Nuar Alsadir's Animal Joy (Reading Group) [Durham, NC]
**This course is in-person only. There is no virtual component. Participants must be age 21+
Full Tuition: $220 — Sliding-scale tuition options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select. To pay in installments, choose PayPal at check out.
Instructor: Jasmina Nogo | 3-weeks | Sundays | November 23-December 7 | 5:00-7:00 PM | 719 N Mangum St, Durham, NC
From the publisher: Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied.
Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina’s morphine addiction, Freud’s un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to “Not Jokes,” Abu Ghraib, Fanon’s negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the author’s relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions—frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking—are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from one’s true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it.
A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.
—
This class will take place in person at Night School Bar in Durham. Night School requires that students refrain from attending in-person classes when sick. For more on our class policies, see our FAQ. Instructors will also follow this policy. If your instructor is sick, class may be moved to online for a session or rescheduled to the week following the final scheduled session at the instructor’s discretion.
Sliding Scale: Night School Bar pays instructors and staff a living wage. We ask that people who make above the living wage threshold for their area strongly consider choosing the full- or mid-level tuition tier in order to support our own living wage program. For Durham, NC, where we are located, the living wage threshold is $49,000 for an individual. All sliding-scale needs are self-assessed, and we will never request or require proof of need.
Scholarships: We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class. Our full scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering, limited to one per student per month.Because our scholarship funding is limited, selecting multiple full scholarships in a single month will result in disenrollment from all classes. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out please email us directly, and we will add you to a waitlist and notify you if additional scholarships become available. Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans and refund policy.
**This course is in-person only. There is no virtual component. Participants must be age 21+
Full Tuition: $220 — Sliding-scale tuition options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select. To pay in installments, choose PayPal at check out.
Instructor: Jasmina Nogo | 3-weeks | Sundays | November 23-December 7 | 5:00-7:00 PM | 719 N Mangum St, Durham, NC
From the publisher: Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied.
Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina’s morphine addiction, Freud’s un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to “Not Jokes,” Abu Ghraib, Fanon’s negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the author’s relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions—frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking—are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from one’s true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it.
A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.
—
This class will take place in person at Night School Bar in Durham. Night School requires that students refrain from attending in-person classes when sick. For more on our class policies, see our FAQ. Instructors will also follow this policy. If your instructor is sick, class may be moved to online for a session or rescheduled to the week following the final scheduled session at the instructor’s discretion.
Sliding Scale: Night School Bar pays instructors and staff a living wage. We ask that people who make above the living wage threshold for their area strongly consider choosing the full- or mid-level tuition tier in order to support our own living wage program. For Durham, NC, where we are located, the living wage threshold is $49,000 for an individual. All sliding-scale needs are self-assessed, and we will never request or require proof of need.
Scholarships: We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class. Our full scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering, limited to one per student per month.Because our scholarship funding is limited, selecting multiple full scholarships in a single month will result in disenrollment from all classes. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out please email us directly, and we will add you to a waitlist and notify you if additional scholarships become available. Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans and refund policy.
**This course is in-person only. There is no virtual component. Participants must be age 21+
Full Tuition: $220 — Sliding-scale tuition options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select. To pay in installments, choose PayPal at check out.
Instructor: Jasmina Nogo | 3-weeks | Sundays | November 23-December 7 | 5:00-7:00 PM | 719 N Mangum St, Durham, NC
From the publisher: Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied.
Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina’s morphine addiction, Freud’s un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to “Not Jokes,” Abu Ghraib, Fanon’s negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the author’s relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions—frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking—are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from one’s true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it.
A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.
—
This class will take place in person at Night School Bar in Durham. Night School requires that students refrain from attending in-person classes when sick. For more on our class policies, see our FAQ. Instructors will also follow this policy. If your instructor is sick, class may be moved to online for a session or rescheduled to the week following the final scheduled session at the instructor’s discretion.
Sliding Scale: Night School Bar pays instructors and staff a living wage. We ask that people who make above the living wage threshold for their area strongly consider choosing the full- or mid-level tuition tier in order to support our own living wage program. For Durham, NC, where we are located, the living wage threshold is $49,000 for an individual. All sliding-scale needs are self-assessed, and we will never request or require proof of need.
Scholarships: We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class. Our full scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering, limited to one per student per month.Because our scholarship funding is limited, selecting multiple full scholarships in a single month will result in disenrollment from all classes. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out please email us directly, and we will add you to a waitlist and notify you if additional scholarships become available. Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans and refund policy.