OLLI101424 - My Mother is a Fish: Family, Class, and Tradition in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Course Description

My mother is a fish: Family, Class, and Tradition in William Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING

Instructor: Jo Ellen Winters
Dates: Thursdays, Sept 29-Dec 8
Time: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Location: Online via Zoom  

Witness the extreme, even grotesque struggles of the beleaguered Bundren family to bury their mother/wife as she requested: Is the chaotic, sometimes dangerous journey a heroic act of humanity and/or a travesty? Is the family dynamic appalling and/or hilarious? We will read 2 short stories and As I Lay Dying as Faulkner’s depiction of the toll taken on community, family, and individual moral sensibility by the post-Reconstruction South’s growing estrangement from tradition and personal contact with the land.
Maximum registrants: 40

Instructor Bio:
Jo Ellen Winters, BA, Comparative Literature, Brandeis University; MA, ABD, Temple University. Professor emerita of English, Bucks County Community College (44 years), where she taught Intro to the Novel, Humanities (team-taught, interdisciplinary), Shakespeare, Short Fiction, and survey courses in American, British, and World literature. She has also taught at Temple University (2 years), Rutgers, C.W. Post College (2 years), and Pennswood Village in Newtown, Bucks County (10 years of intergenerational 3-credit college literature courses).