The Worst Dates in World Literature, Thursday, February 13, 2003, 7:30 p.m.

An evening guaranteed to make you feel good about your relationship (or lack thereof), this program will feature stories and poems of love gone terribly awry--botched proposals, unrequited passions, boorish men, inconstant women, failed marriages, misadventures in adultery, and other tortures inflicted by eros. The evening will include readings from the works of writers such as Catullus, Shakespeare, Flaubert, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Edith Wharton.

"I dare say you will find him very agreeable."
"Heaven forbid!--That would be the greatest misfortune of all!--To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate!--Do not wish me such an evil."

-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

O, My America! My Newfound Land, Tuesday, April 15, 2003, 7:30 p.m.

America was imagined long before it was discovered by European explorers, and it continues to be re-imagined to this day. This evening will explore the changing image of America--as earthly paradise, lawless frontier, urban jungle, personification of hope and despair--and the way America itself has become an important literary character. The program will include readings from Native American songs, the diaries of Columbus, and the poems and stories of Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Mark Twain, and others.

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crused by one above.

-Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Again"

Curated by Matthew Brogan and Laura Ferri
Directed by Laura Ferri