Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have revolutionized how we think and behave. They keep us connected with family and friends and hedge against loneliness. The downside is that many of us who are active on social media feel less able to concentrate on tasks that require our rapt attention.
This class is one-half book group, one-half social experiment. For a month, participants will agree to dial down (or go dark) on all their social media accounts. Instead of posting, snapping, and tweeting, we’ll navigate the rich terrain of one of the greatest Russian novels of all time, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Heard of the slow food movement? Well, this is the slow reading movement. Come practice concentrating again. This January, allow the power of master storytelling to charm you, especially those of you who have decided, as a New Year’s resolution, to cut back on screen time.
TOLSTOY vs. FACEBOOK
Dates: 4 Sundays, 1/8-1/29
Time: 7-9 pm
Instructor: David Roderick
Ages: Adult
Genre: Fiction
Price: $225
David Roderick’s first book of poems, Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize and was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2006. The Pitt Poetry Series published his second collection, The Americans, in 2014. David’s writing has been awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, the James Boatwright III Prize from Shenandoah, the Julie Suk Award, and the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize. He has taught creative writing and literature classes at Stanford, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and most recently at the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was an Associate Professor in Creative Writing.
More about David: www.davidroderick.net