A 10-Week Seminar at the Folger Shakespeare
Library for students in grades 10-12
Wednesdays, 3:30-5:30 p.m., January 19- March 30,2005
No class March 23-Farewell Party and Reading, April 6
Participants in this seminar will read and discuss selected poems by British and American women poets from the mid-sixteenth century to the present, and will write poetry of their own. (No experience in writing poetry is necessary.) The seminar will also look at some poetry about women, by men, in order to see more clearly how perspectives can differ.
All students of grades 10-12 in the D.C. metropolitan area are eligible for the program. Students with an interest in creative writing or gender studies are particularly encouraged to apply. The Folger is eager to assemble a group of students genuinely interested in working with people from a wide variety of educational and cultural backgrounds in an atmosphere of mutual respect. There is no cost for the program.
The seminar will be team taught by Dr. Louisa Newlin, who directed the Folger's High School Fellowship Program for many years, and by Dr. Libbie Rifkin, Poetry Coordinator at the Folger Library.
January 19
Poetry About Women: Male Traditions in the Renaissance. (Petrarch,
Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne)
January 26
The 16th Century, In Another Mode: Queen and Commoner. (Queen
Elizabeth I and Isabella Whitney.)
February 2
The 16th and 17th Centuries: The Tradition With a Difference.
(Aemelia Lanier, Lady Mary Wroth, and Katherine Philips.)
February 9
Rare book session with Georgianna Ziegler, Head of Reference at
the Folger
February 16
The 17th and 18th Centuries: Colonist and Freed Slave. (Anne
Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley)
February 23
The 19th Century: New/Forms, New/Ideas (Emily Dickinson, Emily
Bronte, Chnstina Rossetti)
March 2
The 20th Century, Part I: The Bohemians (Gertrude Stein, Edna
St. Vincent Millay)
March 9
The Twentieth Century, Part II: A New Interior (Marianne Moore
and Elizabeth Bishop)
March 16
The Twentieth Century, Part III: Pioneers and Revolutionaries
(Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Gwendolyn Brooks)
March 23
No class - spring break.
March 30
The Twentieth Century, Part Three: Sisters Under the Skin (Lucille Clifton,
Sonia Sanchez, Jessica Hagedorn, Joy Harjo)
April 6 Farewell Reading and Celebration of Student Poetry
Participants will be invited to a variety of poetry readings at the Folger Library from time to time during the seminar.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL THE FOLGER LIBRARY
AT
(202) 675-0316