Outreach
Annapolis, Continuing Education and Fine Arts Program
Seminars - Fall 2010
A community seminar is composed of approximately 15 students and one tutor engaged in the study of a single book, work, problem, or theme. Each meeting begins with a question posed by the tutor based on the assigned reading; the question is meant to begin the conversation, not to elicit a correct answer. The conversation is characterized by openness, reason, clarity, and civility. Every seminar member is encouraged to take part, to candidly state his or her views, and to be attentive to others.
William Faulkner: Selected Fiction
Tutor: Janice Macaulay
Tuesday, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m.
September 21 – October 26
Mellon Hall, Room 101
Tuition: $180. 6 sessions
The class will discuss two works set in Faulkner’s famous fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi. Go Down Moses, a collection of several interrelated stories explores the complex relations between blacks and whites in the post-Civil War South. As I Lay Dying follows the travels of a family across the Mississippi countryside as they try to bury their wife and mother, Addie. The story is told by all the family members in turn, including Addie herself.
Suggested text: Vintage paperbacks
First assignment: Go Down Moses: “Was” and “The Fire and the Hearth”
Spinoza: A Theologico-Political Treatise
Tutor: Irena Datchev
Wednesday, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m.
September 22 – October 27
Mellon Hall, Room 101
Tuition: $180. 6 sessions
As the title announces, the treatise is concerned with theology, politics, and their relation with one another. On all three counts it was a groundbreaking book. In theology, Spinoza proposes an interpretation of Scripture free of superstition or philosophical ideas extraneous to it, but considering historical context and questions of authorship, thus laying the foundations for biblical criticism. In politics, he was the first philosopher to argue that the unrestricted freedom of the citizens is what makes a state strong. In the relation between the two, he first proposed that state and religious faith must be sharply separated.
Suggested translation: R.H.M. Elwes, Dover Publications
First assignment: Preface and Chapters I-III