Context brings the brightest minds to your living room with perspective-shifting online lectures.

George Orwell’s Enduring Legacy: 1984 and Animal Farm with Dr. Joseph Luzzi

George Orwell’s Enduring Legacy: 1984 and Animal Farm with Dr. Joseph Luzzi


No events are scheduled at this time. Want to be notified when it’s back? Click the blue button to the right and we’ll notify you.

Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

Few works of modern literature have been as influential as George Orwell’s mid-twentieth century classics, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. With his uncanny ability to probe the most lacerating political developments of his time, Orwell created novels that remain shockingly relevant today because of their diagnosis of power, corruption, and misinformation, among many other key issues of the present. In this presentation, Joseph Luzzi, the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, will help participants discover the key qualities of Orwell’s gorgeous prose, as the seminar considers how remarkably prophetic Orwell was in understanding the forces and trends that would define global life from his age all the way to our own.

Joseph Luzzi received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Faculty Member in Italian Studies at Bard College, where he has taught since 2002 after being a visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. A frequent contributor to publications including the New York Times, TLS, and Chronicle of Higher Education, he is the author of 5 books, including "My Two Italies," a New York Times Editors' Choice selection and "In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love," a Vanity Fair “Must-Read” selection. His work has been translated into multiple languages and his many awards include a Yale College Teaching Prize, Dante Society of America Essay Prize, and Wallace Fellowship at Villa I Tatti, Harvard's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. In 2017 he was named Cittadino Onorario/Honorary Citizen in Acri, Calabria, his Italian parents' birthplace. His next book is "Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance," which will be published by W. W. Norton. Professor Luzzi is the founder of the Virtual Book Club, an online community of readers dedicated to exploring some of the best books ever written. Learn more at JosephLuzzi.com.

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

Based on 2 reviews
50%
(1)
50%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
J
J (Vancouver, CA)

Well needed revisit for me. Dr. Luzzi always brings the books to life.

W
W.L.K. (Niles, US)

Guest did not leave comment

Customer Reviews

Based on 2 reviews
50%
(1)
50%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
J
J (Vancouver, CA)

Well needed revisit for me. Dr. Luzzi always brings the books to life.

W
W.L.K. (Niles, US)

Guest did not leave comment