Course Title: Against the Clock: The Sense of Time
Instructor: Chase Atherton, A&S ’19 (MFA)
Brought to you by Odyssey
January 28th - March 4, 2026
Wednesdays, 5:30PM - 7:30PM ET (6 Sessions)
Virtual via Zoom
Course Description: What does it mean to live inside time? This six-week seminar explores how writers have imagined, embodied, and resisted time across centuries and genres. Moving from the industrial age’s “clock time” to the digital era’s dizzying acceleration, we’ll read fiction, poetry, and theory that challenge our assumptions about duration, progress, and the present. Authors such as Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, Édouard Glissant, Lucille Clifton, and Annie Ernaux reveal how power, gender, technology, and biology shape our temporal experience. Alongside thinkers from Marx to Foucault and Kristeva, we’ll consider how literature opens counter-cultural doorways into the lived texture of time—its loops, ruptures, and renewals. The course culminates in a creative workshop inviting participants to craft original works inspired by their own encounters with time.
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Tuition benefits are available to University faculty, staff, and retirees only. Employees of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, or the Applied Physics Laboratory should contact your institution’s Human Resources office for information about tuition remission and eligibility:
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