We have moved many of our offerings online! We hope you will join us.
This seminar is offered exclusively for people of color. Seminar participants will receive one complimentary admission to Literary Arts’ Portland Arts & Lectures event with Min Jin Lee on January 15. “We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.” ― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko Whether it’s
This Delve explores two pivotal examples of historical fiction in contemporary Turkish literature, Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi (2009) and Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (2001). Shafak’s novel transports the reader to the golden age of the Anatolian city Konja, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate in the
With the growing interest in speculative fiction, several writers have worked to deconstruct popular tropes to examine contemporary social issues. Octavia Butler’s modern classic, Kindred, is a science fiction novel that uses time travel to reposition the slave narrative as a speculative work. The story begins when the main character, Dana, is transported to the
In this six-week seminar, we will explore the works of award-winning contemporary writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx, and Claire Vaye Watkins and how they confront, disrupt, challenge, and complicate the dominant narrative of the West. Leslie Marmon Silko’s now classic novel Ceremony weaves desert landscape and tribal origin stories into a tale of a
Six-week Seminar: This Delve seminar will explore the recent trilogy—Outline, Transit, and Kudos—by Rachel Cusk and contextualize it within the developing literary form of autofiction.
Four-week Seminar This class will focus on Forster’s use of symbolism and allusion, lyrical figurative language, and his keen observations of British life in this early 20th century literary masterpiece.
Six-week Seminar: This Delve will explore museum galleries, pages of books, and the realm of memory, discovering commonalities in ways writers and visual artists recreate human experience through their hyper-realistic descriptions of material objects and natural places.
A free 90-minute Delve discussion on Severance by Ling Ma. Hosted by Hannah Kim. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Registered participants will receive information on how to sign on to the Zoom meeting. “ Memories beget memories. Shen fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely
A free 90-minute Delve discussion on The Falls by George Saunders. Hosted by Christopher Zinn. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Registered participants will receive information on how to sign on to the Zoom meeting. "Boy, oh boy, could life be a torture. Could life ever force a fellow into
Two week online Delve seminar. Paula by Isabel Allende is a memoir that accepts the magical and spiritual worlds, and is vibrant with strange lands, bizarre ancestors and rich memories.
This Delve takes place online with Zoom teleconferencing. Participants will receive instructions for how to log on to the Zoom meeting. Born in 1899, Jorge Luis Borges devoted his life to literature, exploring far beyond the previously-held boundaries of fiction, and this devotion shifted not just our understanding of language, but of our consciousness. As
A free 90-minute online Delve discussion on Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things and Jose Saramego’s Blindness. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Registered participants will receive information on how to sign on to the Zoom meeting. Led by Delve guide Ivonne Saed. Participants are encouraged to come prepared to discuss
A free 90-minute Delve discussion on Normal People by Sally Rooney, led by Delve guide Sara Guest. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Click Here to sign up in advance for this event "Sally Rooney’s sentences are droll, nimble and matter-of-fact. There’s nothing particularly special about them, except for the
In The Passion According to G.H. Clarice Lispector offers us a story where very little happens, but where the transformation of the protagonist—alongside the reader—is a path with no return. A trivial, almost insignificant event leads to a deep philosophical reflection of the character’s life and her mysterious inner self.
“It’s with such profound happiness.” Those are the first words of Água Viva, an in-depth narrative about time, life, death, dreams and creation, where a stream of consciousness gives meaning to the protagonist’s surroundings.
This Delve takes place online with Zoom teleconferencing. Participants will receive instructions for how to log on to the Zoom meeting. "I like quoting ancient verses when the occasion is apt. I remember most of what I hear, and I listen all day but sometimes I do not know how to fit everything together. When
Six-week Seminar: This Delve will examine the essays of James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the black freedom struggle.
A free 90-minute Delve discussion on Daisy Miller, led by Christopher Lord. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Registered participants will receive information on how to sign on to the Zoom meeting. Is the young American heiress Daisy Miller innocent--or reckless? A flirtatious girl from Schenectady or a dangerous woman
“It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.” This Delve will explore female friendship, as written by women writers, through both a fiction and nonfiction lens. These friendships are complex and nuanced, sometimes ugly, sometimes enduring, and sometimes one of the most significant relationships
In her book The Ethics of Ambiguity, the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir asks us to consider what it means to exercise individual freedom and to live in community with others. Where does our individual freedom begin and end? Simone de Beauvoir claims that our personal freedom can be manifest only when we “will others free.”
“Opam-pogyakyena shinoshinonkarintsi. Me está mirando la tristeza.” Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa is known for his prolific oeuvre, particularly his long historical novels that portray different aspects and eras of Peru and other parts of Latin America; and yet, his less-known shorter works are narrative gems that show the complexities of the human condition,
4 week Delve online. This Delve Seminar explores the common human experiences of redemption and epiphany and the role that ritual can play in ushering in such profound moments. Through our texts, we’ll examine how ritual can be used to protect societal structures as well as shift culture, how the tension between what has been and what might be leads to necessary conflict within the self, and how the power of acute experience ushers in clarity and the capacity for change.
"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most culturally-relevant examinations of America’s tradition of systematic economic exploitation, particularly of Blacks. Published in 2016, this Atlantic article, which veers into being a short book in length, looks at the foundational policies of the land: 400 years of slavery, decades of Jim Crow
A look at 3 contemporary Korean writers. From a haunting meditation on grief to a powerful examination on capitalism, participants will discuss the themes that bind and distinguish these texts.Discussions will also focus on how translation affects our understanding of these novels as well as elements of Korean culture and current affairs that are uniquely
Six-week Seminar: The philosophy of William James (1842–1910) has had world-wide influence, and yet it is in many ways an essentially American view of the nature and humanity. James was a psychologist by training. This study led him to develop his unique view of human experience, out of which grew his profound concept of the nature of knowledge and reality as the way in which we act in the world and experience life.
Six-week Seminar: Composed in the era of the Second World War, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has become, through various incarnations, one of the best known stories in the world and also part of a larger system of myth and lore--thee so-called "Tolkien universe"--that also includes the Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and countless additional tales in prose and verse.
When exactly is “once upon a time,” what does it mean to live “happily ever after,” and how do these tropes from childhood storybooks find their way into so much contemporary literature and film? These traditional frames for fairytales are just one of the aspects we’ll study in this Delve; we will examine other aspects
The older well-to-do gentleman farmer, the dashing cavalry officer, or the steadfast shepherd—whom will accidental tenant farmer Bathsheba Everdene choose? Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel that first established his international reputation, asks and answers that question. But, because this is Thomas Hardy, the course of true love is fraught with perils,
What is the purpose of public life? Should we live as thinkers or doers? These are the questions that Hannah Arendt tackles in her 1958 work The Human Condition. Philosophers have long argued that the ideal state for the human condition is a life of contemplation and inward-focus. Arendt questions the value of the vita
There are few things more pleasurable than conversing with the great master of the essay, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). Sarah Bakewill’s excellent How to Live: A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (2011) has inspired wide current interest in Montaigne as a writer whom readers uncannily feel they know—our
“We walked out onto Broadway, into the late morning, and the city was buzzing, the buildings high and solid, the sky pristine blue, the sun bright—as if nothing catastrophic were happening.” Valeria Luiselli’s newest novel Lost Children Archive contrasts a privileged existence in a time laden with myriad state-funded horrors. It begins with a woman
This seminar will be an exploration of what Ingrid Rojas Contreras so accurately refers to as, “the middle space between languages,” in her essay, Translation as an Arithmetic of Loss. We will discuss the ways in which the characters in the two novels, Afterlife by Julia Alvarez and Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid
“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.” Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the
Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1982. In 2005, she was awarded the Pulitzer for her second novel, Gilead. In this seminar we will read both novels; a subsequent seminar will focus on Robinson’s third and fourth novels, which take up and expand upon the story told
The Peloponnesian War is the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides's account of the strife, conflict, civil war, and military and political catastrophe he witnessed and lived through as a citizen of Athens during and after the reign of the great Pericles in the 5th century BCE--the height of the classical period. A lifelong student of democracy,
In the six meetings of our Delve seminar we will read selections from books by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), a philosopher of the highest importance and influence in general philosophy, moral philosophy, and religious thought. In Western philosophy, he stands with Plato and Nietzsche alone as a literary stylist of the greatest genius. The most familiar
...we still want justice. We are still America. We know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die soon. -Joy Harjo,“American Sunrise” Our current poet laureate Joy Harjo describes her work as writing that both “tells the truth and creates the truth", providing a “memory on which to build.” Harjo, a member
In this seminar we will read Robinson’s third, fourth, and fifth novels, Home, Lila, and Jack. These novels complete the quartet that begins with Gilead. Home takes up the story of one of that novel’s characters, Jack Boughton. Nemesis of Gilead’s narrator John Ames and son of Ames’s best friend, Rev. Robert Boughton, Jack has
There are Great American Novels and then there is Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece. Have you read it years ago and forgotten it already? Have you thought you should read it? Should you read it right now? All signs point to “yes.” Melville is great, he is strange, he is important, and Moby-Dick stands atop
If you already know Tove Jansson as the author and illustrator of the Moominfamily stories and comic strips, you will meet her in this Delve seminar as the author of her superb The Summer Book. This is a novel that is so deep and yet so apparently casual that it will repay the close reading
The vignetted format of this text sometimes expands into short stories and sometimes shrinks into prose-poems, but regardless of any section’s length, this book is always intimate, charming, and transportive. Galeano uses journalistic research, autobiographical anecdotes, and interviews to emphasize how there really is no distinction between the personal and the political. He writes of
Explore James Baldwin's first two novels - Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room - and some of his early essays in order to deepen your understanding of the intersection of identity, morality, and power. What do these early works teach about Baldwin's response to his own question: what does it mean to
Hilary Mantel is best known for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, the first two volumes of which (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) won the Booker Prize (in 2009 and 2012). The third and final volume, The Mirror and the Light, was published to acclaim in 2020. These books are modern masterpieces, yet Mantel’s earlier
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is one of the most celebrated & impactful books ever written. Since its publication over 50 million copies of the novel have been sold. The story follows the Buendía family & the other residents of Macondo through seven generations, depicting everything from civil war to flying carpets. The lush
Although Herman Melville is best known for Moby-Dick, he also demonstrated mastery of the novella, and this Delve will explore Melville’s best-known shorter works: Bartleby the Scrivener, famous for the Wall Street denizen who “would prefer not to,” no matter what his employer might want; Benito Cereno, where a captain answering a ship’s call of
The Odyssey is one of the world's oldest and most enduring works of literature. Homer’s ancient Greek epic has inspired many modern artists and has introduced generations of readers to the the world of Greek myth, poetry, and storytelling. In this seminar, we will explore the intricacies of Homer’s epic and its central story— Odysseus’s effort
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