The Lost Generation (OOL)
Osher Online | Available (Membership Required)
This course will examine the cultural transformations in thinking and living that reshaped America and Western Europe between World War I and the Great Depression. Known as the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, and the Lost Generation, this period redefined values and norms. We will explore the vibrant world of 1920s Paris through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited and Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, considering the lasting legacy of the era.
WEDNESDAYS, APRIL 15 THROUGH MAY 20 -- Each live session (via Zoom) is 90 minutes
Wednesday, April 15
Wednesday, April 22
Wednesday, April 29
Wednesday, May 6
Wednesday, May 13
Wednesday, May 20
Class schedule: Live lectures will take place via ZOOM
As this class is delivered by the National Resource Center for OLLIs (NRC) at Northwestern University, you will receive a welcome email from osheronline@northwestern.edu. The email will include your credentials (username & password) as well as a hyperlink to the Osher Online Website through which you will access your course website. Please save the link once you receive it. Multi-session courses will use this same link each week.
Ferda Asya
Ferdâ Asya, PhD, Professor of English, has taught at universities worldwide and lived in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Specializing in 19th–20th century American literature with a focus on Edith Wharton, her interests include international literature and American expatriate writing in Europe. She has published widely on authors from Achebe to Stein and edited American Writers in Paris: Then and Now (2025), Teaching Edith Wharton’s Major Novels and Short Fiction (2021), and American Writers in Europe (2013).