Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
Our new season of Sherlock Monthly continues our exploration of the Sherlockian canon. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published. We begin this season with “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.” Joining host Edward G. Pettit are some new cohosts and some old friends. You can watch the livestream on Saturday afternoons or the replays on our YouTube channel.
Course | Modernism Across Media: Joyce, Stravinsky, Picasso | Virtual
This class explores what we call “modernism” through cross-disciplinary analyses of works made by Irish writer James Joyce, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky in the early twentieth century.
Course | Reading Don Quixote with Marina Brownlee | Virtual
Since 1605 Cervantes’s Don Quixote has been read as an icon of idealistic and misguided desire and as a meme of human experience, modernity, the novel, and more. Close readings and cultural contexts will enable us to enjoy Cervantes’s experimental creation and to consider why it continues to captivate its readers.
The Rosenbach holds a significant Cervantes collection, and we will share images of this collection during the seminar.
Course | James Joyce’s “Lying Autobiographies”: Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with Vicki Mahaffey | Virtual
What is published as Stephen Hero is a manuscript fragment of the first version of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which once ran to around 1,000 pages and was rejected by many publishers. We will read what remains of Stephen Hero (edited by Theodore Spencer, John J. Slocum, and Herbert Cahoon) and then A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Relevant extracts will be provided from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Course | Reading The Great Gatsby with Anne Margaret Daniel | Virtual
Fitzgerald's third novel was published in April 1925. When Fitzgerald first began writing The Great Gatsby in the summer of 1921, he told his editor at Scribner, Max Perkins, "I want to write something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." We will learn about the genesis of The Great Gatsby, its critical reception when it appeared, its changing afterlife, the rise of its immense global popularity, and versions of Gatsby on stage and film as we read the novel together.
Course | Constitutionalism in the Black Freedom Tradition with Joshua Kopin | Virtual
This course examines how African American artists, activists, and thinkers have utilized American Constitutionalism as a basis for arguments in support of Black freedom, from the U.S. founding to abolition and from emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement.
Course | Reading King Lear with Jim Casey | Virtual
In this course, we will explore the complexity and depth of this extraordinary text, with close attention to issues related to language, kingship, old age, gender, and more.
Course | Reading Dickens’s Oliver Twist with Edward G Pettit | Virtual
“Oliver Twist has asked for more!” Edward G. Pettit will lead a seminar on one of Charles Dickens’s most popular novels. Oliver is the first child protagonist of any novel, and Dickens recounts Oliver’s adventures from a Poor Workhouse to a dangerous den of London criminals.
Course | Reading Kurt Vonnegut with Christina Jarvis | Virtual
Best known for his wildly imaginative fiction, accessible style, and unflinching critiques of American culture, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most beloved and prescient writers of the late-20th century. Focusing on Cat’s Cradle (1963) and his anti-war masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), this four-session course will explore Kurt Vonnegut’s signature literary techniques (dark humor, satire, and innovative, often time-bending narrative structures) along with his examinations of 1960s America.
Course | Music Stories with Wesley Stace | Virtual
Musician and novelist Wesley Stace presents a unique seminar experience, an opportunity to read works of literature that attempt to capture, on the page, the essence of music.
Course | Birthright Citizenship and the U.S. Constitution with Paul Finkelman, PhD | Virtual
This seminar will examine the history of birthright citizenship (dating from at least 1608),the regulation of immigration from the adoption of the Constitution to the Civil War, and the debates over the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment.
Course | Reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with Louise Curran | Virtual
Capping off our year of Jane Austen seminars to commemorate the author’s 250th birthday, we’ll finish with her most beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice, led by Louise Curran from the University of Birmingham, UK.
We will read and discuss Pride and Prejudice in all its simple and complicated glory, thinking about its depiction of courtship and marriage, its structure as the archetypal romantic comedy, and its place within Austen’s literary career.
Course | Reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings with Professor Michael D. C. Drout | Virtual
In this eight-session course (Wednesdays, 8/13, 8/27, 9/10, 9/24, 10/8, 10/22, 11/5, 11/19) we will try to identify the qualities that make Tolkien’s works emotionally and intellectually engaging while seeking to better understand their significance. In exploring the rich complexity of Middle-earth, the phonesthetic beauty of Tolkien’s languages, the intricacy of the narrative, and the sophistication of the moral vision, we will seek to understand not merely his works’ popularity, cultural influence, and artistic success, but the personal significance they hold for many readers.
Course | Reading Austen’s Mansfield Park with Juliette Wells | Virtual
In this four-week course (Wednesdays, July 16, 23, 30, August 6), we will read and discuss Mansfield Park in relation to key artifacts and documents that shed light on its place in Austen’s literary career.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
The Rosenbach Presents | The Annual Rosenbach Bloomsday Virtual Talk: The Joyce of Everyday Life with Vicki Mahaffey | Virtual
Acclaimed Joyce scholar Vicki Mahaffey will lead our annual Bloomsday virtual discussion on her new book, The Joyce of Everyday Life.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Course | Reading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights with Claire O’Callaghan | Virtual
In this four-week course, we’ll journey into the pages of Wuthering Heights, the beloved novel written and published by Emily Brontë in 1847.
Course | Reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood serially with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual
The Rosenbach holds in its collection the original serial parts of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Throughout this course, we’ll read the existing six serial parts as the first readers did, one part at a time for six sessions, then we’ll spend a final session discussing the many ways Dickens could have unspooled his final mystery, perhaps even solving the mystery of Edwin Drood itself.
Course | Reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion with Paula Byrne | Virtual
Persuasion is often considered Austen’s autumnal novel, her most mature work, and a farewell to her life as a fiction writer. In this course, we will examine the many ways in which she deploys her satire, and we will explore the novel’s themes of heartbreak, hope, personal growth, and second-chance love.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Course | Victorian Female Detectives with Olivia Rutigliano | Virtual
For modern readers, the great secret of the Victorian cultural world is that lady detective characters were among the most popular in the literature of the time. In this course, we will explore many of the most popular of these characters and interrogate how they reflected the spectrum of Victorian attitudes about women and how they both played into and resisted conventional Victorian conceptions of (and anxieties about) female ability, acumen, psychology, and labor.
Course | Reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Jim Casey | Virtual
This course on Midsummer Night’s Dream will be an interactive experience and will rely on your participation, enthusiasm, and free-flowing conversations. Each time we meet, we will practice a variety of reading techniques that will enable you to begin experiencing Midsummer (and eventually all of Shakespeare’s plays) more deeply and effectively on your own.
Course | Reading Faulkner’s Light in August with Carl Rollyson | Virtual
Faulkner’s Light in August dives into the darkest corners of American history: religious fanaticism, racism, the horror of the Civil War, and the brutal legacy of lynching. In this bold masterpiece, Faulkner plays with time’s unbreakable grip.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Course | The Sonnet in English with Sean Hughes | Virtual Program
In this course, we’ll explore how great poets across the centuries have used the sonnet. Authors will likely include William Shakespeare, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Keats, Christina Rosetti, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wanda Coleman, William Butler Yeats, and Percy Shelley. This course will be enjoyable for both people who are new to reading poetry and aficionados alike.
![[SOLD OUT] Course | Ulysses Weekly with Robert Berry | Virtual Program](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739663006621-SKYKMABRWAGNMLU3CP1K/Ulysses-Weekly-graphic.jpg)
[SOLD OUT] Course | Ulysses Weekly with Robert Berry | Virtual Program
February 20, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
February 27, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
March 6, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
March 13, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
March 20, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
March 27, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
April 3, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
April 10, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
April 17, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
April 24, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
May 1, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
May 8, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
May 15, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
May 22, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
May 29, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
June 5, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
This immersive weekly course will help readers explore (and enjoy) the intricacies, enigmas and hilarities of Ulysses. First time readers of the novel will find many resources for understanding this challenging work.
![[SOLD OUT] Course | Huck and James: Reading Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James with Edward Whitley | Virtual](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739657552210-485BV110BPRMDRBHLDKF/HuckJames-Course-Graphic.png)
[SOLD OUT] Course | Huck and James: Reading Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James with Edward Whitley | Virtual
In this five-week online class, we will spend the first two weeks reading Huckleberry Finn. For our third meeting, we will explore the legacy of Huck and Jim in African American culture with a series of short readings from authors such as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and John Keene. We will spend the final two weeks reading Everett’s James.
Biblioventures | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Virtual
February 24, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 3, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 10, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 17, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 24, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Join us on a new Biblioventure with a special subscription-only show on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man with Vivian Papp | Virtual Course
In this class we will map a chronological route through these two texts from 1818 to today. Shelley will have us rethinking our positions as human beings in a world where the giddy rate of technological advancement far exceeds our potential to maintain even the slightest semblance of balance.
![[SOLD OUT] Reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with Claudia L. Johnson | Virtual Course](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739662053855-UYWMZOXYN0TVOCW86SMH/Northanger-course-graphic.jpg)
[SOLD OUT] Reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with Claudia L. Johnson | Virtual Course
Our class will examine Austen’s simple-seeming language carefully. Having told us that “A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” we will consider the knowledge this novel conceals beneath its sunny un-Gothic surface.
Reading the Harlem Renaissance with Michele Lisa Simms-Burton | Virtual Course
Informed by the Rosenbach’s Langston Hughes and Alaine Locke holdings, during the four sessions of this course, we will read and discuss works by four prominent Harlem Renaissance writers and intelligentsia: Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston.
![[SOLD OUT] Reading Dracula with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual Course](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739664724980-UNEYK0E63HMPQNXW8CUD/Dracula-course-graphic.png)
[SOLD OUT] Reading Dracula with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual Course
January 23, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
February 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
February 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
March 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
March 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
In this course we’ll consider how Dracula highlights the fears and anxieties of the culture that produced it and discover how this vampire story is just as much about themes of difference and otherness, race and ethnicity, and sexuality and gender, issues still relevant for contemporary readers.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.
![[SOLD OUT] Course | Reading Moby-Dick with Hester Blum | Virtual](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739835731325-Y7T5VCQWXY6INYG523VS/Moby-Dick-course-graphic.jpg)
[SOLD OUT] Course | Reading Moby-Dick with Hester Blum | Virtual
November 13, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
December 11, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
January 8, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
February 12, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
March 19, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
April 9, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
In this course, which welcomes first-time Melville readers and Moby-Dick obsessives alike, our discussions will range from the novel’s most thunderous, epic heights to its quirkiest, crudest jokes.
![[SOLD OUT] Reading Macbeth with Jim Casey | Virtual Course](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1729608099815-MYSLRDHHK4C15WZBEOZ7/ladymacbeth.jpeg)
[SOLD OUT] Reading Macbeth with Jim Casey | Virtual Course
This course will explore the richness and depth of this remarkable text, with close consideration of the work’s language, action, characterization, worldview, and more.