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New Chapter in Alumni Education
Dr.
Alan Filreis, the Class of 1942 Professor of English and faculty
director of the Kelly Writers House, has recruited some of his colleagues
to join groups of alumni in book-discussion groups–by e-mail–in
the coming year. The Writers House Virtual Book Groups, as he calls them,
"make possible smart and interesting conversations, carried on across
Penn generations as well as across space and time."
The first group will convene from January 15 to February
15, 2000, and will be led by Filreis himself; the readings will be one
story each by Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy.
In March, Dr. James O’Donnell, professor of classical
studies, will lead alumni in discussing Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale
Fire; Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader will be the topic
of rare-book librarian Dr. Daniel Traister’s group, beginning later
that month. Dr. Ann Matter, the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Religious
Studies and a women’s studies scholar, will convene a discussion
of two short fictions, Flannery O’Connor’s "The Temple
of the Holy Ghost" and Bernard Malamad’s "The Silver Crown,"
from mid-September to mid-October, 2000.
Any alumna or alumnus may participate; the only requirement
is a working e-mail account and Internet access. The project is based
in part on "Alumverse"–an intensive seminar for which some
150 alumni gathered virtually with Filreis in 1996 to talk about modern
poetry.
Filreis and Writers House Director Kerry Sherin C’85
will experiment with a fifth and different alumni book group—a group
for New Yorkers. From mid-April to mid-May, they will be joined electronically
by alumni writers Jennifer Egan C’85 and Ellen Umansky C’91–both
also New Yorkers; the four will lead alumni from the region in discussions
of fiction from Egan’s book, Emerald City, and several of
Umansky’s short stories. "The regional restriction is informal,"
Sherin said. "It is meant only to enable an experiment in helping
to create a local, albeit virtual, intellectual community among Penn’s
former students."
"We like the idea that after a month of heated
virtual exchanges about these two fine Penn writers," Filreis said,
"we all might decide to get together–actually to meet each other
and continue the conversation live, face to face." If the experiment
works, the Writers House will sponsor more local groups in 2001.
For more information,
see (www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/bookgroups/).
To register, write to <whbook@english.upenn.edu>.
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