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Course: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Date / Time

  • February 21, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • March 21, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • April 18, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • May 9, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm

In this course we will read the essential poems from the Whitman and Dickinson canons in modern editions of their work, while also exploring online archives that reproduce their poems as they originally appeared. We will contextualize these poems in their cultural and biographical contexts, while also experiencing them as aesthetic objects in their own right.

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Yolanda Wisher’s Rent Party at the Rosenbach

Date / Time

  • February 27, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

“Oak & Ivy”: Celebrating the legacy of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), known affectionately and notoriously for writing in both conventional English as well as African American vernacular. Oak and Ivy, his first collection of poems, was published in 1893 and is part of the Rosenbach’s collection.

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Course: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (SOLD OUT)

Date / Time

  • February 7, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • March 7, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • April 4, 2019
    6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • May 2, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm

Sign up today for this course on Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. Some have called The Portrait of a Lady Henry James’s best novel. The plot corrects what James saw as a great flaw in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, in which an optimistic and energetic young woman enters into a marriage that turns out to be a disaster, and then, fortunately for that heroine, the husband dies. But James is interested in more than finding a happy marriage for his heroine. In examining the difference between Americans and Europeans the book moves on to deeper questions.

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Course: Melville: Beyond Moby-Dick POSTPONED

Date / Time

  • February 24, 2019
    12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
  • March 24, 2019
    12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
  • April 28, 2019
    12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
  • May 19, 2019
    12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

This four-week course won’t be anything close to a comprehensive survey of Melville’s writings. Yet by setting aside his behemoth, Moby-Dick, we will acquire depth into key texts that help us gain perspective on his career and, even more importantly, insight into his arguments about politics, power, self-deception, and modernity.

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Theatrecraft: The Hedgerow’s Moby-Dick

Date / Time

  • March 5, 2019
    6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Director Kittson O’Neill works with members of the cast to explore a scene from their new production of Moby-Dick. Music, movement, and the magic of found objects are all essential to this very theatrical exploration of one of the greatest stories ever told.

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Have a Spooktacular Halloween at The Rosenbach

Michelle Sheffer

We at The Rosenbach have some seriously spine-tingling tales in our collection, from Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula to first editions of Polidori’s The Vampyre and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. What better place to celebrate the spookiest time of year than at the home of these and other horrific — and horrifically inspiring — literary treasures? …

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Hands-On Tour: Herman Melville

Date / Time

  • October 5, 2018
    3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

With a warm heart for human nature, a cold eye for the human condition, and prose that would awe a Biblical prophet, Herman Melville was too good for his time. Join us for an odyssey through the Rosenbach’s mighty Melville collection in honor of the American Homer’s birthday (August 1). We’ll chart our course toward the source of Melville’s greatness through original editions of his novels and handwritten letters. “It is not down in any map,” says Moby-Dick’s Ishmael, “true places never are.”

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Hands-On Tour: Banned Books

Date / Time

  • September 7, 2018
    3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

From the Canterbury Tales to Ulysses, the Rosenbach’s collection is full of books that have been banned, challenged, or censored. During Banned Books Week (Sept 24-30) take your rights and the books back into your own hands, discuss the controversies surrounding them, and celebrate your freedom to read.

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Yolanda Wisher’s Rent Party at the Rosenbach

Date / Time

  • September 26, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

“The Dirty Dozens,” explores the intersection of sports and the spoken word, drawing inspiration from poet Marianne Moore’s liner notes for I Am The Greatest, the 1963 spoken word/rap/comedy album by boxer Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay.

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Moby-Dick Marathon Reading at the Independence Seaport Museum [OFF-SITE]

Date / Time

  • October 19, 2018
    5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
  • October 19, 2018 - October 20, 2018
    7:30 pm - 8:00 pm
  • October 20, 2018
    11:30 am - 2:30 pm

Join us as we read Herman Melville’s entire novel over a 24-hour period. This collaboration with the Independence Seaport Museum will feature food and activities for all ages. Celebrate the Great White Whale with us!

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