Reading Groups

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels with Shirley Tung

Once a week Saturdays, 11:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT March 29 to April 19, 2025

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Books’ option includes the title required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
3/29, 4/5, 4/12, 4/19
Online via Zoom

Take a wild romp through fantastical lands filled with miniature people, giants, flying islands, mad scientists, and talking horses! At first, Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels appears only a strange, ethnographic account of the weird and wondrous, but it soon reveals itself as a thinly veiled, scathing critique of eighteenth-century British culture bent upon global expansion.

As we travel alongside Gulliver, we will examine Swift’s satire of colonialism, scientific advancement, mass consumerism, politics, religion, and societal norms. Although published nearly 300 years ago, Gulliver’s Travels is both timeless and timely in the way it gleefully challenges the superiority of so-called “civilized” societies. When we reach the end of this journey nothing will ever appear the same.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Part One of Gulliver’s Travels

What to expect from this reading group: Sessions will begin with a contextual mini-lecture, followed by a conversation opener. Although the group leader will have passages on hand to illustrate the key concepts and to guide the discussion, participants are expected to shape the course of the conversation.

Reading List:

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Capacity: 20

Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Shirley F. Tung

Shirley F. Tung

Shirley F. Tung is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University, specializing in the literature and culture of the Restoration and long eighteenth century. She is also a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Life-Writing. Dr. Tung’s scholarly work, which spans the genres of (auto)biography, epic and lyric poetry, early periodicals and print media, and travel writing, has been published in several top-tier academic journals such as European Romantic Review, Huntington Library Quarterly, and Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. At Kansas State, she teaches courses that range from medieval to modernist literature as well as classes on film and television. Her teaching has received the awards at the international, national, and collegiate levels from the British and American Societies for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Kansas State’s College of Arts and Sciences, and the Student Association of Graduates in English. Currently, Dr. Tung is completing two books: a micro-biography on John Milton’s time as a pamphleteer during the English Civil War and a braided biography of three influential eighteenth-century women travel writers.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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