D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
Instructor: Jack Herney

Joseph Stalin said of D-Day that "the history of warfare knows no other like undertaking." June 6, 1944, and the subsequent Battle for Normandy have become, particularly of late, the "greatest generation's" finest hour, elevated to an American epic by stunning examples of individual courage and by the moments of terror and suffering that ennoble such heroism. Yet Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, chief of Britain's Imperial Staff, predicted the invasion could prove to be "the most ghastly disaster of the whole war." Just after the landings, General Omar Bradley, commander of U.S. forces on Omaha Beach, said, "Someday I'll tell General Eisenhower just how close it was in those first few hours." Like any moment in history, what happened at Normandy might not have turned out as it did. In this course, we will examine this most critical event in World War II -how the battle came to Normandy and what both men and women did there. Readings will include historical interpretations and also primary texts: memoirs, letters and diaries. We will view several films on D-Day and WWII. Our impressions and understandings will take shape as we enter the lives not only of Americans, but British, French and Germans as well - some of them Exonians - who came together on those beaches to take part in one of the great dramas of the 20th century.

Melville’s great novel has come to take on greater and greater importance in American literature. During our week together, our morning discussions will focus on the structure and substance of this great whaling epic. Perhaps we’ll discover how the America that Melville describes anticipates the America to come and how the novel, in its design and energy, embodies what is finest in the American democratic spirit. Our afternoon excursions will include whale-watching along the New England seacoast and a trip to Salem’s Peabody Museum. Because the text is so substantial, we will mail you copies of the novel by mid-April.

Gettysburg and the American Civil War
Instructor: Rick Schubart

Unlike the other ON BEYOND EXETER offerings, this course will meet on site, in Gettysburg, PA.

Our week together will provide time for Harkness discussions that focus on our reading assignments and our experience in the field. Excursions will carry us to Antietam, Harpers Ferry, the battlefields of Gettysburg and museums in Washington, D.C.

Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse ***No longer available for Summer 2009 ***
Instructor: Nita Pettigrew

The publication of To the Lighthouse in 1927 helped transform the English novel and give rise to Modernism. In these five days at Exeter, we will read Virginia Woolf’s ground-breaking novel. This elegiac and elegantly composed work focuses on the years just before and after World War I. To the Lighthouse offers an opportunity to think together about the War and its effects—personal as well as societal. The novel invites a consideration of the art of writing and of the psychological truth of “stream of consciousness,” and it invites us into the mind of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.