life-long explorations of great works of literature
Richard Sacks -- Fall 2024
University College Enrichment Program
Fall 2024 Enrichment Program Catalog (available in summer 2024)
Five sessions overall (including performance of Hamlet at DCPA)
Four Wednesday evenings from 6:30-8:30pm MDT in-person at DU
September 4, 11, 18, 25, 2024
Hamlet at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Saturday September 21, 2024 at 7:00pm MDT
Registration link (available in July 2024)
Course Materials and Information page (available in June 2024)
Course Overview:
For over 400 years, Shakespeare's Hamlet has captivated and confounded actors and directors, scholars and critics, and of course audiences around the globe, confronting them all – and confronting us still today – with agonizing questions about what it means to be – or not to be – human. Are we “noble in reason [and] infinite in faculties,” as Hamlet muses aloud in his oft-quoted “what a piece of work is a man” speech, or (as he continues) are we “this quintessence of dust?” And how can we coexist with the excruciating contradictions of the world around us? Or with the suffering of those who love us for better or for worse? Or with the ghosts that insistently inhabit our minds and spirits? Or ultimately, as he wonders in the play’s most famous soliloquy, how can we live with our very selves – “to be or not to be?” Join Dr. Richard Sacks, who spent four decades at Columbia University teaching its core great books course, in a deep dive into these and other difficult questions through a four-session close reading of the unimaginably dazzling language and unbearably tragic visions of this astonishing text.
Please note: on Saturday evening September 21, 2024 at 7:00pm – between the third and final Wednesday evening sessions – we will attend the fall 2024 production of Hamlet at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
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