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Virtual Course | Jules Verne’s Scientific Imagination with Anastasia Klimchynskaya [in-progress]

Date / Time

  • March 17, 2022
    6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
  • April 14, 2022
    6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
  • May 19, 2022
    6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
  • June 9, 2022
    6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Location

This program is sponsored by Robert K. Urquhart

Registration

  • Tuition for this course is $200, $180 Delancey Society and Members.
  • Rosenbach members receive a 10% discount on tuition.
  • Not a member? We invite you to join upon registration. Click here for more information about membership.
  • This course is limited to participants who are 17 years of age or older.
  • Before the first meeting, The Rosenbach will send the Zoom link for course meetings. 
  • Two complimentary tickets to visit The Rosenbach are included with your paid registration for this virtual course. You will receive the discount code in your email confirmation and tickets can be booked here. Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation.
  • If you have questions about registration, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
  • Registration opens for Delancey Society members on November 15, for members on November 22, and for the general public on November 29.

Register

 

Course Description

Verne is often cited as one of the fathers of science fiction, and indeed he is: throughout the decades of his writing career (1863–1905) he wrote the Extraordinary Voyages, a series of novels with which he created a new form of storytelling that  his contemporaries and descendants alike would imitate. A lover of both literature and technology, a poet and a scientific popularizer, Verne combined the earlier genres of the extraordinary voyage, travel narrative, and adventure story with unprecedented scientific rigor, creating the scientific romance genre, or roman de la science. S cientific romance stories included lively tales of adventure and exploration that incorporated (and extrapolated from)  the most recent, advanced  scientific and technological discoveries. This class  will explore Verne’s unique mix of science and imagination and how it helped solidify the genre of science fiction. In addition to reading three of his most famous novels, including From the Earth to the Moon, Twenty Thousand  Leagues under the Sea , and Robur the Conqueror, we’ll read some of the  tales that influenced his storytelling and examine the political, social, and cultural contexts that made his  approach to storytelling possible and necessary.   

Week 1  

From the Earth to the Moon (1865) 
Voltaire, “Micromegas”; Edgar Allan Poe, Moon Hoax  

Week 2 

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, Volume 1 (1869) 
Rosalind Williams, “Inventing the Geographic Romance”

Week 3 

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, Volume 2 (1870)                                                                   Timothy Timothy Unwin, “Jules Verne: Negotiating Change in the Nineteenth Century”

Week 4 

Robur the Conqueror (1886)  

Jules Verne’s Scientific Imagination with Anastasia Klimchynskaya Syllabus

 

About the Instructor

Dr. Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago and was a cohost for the The Rosenbach’s Sundays with Frankenstein. Her current book project focuses on the emergence of science fiction in the nineteenth century, arguing that Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Albert Robida, and H.G. Wells represent the formal expression of a new set of paradigms through which humanity saw the world following the Industrial Revolution. She has presented widely on science fiction and the history of science at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, the Cyberpunk Culture Conference, the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, Science in Public, and the Philadelphia Science Fiction Conference (Philcon), of which she is also the deputy programming head. 

Scholarship Opportunities

Scholarships may be available for this course. For more information, please contact Emilie Parker at [email protected].

About Rosenbach Courses

Revisit beloved classics or experience new ones with Rosenbach courses. Book lovers delve into fiction, history, and poetry with the guidance of a literary expert and the company of other readers. See all upcoming courses.

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