Literature Classes in NYC, New York

Gather in a diverse group setting and participate in an informal but challenging discussion of contemporary and classical literature and the reading experience.  Learn what authors do to capture a reader's interest and The Mare by Mary Gaitskill will be the first selection. Please read this book PRIOR to the 1st class mee...

Gather in a diverse group setting and participate in an informal but challenging discussion of contemporary and classical literature and the reading experience.  Learn what authors do to capture a reader's interest and to keep a reader reading. Join in and talk about how authors create characters, develop plot and theme. ...

Join charismatic actor and teacher Leo Schaff as he breathes life into Shakespeare's words, acting out portions of the play, and offering illuminating insights into the Bard's language, plot lines, historical context and eternal relevance, all with a generous sense of humor. This year, he tackles the history plays. Sep 26 — Henry VI, Part I Part...

This course considers James Baldwin’s decades-long preoccupation with the role of the artist in American culture. Reading across his fiction, non-fiction, and selected speeches, we will examine the author’s provocative assertions about the singular responsibility of the artist as moral arbiter and unflinching witness in our ongoing quest to make...

The language of love lends HER voice to seminal stories of Super Hero Femmes.  Learn French Brooklyn lead instructor Souad Bouhayat offers expert instruction and guidance to this impassioned subject matter. Each workshop follows a predetermined curriculum and study plan.  Book excerpts are read, dissected and discussed in an equally academic...

A master class to explore W. G. Sebald and his influence on writers like Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole. Through this lens, we will examine the transformation, or evolution, of realism in recent years. Please bring a notebook and pen.

This seminar works through selected chapters of Ulysses (Gabler edition), addressing it’s difficulties and discovering what makes the novel resonate today.

Things Seen in Flowers: Poetry and the Occult Spring In this class, we will explore the multitude of weirdness and wonder in poems that contain flowers. We associate flowers with love, life, health, and growth or the direct opposite of these ideas. But flowers in poems can mean other unexpected things, too. Together, we will read poems by William...

Balzac was prodigiously prolific. The fictional world he created in his Human Comedy is complex, endlessly surprising, sometimes comical, sometime dramatic but always steeped in his encyclopedic knowledge of the society of his time. In this follow up to Muhlstein’s sold-out course in the fall, students examine  The Marriage Contract A Daughter...

Full Title:  What Would Buffy Do? A Radical Feminist Seeks Answers from The Slayer From the moment she was called upon to become the Slayer, and thus shoulder the weight of saving the world (Again!) Buffy the Vampire Slayer wrestled with understanding not only her place in the world as a superhero, but also finding her place as young...

Hold on to your number 2 pencils, we’re taking on the SATs. We've taken high school’s most stressful test, sprinkled some comedy on it, and turned it into a drinking game! Your favorite test proctor and comedian Michael Wolf (Comedy Central, MTV) has combined bar-room trivia with real SAT quizzes to create NYC's booziest classroom. Whether you've...

Explore our redesigned catalog. Search for books and other materials, learn how to place holds, rate an item, add items to your shelves, look at reviews and create lists.

Each session, students will address three of the twelve unnumbered chapters in the book and focus on issues that are raised by those chapters.   Topics covered will include: literary form, personal psychology, social status, rewritings of The Odyssey and Ulysses, local and imperial politics, archetypes and myths, distant and intimate marriages,...

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. We’ve outgrown believing in the monsters under our beds, but we’re still haunted by grown-up ghost stories. Gather around the Caveat campfire for stories of monsters, ghouls, and ghosts, and the real life reasons they keep us captivated, told by some of some of the City’s best storytellers - submitted for the...

Dante’s Divine Comedy follows the journey of the poet through hell, purgatory, and paradise. This epic Italian poem, composed between 1308 and 1321, is an allegory for the movement of the soul toward God. But it is also a multifaceted exploration of ethics, metaphysics, politics, love, order, chaos, poetic form, and the Classical literary tradition. ...