C In-Person Class: This class will be taught in person, in the classroom at the Red Cross building.
Enrollment: The American Red Cross pandemic protocols may limit the enrollment for this class.
Registrants will be informed in advance, and a waitlist will be available.
Text: Louise Erdrich, The Round House. HarperCollins, 2012.
Harper Perennial, ISBN 9780-06-206525-4, paperback.
Louise Erdrich’s 14th novel, The Round House, is set on an Ojibwe (Chippewa) reservation near Hoopdance, North Dakota. The story is narrated retrospectively by Joe Coutts, the son of Geraldine and Bazil Coutts. During these two class sessions, we will discuss how this winner of the National Book Award for Fiction is at once a mystery novel, a crime novel, a coming-of-age story, and a revenge narrative. We also will consider the interrelationships between the story’s legal ambiguities and complexities of jurisdiction, sovereignty, and treaty law, as well as how Erdrich explores faith and belief, justice and injustice, gender and trauma, and adolescence and adulthood. Our sessions will include viewing an interview with the author about the novel, and a video of her commencement speech at her alma mater, Dartmouth College.
Kevin Eyster retired from Madonna University in June after serving the university for thirty years in various capacities, most recently as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Among other endeavors, he is returning to teaching at Madonna as an adjunct professor of literature and writing.
