Award winning teacher and educational leader Deborah Woelflein has designed her approach to this popular class to examine standardized testing, censorship, violence in the schools, and other topics of interest and concern to students in the class. They were the best of times, the worst of times. But Dickens and Hardy always rose to the occasion. Come explore the world of Bleak Houses and Twisted dreams, of Returning Natives and Obscure stonemasons. Find out the real identity of your Mutual Friend, whether any man named Angel Clare really can be, and how Esther, Joe, Eustacia, Bentley and a slew of other such characters make their way through the strangely familiar landscape of Victorian fiction.
Nature is the subject and object of some of our deepest desires and impulses.
This seminar will read and write Nature as awesome and awe-ful, backyard familiar and strange new world, as extraordinary science and inspiring art. We'll examine different approaches to reading and writing Nature taken by such authors as Annie Dillard, Sue Hubbell, Peter Mathiessen, Loren Eiseley, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Rachel Carson, and others.