History and Literature ~Stair agus Litríocht
Gerry Adams, Visionary or Villain?
We take a three-week journey examining Gerry Adams, his work and his legacy. Is he a Mandela or an Arafat? We will help each other through the class’s journey. Adams walks the path of many past Irish Heroes, love him or otherwise.
Class text Resource; Hope and History, Making Peace in Ireland, Gerry Adams, 2003, Brandon Publishing.
3 sessions. Saturdays days 2:30-4:00 p.m. October 3 - 17.
Class fee: $60
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Frederic Stenborg at fredericstenborg@gmail.com and copy education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Five Irish Women Playwrights
This course explores the work of five women who wrote for the Irish stage during the 20th century. Participants will read plays and discuss the life and times of playwrights whose contributions have been overshadowed by the more famous names of the Irish theatrical “canon”, including Yeats, Synge, and O’Casey. Beginning with Lady Augusta Gregory, founder of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and co-author of several works previously attributed solely to W. B. Yeats, the course will span approximately 100 years of Irish drama. In addition to Gregory, over four nights, students will discuss the work of Teresa Deevy, Anne Devlin, Marie Jones, and Marina Carr. Join us as we celebrate the work of these five Irish women playwrights, and explore the representation of women in Irish theatre.
4 sessions. Wednesdays 8:00 - 9:30 p.m. October 7-28.
Class fee: $80
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Steven Griffith at sjgriff5388@gmail.com and copy education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
The Genius of James Joyce
Exploring the Labyrinth: Understanding the early to middle episodes (5-8) of Ulysses. Perhaps the greatest literary genius to emerge out of Ireland and arguably the greatest literary intelligence since Shakespeare, 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). This course will give a foundation to anybody wishing to understand the unfolding of Joyce’s genius by reading and discussing ONLY episodes five through eight in his modernist novel, Ulysses (1922). The episodes from this masterpiece are “The Lotus-Eaters,” “Hades,” “Aeolus,” and “The Lestrygonians”.
Any edition of Ulysses will work, but the instructor recommends the 1961 Random House edition. It is also recommended to acquire Stuart Gilbert's Ulysses: A Guide. [Note: this is the second in a sequence of classes working through the 18 episodes constituting this comic and innovative masterpiece.]
6 sessions. Mondays. 6:30-8:00 p.m. October 5-November 9.
Class fee: $120
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell at education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
The Genius of George Moore: Three Novels
The French Connection. ‘Paris in the seventies had a world to offer the curious young Irishman.’ (Malcolm Brown) Arguably the literary surrogate father to James Joyce (1882-1941) and central to the Irish Literary Renaissance, the great Irish caustic and witty novelist George Moore (1852-1933), went to Paris at the age of 21 in 1873. He failed there as a painter and instead transformed himself into an incisive prose artist by imbibing from the deep well of French realist fiction. His two French models were Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), author of one of the most famous French novels, Madame Bovary (1857) and Emile Zola (1840-1902), the master of naturalistic science-informed realism. Understand and enjoy the formative French influences on the sociological fiction of the great George Moore by reading three novels: two French and one Irish. Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert, The Fortune of the Rougons (1871) by Emile Zola, and the second published novel by Moore: A Mummer’s Wife (1885).
Note: students may read some or all of these novels for free on Project Gutenberg.
8 sessions. Mondays. 8:00 - 9:30 p.m. October 5 - November 23.
Class fee: $160
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell at education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth: witches, murder, and horror
Written for the Scottish king, James I, who had a horrible and paranoid obsession and aversion to witches and witchcraft, this short action-packed play is famous for its supernatural horror, its uncanny and terrifying “black and midnight hags,” its brilliant electric poetry, and its astute psychological portrait of personalities inflamed by ambition and ruthlessness.
Note: any edition of Macbeth will work.
2 sessions. Mondays. 4:00-5:30 p.m. October 19 - 26.
Class fee: $40
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell at education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
Parzival by Wolfram Von Eschenbach
Understanding the classics of Arthurian Literature. Written in Middle High German by the poet-knight, Von Eschenbach (c.1170-1230), this enormously popular thirteenth-century vernacular romance is one of the masterpieces of medieval Arthurian literature and is the greatest of the Grail stories. It is famous for its hero’s quest for the Holy Grail –seen as a stone rather than a cup - and the poignant themes of love, spirituality, and chivalry which are expressed in Parzival’s struggle to overcome his childish immaturity and endure trials on the path to being chosen by the Grail.
Course text: Wolfram Von Eschenbach, Parzival, Oxford World’s Classics (in a new translation by Cyril Edwards).
6 sessions. Saturdays. 2:30-4:00 p.m. November 7 - December 12.
Class fee: $120
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell at education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.
“The Dead” by James Joyce
Usually considered one of the greatest short stories of the twentieth century, Joyce’s immortal “The Dead” is a masterpiece of ironic and laconic observation and tenderness. Written as the last story in his jaundiced collection Dubliners (1914), it tries to grant a fair hearing to the warm hospitality that characterized his native city as we join Gabriel Conroy and his wife, Greta, at his aunts’ annual Dublin Christmas party: ‘It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.’
Any edition of Dubliners will work, but we’ll only be reading “The Dead” - its concluding story.
3 sessions. Mondays. 6:30-8:00 p.m. December 7- 21.
Class fee: $60
- Online payment is strongly preferred. It automatically notifies the instructor and the director of the Irish College of your registration.
- By check, make it out to 'Celtic Junction Arts Center' and mail to Irish College, Celtic Junction Arts Center, 836 Prior Ave N, St. Paul, MN 55104. If you pay by check, please send an email to the instructor, Dr. Patrick O’Donnell at education@celticjunction.org. Without an email, we won't know to expect you or how to communicate with you.