Grapes of Wrath Seminar

John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is set during the humanitarian crisis of the Dust Bowl, a manmade environmental disaster that uprooted 400,000 people from small farms in the American Southwest, sending them on a cross-country journey towards the “promised land” of California. It focuses on a single family of migrants, the Joads, and their dignity and resilience in the face of joblessness, homelessness, hunger, and violent oppression of the poor and dispossessed. A transcendent novel about social justice, the novel has much to teach us about an American Dream gone badly wrong and about our collective responsibility not just for ourselves and families, but for humankind. In addition to discussions of the text, this seminar will include a background lecture and screenings of Pare Lorentz’s documentary, “The Plow that Broke the Plains” (1936) as well as John Ford’s film of The Grapes of Wrath. 

Required Reading: The Grapes of Wrath: Text and Criticism, edited by Peter Lisca, ISBN 978-0140247756. Class will also use supplemental materials from this edition.

Susan Beegel holds a PhD in English from Yale University and is Editor Emerita of The Hemingway Review. She has published four books and more than 50 scholarly articles on American literature. Her Steinbeck credentials include co-editing an anthology of criticism on Steinbeck and the Environment; introducing the author’s first novel, Cup of Gold, for Viking Press; writing for The John Steinbeck Encyclopedia; speaking at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas; teaching high school teachers in an NEH summer institute on Steinbeck and the Art of Social Engagement; and co-directing an NEA Big Read of The Grapes of Wrath for Brunswick-area libraries.