Tucked comfortably into a well-lit corner conference room of the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library, once a week from August through December a group of scholars, students, and poetry enthusiasts of varied backgrounds meet to discuss the lyrics of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The room is angular, modern, a cool and inviting multi-shaded gray room that overlooks Philadelphia without pretension. Eric Weinstein is the hero of this story, although I am sure he would disagree with my assessment. He is an incredibly gracious and progressive leader, one whose knowledge of poetry and ever-generous attitude provides the room with a serenity perhaps only matched by Shelley’s representations of the infinite coasts of Italy. I want to take an aside to mention that Eric coordinates the Unbinding Prometheus Project, an innovative collaborative opportunity for scholars to engage in across the globe in a truly evocative effort of academic rigor.

Each week, the three-hour seminar is split into two parts. The first half comprises an hour-long lecture given by a prominent scholar of Shelley’s work. Topics have included new formalist readings, biographical interpretations, and historicist interventions, and I could not possibly do this list justice by enumeration. After the talk concludes, Eric opens the room for questions and discussion, and the varied group invariably offers tremendously thoughtful inquiry and commentary about what had preceded the discussion. Typically we discuss Shelley’s politics, his biography, his poetry, and how these influences embolden—or even work against—one another.

Posthumous Portrait of Shelley Writing Prometheus Unbound in Italy, Joseph Servern (1845)

Now might be an appropriate time to mention that part of the impetus for this seminar series is the creation of a massive online open course (or the more charming appropriation, MOOC), a genre of public academic pedagogy—in this case, humanities-driven—designed for a wide range of audiences. The MOOC serves more as a backdrop to the group discussion; it neither distracts nor detracts from the presentation or succeeding conversations. Eric occasionally reminds the group about the context of the taping, and he is conscientious about the setting, dialogue, timing, and other features of the production. Yet, he never allows these concerns to supersede the conversation.

The second half of the seminar consists of breakout sessions, small-group close reading exercises. First, as a group, one member of the seminar—oftentimes Eric, who is an absolutely beautiful performer reading poetry aloud—reads the evening’s passage (this, I presume is mostly for the MOOC). For the next step, Eric breaks us into smaller groups, each of which is responsible for a section of the night’s poetry selection. We discuss everything from formal characteristics, thematics, content, biography, imagery, grammar, punctuation, allusions, history…you probably get the idea. The cameras do not follow these breakout sessions but are turned back on when we return to the larger group. As Eric moderates, the ideas discussed in the smaller groups crystallize, take shape, become moments of academic exploration in real-time, in ways atypical of the ways we often receive poetry.

Would you, patient reader, like to know the most profound realization I have had about this experience?

For several weeks we discuss Epipsychidion, Shelley’s 1821 poem that is about—to be quite reductive—the failure of modern conceptions and institutions of love (marriage, in particular). Even the most prolific Shelley scholar sometimes has an extraordinarily difficult time making meaning from his more difficult poetry, and this is a case in point. I believe this realization is pedagogically useful. As instructors, we should stop assuming we are the harbingers of some grand truth. It is okay if we do not know how to make sense of dense literature at times. What we offer are ways of reading and understanding texts that sometimes even elude us.

I submit that the value of this experience has limitless potential and that other institutions should experiment. Professors may volunteer to have their undergraduate or (perhaps more usefully) graduate seminars recorded for open access courses through Stony Brook’s website. This would allow for promotion of scholarship, research, and pedagogy that professors and students conduct, and allow for a tremendous variety of audiences to engage what we have the privilege of participating in every semester on campus. These open access resources have the added benefit of opening avenues of credibility and progressively aware value to our work beyond the campus community. It is no secret that the humanities is under siege by administrative and political forces that often seem beyond our reach. Connecting with a wide audience of thoughtful readers and students across the community and the globe makes palpable in an innovative way our importance to the world.

I know in these times it is easy to be cynical and to retreat into your own work. We also have the option of fighting openly and aggressively the incursive praxis of the campus and governmental institutions that seek to undermine our work in obvious ways every day. Alternatively, I believe such iterations as the University of Pennsylvania offers in the Shelley Seminar Series are inexpensive, simple to produce, and effective in reaching beyond our community. Peaceful resistance is perhaps at its best when it comes in the form of productive and collaborative work, and that is precisely the spirit of such projects.