3 Sessions: Tuesdays, Sept. 10, Oct. 8 and Oct. 29

1:30 to 3:00 pm (ET)

Location: Manhattan, Upper East Side

View modern culture through the lens of a popular pastime: swimming. Through literature, film, art, & social history, explore how swimming pools have become provocative icons of glamour as well as contested public arenas for sports & recreation. Explore pressing issues including gender and racial discrimination, suburban conformity, economic inequality, sexuality, and more by focusing on aquatic activities and themes. Discuss John Cheever’s story “The Swimmer” (1964) and the subsequent film starring Burt Lancaster (1968), along with online exhibitions and podcast-style interviews. Leanne Shapton’s memoir Swimming Studies (2012) and the doc film Swim Team (2016), about teenagers with autism who swim for recreation & competition, will prompt conversation about how recreation can shape our lives, health, personal identities, and social belonging. (You don’t need to wear a bathing suit, or even enjoy swimming, to participate in this class!)

3 sessions: Sept. 11, Oct. 9, Oct. 30
2:30 - 4:00 PM (ET)

Class Fee: $120 for 3 online sessions

Hosted by: SCARSDALE ADULT SCHOOL, Online

View modern culture through the lens of a popular pastime: swimming. Through literature, film, art, & social history, explore how swimming pools have become provocative icons of glamour as well as contested public arenas for sports & recreation. Explore pressing issues including gender and racial discrimination, suburban conformity, economic inequality, sexuality, and more by focusing on aquatic activities and themes. Discuss John Cheever’s story “The Swimmer” (1964) and the subsequent film starring Burt Lancaster (1968), along with online exhibitions and podcast-style interviews. Leanne Shapton’s memoir Swimming Studies (2012) and the doc film Swim Team (2016), about teenagers with autism who swim for recreation & competition, will prompt conversation about how recreation can shape our lives, health, personal identities, and social belonging. (You don’t need to wear a bathing suit, or even enjoy swimming, to participate in this class!)

3 Sessions: Thurs. Sept. 12, Oct. 10 and Oct. 31

11 am to 12:30 pm

Hosted by: SCARSDALE ADULT SCHOOL

Class Fee: $ 120 for 3 sessions

Location: Westchester Reform Temple, Scarsdale NY

View modern culture through the lens of a popular pastime: swimming. Through literature, film, art, & social history, explore how swimming pools have become provocative icons of glamour as well as contested public arenas for sports & recreation. Explore pressing issues including gender and racial discrimination, suburban conformity, economic inequality, sexuality, and more by focusing on aquatic activities and themes. Discuss John Cheever’s story “The Swimmer” (1964) and the subsequent film starring Burt Lancaster (1968), along with online exhibitions and podcast-style interviews. Leanne Shapton’s memoir Swimming Studies (2012) and the doc film Swim Team (2016), about teenagers with autism who swim for recreation & competition, will prompt conversation about how recreation can shape our lives, health, personal identities, and social belonging. (You don’t need to wear a bathing suit, or even enjoy swimming, to participate in this class!)

Thursday, September 19

1:00 to 2:15 pm (ET) Online

Hosted by : SCARSDALE ADULT SCHOOL

Class Fee: $ 30 Online via Zoom

Hollywood films of the 1940s & 1950s helped earn women the right to swim freely for fun and fitness. Tracing a century of aquatic performance from circus acts to the Olympics, Valosik reveals how colorful swimming spectacles forever changed women’s (and men’s) relationship with water. Once forbidden to swim alongside men and required to wear cumbersome swimwear to hide their legs, female swimming pioneers defied society’s expectations of what was permissible for their sex. Far more than bathing beauties or “mermaid queens,” they ushered in modern bathing suits, improved swim instruction, reduced global drowning rates, and turned synchronized swimming into an important Olympic sport. Valosik will recount fascinating stories about the athletic joy of “fancy swimming” and why it still matters for us swimmers today. Please note: You do NOT need to read the book in advance to enjoy this program. Live participation is encouraged, but a recording will be available for registrants for up to 2 weeks following the program.)

2 session series: Thursday Sept. 26 and Thursday October 17, 1:00 to 2:15 (ET)

Host: SCARSDALE ADULT SCHOOL, Online

Class Fee: $ 55 for BOTH sessions. Each session will include an audience Q&A. Recordings will be made available to registrants for 2 weeks following the program. You do NOT need to read the books in advance to enjoy the program.

Uncover the history of women’s exercise & fitness for health, wellness, & bodily appearance through two separate visits from experts. Learn how fitness fads & conflicts influenced social change in relation to gender discrimination & feminism, citizenship and political participation, racism & resistance, consumer capitalism, "wellness culture," the workplace, & sexuality.

The first session features journalist Danielle Friedman, author of Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World (2022), chronicling entrepreneurs behind the barre method, Jazzercise, city marathons, yoga studios, and more. The second session features Ava Purkiss, Assistant Professor of History at U. Michigan and author of Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America (2023). Learn how physical activity was not merely a path to health but also a way for Black women to support broader efforts for racial equality. From Jane Fonda to Michelle Obama, fitness leaders empowered people to improve personal and social welfare—one workout at a time.

Tuesday, November 19 1:30 to 3:00 PM

LOCATION: Manhattan, Upper East Side

This session will focus on a contemporary novel or memoir: the title will be announced shortly.

Thursday, December 5: 11 am to 12:30 pm.

Class Fee: $35 1 session

Hosted by: Scarsdale Adult School

Location: Westchester Reform Temple, Scarsdale NY

In her acclaimed follow-up to Fleishman Is In Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner invents the unforgettable Fletcher family of Long Island. In 1980, wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. He is returned relatively unharmed to his wife and kids less than a week later. The family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted by the knowledge that while their money endangered them, it also assured them their safety. But over the decades, the family’s trauma leaves lasting consequences in its wake. As Carl Fletcher’s three adult children—Nathan, Beamer, and Jenny, struggle with a different kind of survival, and face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in their lives’ successes & failures. Long Island Compromise confronts many mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, boredom, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, psychics, and the often unspoken love that unites a family forever.

Thursday, December 5 3 to 4:30 pm (ET)

Host: Scarsdale Adult School ONLINE

In her acclaimed follow-up to Fleishman Is In Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner invents the unforgettable Fletcher family of Long Island. In 1980, wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. He is returned relatively unharmed to his wife and kids less than a week later. The family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted by the knowledge that while their money endangered them, it also assured them their safety. But over the decades, the family’s trauma leaves lasting consequences in its wake. As Carl Fletcher’s three adult children—Nathan, Beamer, and Jenny, struggle with a different kind of survival, and face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in their lives’ successes & failures. Long Island Compromise confronts many mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, boredom, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, psychics, and the often unspoken love that unites a family forever.