Like going to college without the student loansLooking for a new way (other than Netflix perhaps) to unwind after work? You might consider taking advantage of one of the amazing free online courses that are available.
It’s almost a crime not to – the courses at Open Yale Courses, for example, cost nothing and are the same classes actually taught at New Haven’s storied Ivy League university.
This class on “The American Novel Since 1945” was taught by Yale University professor Amy Hungerford, and covers a wide range of novels from the post-War period to today. The reading list includes Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The syllabus is included here.
Read at your own pace, and once you complete each novel, go to the YaleCourses website to watch one of the course’s 24 50-minute videotaped lectures. By the end of the course, you’ll feel ready to take the optional – and ungraded – final exam.
Here’s the introduction to the class. If you were a Yale student at this point, you might be “shopping” the class to see if you might like to take it.
