UNCG ALUMNI COURSE - Disappearing Ink? The Revival of the Letter

About this experience

Wednesdays, 10:00 – 11:30 am 
September 16 – October 21

You might think the letter is, if not dead, in serious decline. Who gets a letter nowadays? Who writes one? In this world of AI-generated sentences and IMs, the letter seems more than quaint. It’s a hindrance to the instant communication we’ve come to expect. And yet people save them, write them still. And there are signs of a resurgence. A popular podcast features famous people reading letters. A recent epistolary novel is a bestseller. After years of neglect, handwriting is again being taught in schools, and often the first thing a child writes is a letter.
A letter, no matter its topic or its age, brings people to life, mysteriously as immediate as when the ink was still damp.  We listen in,  and we find clues to the inner life of correspondents, intimate hurts and joys that get revealed to us, often in a language far deeper than the words on the page.
 
We’ll read fiction, old (a horror story) and new (a life story and a children’s book), told through letters; and we’ll read letters that span the centuries — written by children, rulers, lovers, poets, and soldiers—a wide spectrum of human life.

You may feel the call to write a letter of your own by the time we finish our study!

Material: Dracula, Bram Stoker
                 The Correspondent, Virginia Evans
                 The Day the Crayons Quit, Drew Daywalt
                 “Letter to My Nephew”, James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time
                        other selected letters
               

Week 1: Intro: Letters as Mysteries
            Openings and Salutations: Dracula and The Correspondent
            Letters from our past
            Letter Read Aloud

Week 2: Letters and Arguments
Intro- Chapter 3 Dracula
Film versions
17th-18th C Letters.: Adams Family; Benjamin Banneker, Lady Montague

Week 3: Letters and Forms; Letters and Psychology
19th c:  Proposals:Austen; Requests: Abraham Lincoln; Opinions: Twain
Complaints: Dickens

Week 4:  Finding the Clues: Tone, Language, and Handwriting
            Dracula
            Intro: The Correspondent
            20th C:  James Baldwin; Mrs. Sullivan; MLK; Gloria Steinem

Week 5:  Letters and Love: The Correspondent
            21st C. letters: Barak Obama, from Gone Girl, Greta Thunberg

Week 6: This is My Letter to the World: Unraveling the mystery of human sharing
Poets and Letters;  Children’s letters; The Correspondent

Refund Policy

To receive a refund, a written request must be received 3 business days before the first class. A $25 processing fee will be deducted from the refund. Cancellation requests received less than 3 business days before the first class but before the second meeting will receive a 50% refund.  ALL written requests should be emailed to emeritus@spartanstrategiesinc.org or mailed to the address below.

Spartan Strategies, Inc.
Attn: Emeritus Society
5900 Summit Avenue, #201
Browns Summit, NC  27214