Where did you go to school?  Harvard?

No, because it’s expensive!  It costs more than $60,000 a year.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 0.4 percent of American undergraduates go to Ivy League schools.  Seventy-three percent are educated at state universities and public colleges.

But New York publications continue to–excuse this nasty phrase–suck Ivy League d—.   In a recent article at the Literary Hub,  Emily Temple felt nostalgic for her school days,  so selected 10  courses  from university syllabi she’d like to take “from her couch.”  I raised an eyebrow when I noticed that seven of the 10 are offered by Ivy League schools, because isn’t Literary Hub supposed to be hipper than that?

Here are the Lit Hub stats.

• Princeton:  3 courses.
• Harvard:  1 course
• Stanford:  1 course
• Cornell:  1 course
• Northwestern (the only Midwestern school, an elite private university):  1 course
• Williams College (junior Ivy League):  1 course
• Berkeley (a very cool state university, but very elite):  1 course
• University of Florida (a state university, perhaps chosen to balance the others?):  1 course

And, to remind you-all that there are affordable schools between the east and west coasts,  I have selected three fascinating courses offered by the University of Iowa and University of Illinois.

THREE DREAM COURSES.

University of Iowa, Comparative Literature:  The Tale of Genji

Close reading of Murasaki Shikibu’s classic Tale of Genji; students come to know the characters by exploring the social and cultural context of the tale and discover the art, literature, and film that the Tale of Genji has inspired while tracking its reception through the history of Japan and across the globe. Taught in English.

(Some of you remember I read Tale of Genji the summer of 2016.  I’d love to do it right:  all the notes in the world can’t make up for not having a professor.)

University of Iowa, Comparative Literature:  Wonder Woman Unleashed: A Hero for Our Times

Development of the woman warrior archetype in mythology (Athena/Minerva and Artemis/Diana), literature (Camilla from The Aeneid by Virgil), and history (Artemisia and Joan of Arc); focus on the development of Amazon narratives in Metamorphoses by Ovid, The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizzan, and On Famous Women by Boccaccio; students read Wonder Woman Chronicles and one or two critical studies on the subject, which may include The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore.

University of Illinois, English: Literature of Fantasy, From Mordor to Gormenghast: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings  and Peake’s Gormenghast

If J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955, rev. 1966) established the dominant paradigm for the genre of secondary-world fantasy fiction, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy(1946-1959) established a rival paradigm that, while less influential, has been all the more important for defining an alternative to hobbitry—so much so that Peake has sometimes been described as “the anti-Tolkien.” Among contemporary fantasy writers who have preferred Peake’s vision, China Miéville has gone so far as to say that “The nicest thing anyone ever said about [his novel] was that it read like a fantasy book written in an alternate world where the Gormenghast trilogy rather than Lord of the Rings  was the most influential work in the genre.” …

There are so many great courses and creative professors out there!