The Wine-Dark Sea: Folklore of the Ocean - Live and Expanded Edition

The sea is calling.

There's a story as old as the tide.

A woman stands at the edge of the shore, caught between two lives: the one everyone expects her to keep living, and the one calling to her from beneath the waves.

Everyone wants her to choose. Land or sea. Safety or longing. Who she was raised to be, or who she actually is.

Folklore calls her a selkie. But you already know her. You've been her - standing at some edge, wondering if the parts of yourself that feel too strange, too deep, too much are the very things worth diving after.

It's lucky then that the sea is wide and deep with secrets. And legends are the skeleton keys that unlock them.

Our most beloved tales of the ocean ask us to consider the nature of love, home, loss, and who we want to be. When we speak of selkies, we weigh the force of passion against the right to self-determination. The ghost ships that drift through stories and song shed light on our deepest values and fears. The women of history and legend who took up piracy challenge our vision of the past (and maybe even the future.) And horrors like Scylla and Charybdis ask us to wonder how monsters are made… as do Odysseus's own choices throughout his journey.

The sea and its lore are vast. The saltwater and stories are wide enough for your sweetest dreams and your sharpest fears, all your complexities, contradictions, and magic.

A live, newly expanded six-week odyssey into oceanic folklore and legends from around the world, gathering tales, songs, and poems like sea glass on the shore.

The sea is calling.

The tide is turning, and the maps are unfinished. The monsters are waiting.

The ghost ships are already on the horizon, and the selkies are wrapped in their coats. Somewhere beneath the waves, the stories are still singing.

This summer, we're setting sail together.

Not just to study the folklore of the sea, but to explore it. To ask impossible questions. To lose ourselves in the old lore. To discover why oceans have always been home to our deepest fears, enduring loves, beguiling monsters, forgotten cities, and impossible dreams.

Pack your books and your sense of wonder.

We'll bring the maps.

Each week, we'll dive into a different current:

Love, Lust, and Longing

Nothing kindles desire and fear like the liminal creatures of the sea. Mermaids balance on the knife-edge of beauty and monstrosity, while selkie tales infuse our understanding of romance with melancholy and loss. We'll explore why sea folklore seethes with forbidden love and evanescence - and why that longing feels so recognizable.

Live on 7/21 at 7PM ET

Getting Lost & Found

There’s a tension between being lost at sea and finding a home among (or beneath) the waves. How do tales of underwater cities and islands of paradise and ruin help us understand the human need for belonging and home?

Live on 7/28 at 7PM ET

Ghosts & Guilt

Swashbuckling adventures are a hallmark of oceanic tales, but they cast long shadows. What happens when adventure leads to disaster? What kinds of ghosts haunt the high seas and how do they shape the stories we tell about valor or justice?

Live on 8/4 at 7PM ET

Becoming Monstrous

Here there be monsters. The Kraken, Leviathan, Aspidochelone, Scylla, Charybdis. But how are these monsters made and why do we need them? What happens when the line between the monsters and heroes of the sea begin to blur? And what does it mean for the parts of us the world has called "too much"?

Live on 8/11 at 7PM ET

Lady Pirates!

Yes, there were lady pirates, and no, it wasn't easy. For centuries, women took up piracy despite steep social barriers and superstitions built to keep them off the deck. But how much is fact and how much is legend? We'll study figures like Ching Shih and Grace O'Malley to see how their stories challenge our expectations of history - and what it costs (and wins) to defy the role you're handed.

Live on 8/18 at 7PM ET

The Odyssey

Drawing from all the threads and themes of previous weeks, we close with The Odyssey as translated by Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate the epic ocean voyage into English. How do translation and gender impact our understanding of romance, monstrosity, home, and identity in this iconic tale?

Live on 8/25 at 7PM ET

Grab your fellow travelers (and maybe your favorite tea.) This is a journey best taken in good company!

No memorization, no gatekeeping - just real scholarship, real depth, and the kind of companions that makes a long voyage feel like the best part of the trip.

The wine-dark sea and its lore are deep and dark enough to hold us all.

Are you ready to shed your coat and join us?

The Gangway of the
Good Ship Carterhaugh Is Down:

(but only until 7/20 at midnight ET!!)

$497

Full Payment

2 payments of $274/month

2-Month Payment Plan

4 payments of $143/month

4-Month Payment Plan

Please Note:

In order to fully participate in Week Six, you will need to purchase or borrow a copy of Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Odyssey! We will be looking at this new translation in particular, so please be sure you get Wilson's version!

The Wine-Dark Sea: The Folklore of the Ocean is a 6-week live course that meets weekly on Tuesday nights from 7/21 to 8/25 at 7PM ET. We encourage you to come live if at all possible - there’s nothing like the Carterhaugh community - but there will be replays posted within 24 hours of each live meeting because timezones are real and life happens.

Here's What's Included
in the LIVE AND EXPANDED Version:

Six core LIVE video lectures about the week's key concepts. Expect college-level discussions, complex topics in accessible language, time for Q&As, and a sense of humor.
Access to an exclusive Circle community for students of The Wine-Dark Sea. This moderated space will include weekly discussion questions and opportunities to connect with your fellow students.
A special BONUS lecture with the amazing Terri Windling - this pre-recorded multimedia lecture on selkie legends is exclusively for enrolled students!
All course readings as PDFs or Links (Minus One!) - Our stories and lore are curated with care. Some will be familiar and some will likely be wholly new to you, but they are all worth exploring. Prepare to be fascinated and delighted with tales from all over the world in this CUSTOM collection made specifically for this course!
NOTE: Please purchase or borrow the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey to fully participate in Week Six!
Discussion questions for learning and self-discovery - These questions will help deepen your knowledge, guide your reflections, and explore how the folklore we discuss echoes your own journey.
Five Gorgeous "Grimoire Pages" - Grimoire pages are highly aesthetic lesson summaries that you can use as reference materials. You can also print them and add them to your own course notebook!

SPECIAL BONUS

You're going to get an additional bonus lecture all about SELKIES from the incredible, incomparable TERRI WINDLING!

This is an exclusive lecture that isn't available anywhere else!

Terri is one of the most magical people we have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She has been a guiding force for the two of us, and we are so honored by her support of Carterhaugh and her agreement to do this special lecture!

Click here to read more testimonials!

Your Teachers

We, Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman, are award-winning folklorists, teachers, and writers with a combined 26 years in higher education, two streaming series on The Great Courses+, and over 150 publications (including our new book, Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk!)

Together, we founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, teaching creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. In 2019, Carterhaugh won the Dorothy Howard Award from the American Folklore Society.

When we aren’t teaching at Carterhaugh, we're scholars, writers and best friends who have published peer-reviewed articles, appeared on podcasts, sold stories and poems, written book introductions and encyclopedia entries, and written for magazines and blogs. (We’ve also been known to crush “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at karaoke.) We're regular writers for Enchanted Living Magazine, and we also deliver sold-out lectures at venues like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Profs & Pints series, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, and FaerieCon.

We love teaching. Our classes reflect the joy we get out of the strange and delightful world of folklore. We take scholarship seriously, believe in clear communication over jargon-speak, deeply value our community, and laugh a lot.

FAQ

"Um, what exactly IS Carterhaugh?" - The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic is an award-winning online school dedicated to classes on fairy tales, folklore, and all things fantastic. It was created by Sara and Brittany in 2016 as a place for those who dreamed of elven battles while studying economics, those who have always sworn they could see ghosts, and those who longed for a school of magic to send them an unexpected acceptance letter. If you've ever felt like you were the only one who cared so much about a fairy tale or a ghost story, we founded Carterhaugh so you'd have somewhere to bring that feeling - and to find out you were never alone. Want to know more? Check out our "About" page by clicking here!
"When will I get the first lesson?" - Our first live session will happen on 7/21 at 7PM ET, with subsequent live meetings on 7/28, 8/4, 8/11, 8/18, and 8/25. They will be recorded if you can't make them live. Additional lesson materials will become available as we go through the course. The Circle group will be open starting 7/21 and the pre-recorded bonus workshop with Terri Windling will be available starting 8/4!
"What if I can't come to the live discussion?" - You do NOT have to watch the videos on any specific date, nor attend any live session, as they will all be recorded and available for you to view later. We aim to make this course accessible, so please watch whenever is best for you. That said, our live meetings are a LOT of fun, and we encourage you to come live and participate in real time when you can!
“What do you mean 'live and expanded'?” - We first taught this course in 2023 and have released a self-study version in subsequent years. However, this course is frankly too good and too vast to languish - it needs to live, breathe, and adapt! So, for the first time since its inception, we will be teaching the materials live every week. We'll also be refining the materials, AND we're adding an entirely new module on LADY PIRATES.
"What if I hate this? Is there a refund policy?" - Please understand that we do not offer refunds. (You're not gonna hate this, we promise.)

Other questions? Contact us at theprofs@carterhaughschool.com!

Click here to read more testimonials!

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The gangway is down...

but only until 7/20 at midnight ET!!

$497