticated and slyly humorous of Minnesota's great twentieth-century writers.
Unlocking the Mystery of Sherlock Holmes. Explore the fiction, cultural assumptions (and blind spots!), and biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous creation in this class for readers of classic Victorian literature and/or writers of crime fiction thrillers.
The Genius of James Joyce. James Joyce (1882-1941) can be understood as creating an ever-widening labyrinth of innovation through his four masterpieces: Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939).
Five Irish Women Playwrights. Explore the work of five women who wrote for the Irish stage during the 20th century, Lady Augusta Gregory, Teresa Deevy, Anne Devlin, Marie Jones, and Marina Carr.
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Understand and enjoy the formative French influences on the imagination of the great Irish writer Samuel Beckett by reading his two-act play, Waiting for Godot.
The First 25 Years of the Abbey Theatre. Founded by Lady Augusta Gregory, W. B. Yeats, and John Millington Synge, the National Theatre of Ireland (generally known as the Abbey Theatre) has been the cradle of Irish drama for over 100 years.
Colum McCann’s Transatlantic. Join us for a deep read of TransAtlantic, learning how it fits within the wider scope of the history of the Irish novel, and postmodern literary trends blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction.
The Irish in Minnesota: Emigration during the Famine of 1879. Learn of this compelling story of the Connemaras as they seek a new home first in western Minnesota and ultimately in St. Paul.