Delve Engages Readers
Delve engages readers with discussion-based seminars led by professional writers and scholars on classic and contemporary literature.
Each seminar is limited to 16 participants who will complete designated reading in advance and come prepared to discuss the text in an informal, friendly atmosphere. No previous knowledge of the author or text is required. Delve is a perfect combination of a book group and a college English class, but we promise not to assign any essays.
Our traditional Delve seminars meet once a week for 6 weeks. Read below for brief seminar descriptions. Remember to enroll early; each seminar is limited to 16 participants. Seminars typically run from 6:30–8:30 p.m., are held at the Literary Arts event space (925 SW Washington St, Portland) and tuition is $185 unless otherwise noted.
REGISTER FOR DELVE SEMINARS HERE.
2013/2014 Seminars
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children & The Satanic Verses
Tuesdays, August 27 – October 1, 2013 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Tuition: $185
In this six-week seminar, we will read two of Rushdie’s greatest, most acclaimed, and most notorious works of fiction: Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. Participants will acquire an introduction to the major themes and formal ambitions of Rushdie’s stunning works of historical fiction and magical realism, and will discuss the backgrounds to these two novels of enduring cultural and artistic significance. We will also read excerpts from and responses to Rushdie’s most recent work, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, in anticipation of his October Delve appearance.
Note: Participants in this seminar will receive a complimentary ticket to Salman Rushdie’s Portland Arts & Lectures event on October 8, 2013.
Guides: Pauls Toutonghi is Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College where he teaches fiction writing and English and American literature coursework. His first novel, Red Weather, was published by Random House in 2006. His second novel, Evel Knievel Days, was published by Random House/Crown in 2012.
Rishona Zimring is Associate Professor of English at Lewis and Clark College, where she has taught modernist and post-colonial literature since 1995. A past chair of Lewis & Clark’s English department, a past organizer of the annual international conference on Virginia Woolf, and a past and present participant in seminars run by the National Endowment for the Humanities, she brings to the Delve seminar an abiding delight in fostering intellectual communities in a variety of settings.
Masterpieces of the Ancient World: The Epic of Gilgamesh & More
Mondays, September 23 – October 28, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
This Delve explores masterpieces of the Ancient Near and Far East, beginning in Mesopotamia with The Epic of Gilgamesh, moving to ancient India with The Bhagavad-Gita, and finishing up in fourth century BCE China with the Confucian Analects, Lao-tze’s Daodejing and the thought of Zhuangzi. We focus on the complex and compelling vision of the individual presented in these works: the hero buffeted by social and moral struggles, the ruler seeking wisdom amid a turbulent age, the philosopher struggling with ideas of human nature. Along the way, we consider the intricate and deeply pleasurable narratives these classics offer, their beautifully rendered stories a source of entertainment and education to readers for thousands of years.
Guide: Bruce Suttmeier is Associate Professor of Japanese and Chair of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department at Lewis & Clark College. He researches and writes on Japan in the 1960s, and his current project / obsession involves the changes in public space in Olympic-era Tokyo. He recently won a Mellon Foundation Grant to develop a course on World Literatures for the College, which he taught in Spring 2013.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Wednesdays, Septemeber 25 – October 30, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
Ambitious, ironic, playful, and shocking, the Metamorphoses is anything but dull. We will follow along with Ovid as he guides us from the birth of nature to Caesar’s times — tackling the poem’s challenges and enjoying a truly unique literary sensibility.
Guide: Lucas Bernhardt holds MAs in English and in Writing from Portland State University, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He teaches writing at Portland State University and is managing editor of Propeller Quarterly, a literature and art magazine.
Thomas Pynchon: Bleeding Edge
Tuesdays, October 15 – November 19, 2013 7:00 – 9:00pm
Tuition: $185
In this seminar, we will read and explore Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge, which will be published on September 17. Notoriously publicity shy, Pynchon has reportedly set his latest novel in NYC’s “silicon alley” in the years between the collapse of the dotcom boom and the events of September 11. While we can expect Bleeding Edge to include treatments of some of Pynchon’s most favored themes, we can also hope it will feature the soaring prose and mischievous counter-narratives that have made his previous novels (e.g. Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon) contemporary classics. No matter what, we will have the pleasure, and challenge, of making our way, on our own, through Pynchon’s unique fictional geography.
Guide: Christopher Zinn, an independent literature scholar, has led several Delve seminars. He teaches humanities at the Portland Waldorf High School.
Whitman and Neruda: The Empathic Imagination
Mondays, November 4 – December 9, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
When a visitor asked Pablo Neruda if the portrait (of Walt Whitman) above his mantel was his grandfather, Neruda answered without hesitation: “Yes.” In this Delve seminar, we’ll look at the two most expansive, celebratory, politically engaged and openhearted poets the Americas have produced, exploring the many connections between them and focusing in particular on the power of their poems to both express and arouse empathy and compassion.
Guide: John Brehm is the author of two books of poems, Help Is On the Way and Sea of Faith, both from the University of Wisconsin Press, and the associate editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. A past recipient of a Fellowship from Literary Arts, he has an MFA from Cornell University and has taught at Cornell, Emerson College, and Portland State University.
Whodunit: Detective Fiction in the “Golden Age”
Mondays, January 6 – February 10, 2014 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
From its roots in Edgar Allan Poe to an Agatha Christie classic, detective fiction gets the Delve treatment. We will focus on the genre’s founders (Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle) before touching down in the “Golden Age” (Agatha Christie).
Guide: Christopher Lord is author of The Christmas Carol Murders (2012) and The Edwin Drood Murders (September, 2013). He is a previous Delve guide (A Tale of Two Cities, Our Mutual Friend), and a past recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts. Look for the third Dickens Junction mystery, The Our Mutual Friend Murders, in fall 2014.
The Mexican Revolution: Rulfo, Azuela & Fuentes
Thursdays, January 9 – February 13, 2014 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185, Location TBD
There are many historical accounts of the Mexican Revolution. In this seminar we will read works of fiction by three celebrated Mexican writers—Juan Rulfo, Mariano Azuela and Carlos Fuentes—who address issues of identity related to this era in very different ways, using narrative techniques that go from magical realism to postmodern multiple perspective.
Guide: Graphic designer, photographer, and writer, Ivonne Saed has extensively explored the crossroads between the visual and the textual within the Humanities, both in her own professional creation as well as in teaching. She published the novel Triple crónica de un nombre (Triple Chronicle of a Name)—Juan Rulfo National Award for First Novel in Mexico, and the non-fiction book Sobre Paul Auster: Autoría, distopía y textualidad (On Paul Auster: Authorship, Dystopia and Textuality), and has co-authored other fiction and non-fiction books. She currently teaches Latin American Literature at Marylhurst University and has been a guide of several Delve seminars.
The Signature Style of Chris Ware
Tuesdays, January 21 – February 4, 2014 6:30 – 8:30 pm (3 evenings)
Tuition: $90
Incorporating principals of typography and graphic design, Chris Ware re-invented comics and influenced a generation of cartoonists with books like the Acme Novelty Library and Jimmy Corrigan. Ware’s signature style, drawing on early 20th century cartooning, can be recognized in the pages of McSweeny’s, on the facade of the 826 Valencia building in San Francisco, and in reprinted collections of Gasoline Alley. Having won almost every comics industry award, his work sprawls beyond comics into contemporary book design and fine art, yet remains firmly rooted in graphic storytelling. In this Delve seminar, we will explore his career from The Daily Texan to the Chicago Reader to The New Yorker, and his innovations in comics and
beyond.
Note: Participants in this seminar will receive a complimentary ticket to Chris Ware’s Portland Arts & Lectures event on February 18, 2014.
Guide: John Isaacson is a writer and artist who teaches comics at the Independent Publishing Resources Center, Marylhurst University. and Portland Community College. His comics and writing have appeared in the Willamette Week, Teachers and Writers magazine, Propeller, and The Santa Barbara Independent. His first graphic novel, Do It Yourself Screenprinting was published by Microcosm in 2007. He continues to self-publish the mini-comics, Feedback, Pyromania, and Grumpy McBumbles.
Learning How to Live: Exploring the Imperatives in William Stafford’s Work
Wednesdays, January 22 – February 5, 2014 6:30 – 8:30 pm (3 evenings)
Tuition: $90
Deeply inspired by philosophers, William Stafford often used poetry to teach us how to live: “Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.” In celebration of the Stafford Centennial, this seminar will explore the imperatives in Stafford’s work, the rich legacy he has bequeathed to help us on our journey. Together we will remember and discover: “we must find something forgotten by everyone alive.”
Guide: Poet-dramatist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez has taught creative writing to adults through the Attic and the Oregon Poetry Association, as well as to youth through the Right Brain Initiative and Writers in the Schools. Her collection the small claim of bones is forthcoming from Bilingual Press (Arizona State University). Cindy is currently creating an original theatrical work for the William Stafford Centennial in the fall of 2014.
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
Wednesdays, February 12 – March 19, 2014 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Tuition: $185
We will take a three-pronged approach to reading Ellison’s masterpiece, focusing on its political messages and dilemmas, its psychological explorations, and its use of music as a mode of transcendence. In short we’ll talk politics, analyze dreams, and listen to the novel’s melodies.
Guide: Lucas Bernhardt holds MAs in English and in Writing from Portland State University, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He teaches writing at Portland State University and is managing editor of Propeller Quarterly, a literature and art magazine.
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Mondays, February 17 – March 24, 2014 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Tuition: $185
Praised by novelist Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” Middlemarch has reigned for more than a century as one of the most powerful and affecting novels in the English language. A serious study of self-delusion and gender-dynamics, George Eliot’s last novel is also a wonderful window into the human soul. This is a book within which to become lost and also found.
Guide: Sara Guest is a literature editor/producer and poet whose previous jobs have included editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica, producer for Harpo Studios (Oprah’s Book Club) and program coordinator for Write Around Portland. She is currently a visiting writer at Pacific Northwest College of Art and an author coordinator for Wordstock. Sara has an MA in English from Case Western Reserve University with a focus in the late-Victorian and early-Modern periods.
19th Century Realism: Balzac & Flaubert
Tuesdays, February 18 – March 25, 2014 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
Money, marriage, class, sex, ambition, Paris, the provinces, all this and more are explored by the French novelists Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert. We will follow these themes and others in our reading and discussions of Père Goriot and Madame Bovary. We will ask how these two novelists portrayed, what to them, was the new and changing world of the nineteenth century.
Guide: Judith Stone studied French literature at New York University and earned a doctorate from the State University of NY in modern French history. She is the author of two books, The Search for Social Peace and Sons of the Revolution. She is an emerita professor from Western Michigan University and currently teaches as an adjunct at Portland State University.
The Americans: Award-Winning Novels by Louise Erdrich, Julie Otsuka & Jesmyn Ward
Wednesdays, April 2 – May 7, 2014 6:30 – 8:30pm
Tuition: $185
Join us to explore the many facets of life in the United States, with three award-winning female novelists as guides. We will immigrate to California with Japan’s picture brides in the lyrical collective stories of Julie Otsuka’s A Buddha in the Attic; face down Hurricane Katrina with fifteen-year-old Esch and her family in Jesmyn Ward’s epic and impassioned Salvage the Bones; and immerse ourselves in the traumatic emotional and legal after-affects of a brutal attack on a North Dakotan reservation in Louise Erdrich’s heartbreaking The Roundhouse. Each of these celebrated novels takes us out to the margins of American life, while simultaneously implicating and encircling the reader in a deeper, more complex view of the country we live in and the Americans we share it with.
Guide: Ramiza Koya’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Washington Square Review, Lumina, and Catamaran, and she has been a fellow at both MacDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center. She has both a BA and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught in Spain, the Czech Republic, and Morocco. In addition to teaching writing, she also works as a freelance writer and editor.
The Following Seminars are SOLD OUT
James Joyce: Ulysses
Tuesdays, April 1 – May 6, 2014 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Tuition: $185
In Ulysses, James Joyce endeavored to write a book about one day in the lives of a few Dubliners that would represent the noisy minutiae of contemporary urban existence while conveying the dignity and importance of classical literature. Published amid controversy in Paris in 1922, Ulysses recorded Joyce’s growing audacity as an artist and has since come to epitomize literary modernism. In this seminar, we will approach the book as readers rather than as scholars, hoping to follow the journeys of Joyce’s characters and to grasp the simple and humane insights of Joyce’s vision.
Guide: Christopher Zinn, an independent literature scholar, has led several Delve seminars. He teaches humanities at the Portland Waldorf High School.
