The Great Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s American Epic

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has turned 100 this year. To discuss the enduring significance of the novel, we are excited to host literary scholar Dr. Julia Stern on Tuesday, September 9. Dr. Stern has been teaching the novel since the mid-1980s, when she was a graduate student at Columbia University. Dr. Stern will present the argument that by unpacking the epic dimensions of The Great Gatsby, according to criteria developed to understand Homer, Virgil, and Dante, the audience will gain a distinctive appreciation of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.

Dr. Julia Stern is the Henry Sanborn Noyes Professor of Literature and the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early America Novel (a finalist for the MLA first book prize), Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic, and Bette Davis Black and White, all published by University of Chicago Press. Dr. Stern teaches courses on American women and Black writers of the 19th century, Faulkner’s novels, and the cinema of classical Hollywood, particularly the work of Bette Davis. Dr. Stern is currently working on a collection of essays, tentatively titled, “The Many Skins of Bette Davis.”

You may also like the following events from History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff:

• Next month, 14th September, 04:00 pm, Local Legends 2025 Event Honoring Joanna Rolek in Lake Forest
• Next month, 23rd September, 10:00 am, Mellody Farm Nature Preserve Walk in Lake Forest

Also check out other Arts events in Lake Forest, Literary Art events in Lake Forest, Workshops in Lake Forest.