Sept 2020 Book Program

WAT Classic Books Series

As the United States approaches a presidential election marked by extreme partisanship, we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic, besieged by false information, and surrounded by civil unrest. Hence the selection of Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift's satiric masterpiece, for this September Book Program. Scholars have long recognized that this book, wrapped in a travel tale, exposes the flaws of political institutions and social systems. Given human nature, systems ostensibly created to support common causes can degenerate into divisive behaviors. Gulliver's Travels gives us a fresh way to consider our current landscape, while its bizarre fantasy provides us with much needed humor and some psychological distance from a range of emotionally charged issues.

About the Professor

Dr. Peggy Thompson is the Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor Emerita of English at Agnes Scott College, where she was an award-winning educator for 31 years. This South Dakota native…