Please Note: Due to the government shutdown, the final session has a rescheduled date (originally January 14, 2019).
What do novelists like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty have in common that defines them by the honorific “Southern writer”? Is it growing up the region, with its warm, humid climate, that provides rich inspiration? Does a history marked by rebellion, loss, and economic struggle shape a certain outlook? Or societal stratification and racism? Or an identity shaped by family and a code of honesty, fortitude, and bravery?
Lisbeth Strimple Fuisz, a lecturer in the English Department at Georgetown University, leads spirited lectures and informal discussions about four authors—William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, John Kennedy Toole, and Ernest Gaines—whose works uniquely define what it means to write about the South.
Participants should read first book prior to class. Sherry and cookies are available for refreshment.
NOTE: Individual sessions are available for separate purchase.
OCT 15 Light in August (1932), William Faulkner (Oxford, Mississippi)
Faulkners explores themes of race, sex, class, and religion with some of his most memorable characters: Lena Grove, in search of her unborn child’s father, and drifter Joe Christmas.
NOV 19 The Optimist’s Daughter (1972), Eudora Welty (Jackson, Mississippi)
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South. She returns, years later, to be with her dying father, and alone in her old home, she comes to an understanding of the past.
DEC 17 A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), John Kennedy Toole (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Ignatius J. Reilly, an educated but slothful and fractious young man, is a kind of Don Quixote of the French Quarter. In his quest for employment he has adventures with a variety of colorful New Orleans characters. Winner of a posthumous Pulitzer prize.
FEB 25 A Lesson Before Dying (1993), Ernest Gaines (Oscar, Louisiana) (RESCHEDULED)
When a young man returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach he agrees to help an imprisoned black youth facing the chair for a crime he didn’t commit. The two forge a bond as they come to understand the heroism of resisting and defying the expected. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
4 sessions
