Courses – Spring 2025 / Literature
The courses listed below, in the general area of literature, are currently offered at Quest.
Click on any title to view the related course page.
CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES
Coordinators: Nancy Richardson, Mary Buchwald, Frieda Lipp
This long-standing class discusses short stories from all over the world.
CONTEMPORARY POETRY
Coordinators: Ellen Rittberg, Martha Drezin, Mary Ann Donnelly, Frieda Lipp
We will explore important and well-regarded modern poets, their poems, and their place in the literary continuum/historical context.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Coordinators: Sheryl Harawitz, Patricia Geehr, Andrea Irvine, Ellie Schaffer
In this study group, we shall plunge headlong into the dark labyrinthine corridors of the human soul as laid bare by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Coordinators: Lynnel Garabedian, Sandy Kessler
Great Expectations is Charles Dickens’s beloved novel of a humble orphan boy who rises to the ranks of high society through the patronage of an unknown benefactor.
OLD TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE AND IN THE ARTS
Coordinators: Joyce Hinote, Peter Dichter, Jamie Sykes
The Old Testament is a great religious work but it also contains many wonderful stories that have influenced our literature and fine arts down through the centuries.
ORAL INTERPRETATION OF POETRY
Coordinators: Joyce Hinote, Peter Dichter
The human oral tradition goes back millennia, and it began with poetry. It was a way of communicating and telling stories about the world around us and who we are.
WONDERFUL BOOKS OUT LOUD
Coordinators: Harriet Finkelstein Larry Shapiro, Ruth Ward
Billy Budd, a young sailor on a British warship, is court-martialed for the murder of his ship-board tormentor. The story is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good.
WORLD OF RELIGION
Coordinators: Ruth Ward, Bob Gottfried
This is the second semester of a year-long course intended to serve as a general introduction to the basic religious concerns of humanity and the ways in which religions have developed in Eastern and Western history, giving intellectual, moral, and institutional expression to the meaning of human existence.