ONLINE SEMINAR
February 17 | W.G. Sebald — Writing the Past

Description

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LEADER

Dr. Wendy O’Brien is a philosopher with over 30 years’ experience teaching in academic and non-academic environments, including Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo, Harvard, Oxford and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her work explores subjects including power, violence, the relation to the Other, home, silence, and creativity. She is presently working on a long-term project on the concept of wonder. An active member of the Ontario literary scene, she has been an interviewer for organizations including By the Lake Book Club, the Toronto International Festival of Authors and GritLit, as well as hosting Bourbon and Books book club in both Toronto and Hamilton.

BOOKS

Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell, with an introduction by James Wood
(Modern Library, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0812982619

The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse
(New Directions, reprint edition, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-0811226158

To facilitate text references during the seminar, please obtain these editions.

We encourage you to support local bookstores or other independent sellers, especially as alternatives to Amazon.

In the US and the UK, try Bookshop.org, World of Books, or Ebooks (electronic books only)

In the US and Canada, try Powell’s Books, IndieBound, and Thiftbooks (used books only in Canada)

In Canada, try McNally Robinson. Toronto-based Ben McNally Books also takes orders by phone or email and ships across Canada.

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How do we write of the past? Of historical events in the past? Of our own past? What can be captured in words and what remains untranslatable into sentences and paragraphs, chapters and books? Do we ever write of the past, or are we always already involved in its construction? These questions preoccupied the writer W.G. Sebald. Through both the content and form of his works, he offers his reflections, creating some of the most powerful literature of the 20th century as he writes about the trauma of World War II. Blending fact and fiction, word and image, intersplicing memoir, art criticism, history, and travelogue, his works provide us with the opportunity for exploring our own answers to these questions.

In this seminar, we undertake a close reading of two of Sebald’s masterpieces, The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz, enquiring into the role that imagination and documentation play in the process of recollection.

“This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective.
We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.”
— W.G.Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

 

More resources on Sebald:
A roundtable on Art, Fiction & History: The Work of W. G. Sebald hosted by André Aciman (author of Call Me By Your Name)

Why You Should Read W.G. Sebald in the New Yorker
Sebald reading from Austerlitz at the 92nd Street Y
Sebald the Trickster in the New Yorker

All online seminar payments are nonrefundable. All discount codes must be used at the time of purchase; no retroactive discounts will be issued.

All seminars are subject to minimum enrollment of 7 participants. Click the link for full terms and conditions for Classical Pursuits online seminars.

Classical Pursuits does not record seminars. By participating in any seminar, registrants agree not to make their own seminar recordings and to abide by the Classical Pursuits code of conduct.

Image credit: Antwerp Central Station interior, Alvegaspar, via Wikimedia Commons

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