Monday, October 19, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

Gretchen Schulz, Professor of English Emerita, Oxford College

“Déjà vu all over again:  Let’s read another story together”

When our Lunch Colloquiums switched to Zoom last April, one of our first sessions let us experiment with the “remote learning” so many of our colleagues are engaged in now, as Gretchen Schulz offered us a “class” devoted to discussion of James Joyce’s short story “Araby.” So good a time was had by all that we soon scheduled other “classes” requiring some “homework” to prepare those “attending” for the lively exchanges that ensued. Vernon Robbins led us through analysis of “The Infancy Gospel of James” and Holly York led us through analysis of some poetry by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Now Gretchen returns (she’s baaaaaack) to ask all would-be-students-again to read another short story by another giant of the genre, this time, one who’s with us still. Joyce Carol Oates may have published 58 novels and hundreds of short stories (and plays and poetry and essays), but, as she has said herself, she is still best known for one of the first short stories she ever published, “Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?”  Let’s do our “homework” by reading the copy of the story we’ll make available—and then gather to consider why this might be so.