Outreach
Annapolis
Saturday Seminars, February 27, 2010
Experience the great books educational program at St. John’s College—by participating in a Saturday Seminar sponsored by the Friends of St. John’s College. These seminars attract about 200 participants from varied ages and walks of life, who gather for coffee and donuts before joining groups of 18-20 for seminars.
St. John’s faculty members, called tutors, have chosen 12 readings—classic works drawn from the St. John’s program—and will conduct seminars on each. Choose one of the topics listed, read the assigned text in advance, and then join with others on seminar day in a discussion of the work. No previous knowledge of the subject or author is required. No outside research on the topic is expected.
Registration is required. Cost is $40. Phone registrations will not be accepted until after February 10. Since participation is limited, early registration is advised. For more information, contact Alice Chambers at 410-295-5544 or alice.chambers@sjca.edu.
Registration has been closed for 2010 seminars. Click here to register for e-mails about future seminars.
Saturday Seminars 2011 information to be announced in Fall 2010.
Schedule:
Saturday, February 27, 2010
9:30—10 a.m.
Registration and refreshments in Mellon Hall
Francis Scott Key Lobby
(Room locations will be given at registration.)
10—11:30 a.m.
Seminars
Seminar Offerings:
1. Akutagawa: “In a Bamboo Grove” [Waitlist only]
Often praised as being among the greatest short story in Japanese literature, "In a Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa appeared in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shinchō. Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon. An early modernist short story, it consists of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.
2. Bible: The Book of Job
After losing his property, his children, and his health, Job is told by his wife to “curse God and die.” He resists the suggestion, but he does complain bitterly about a fate he is convinced he has done nothing to deserve. While the friends who come to comfort him argue that his suffering must be a divine punishment for some grave if unwitting sin, Job eloquently insists on his innocence and voices his desire to put God on trial for the apparent injustice. When God finally responds, speaking from “out of the whirlwind,” his words come as a rebuke both to Job, the angry accuser, and to Job's friends, the self-appointed defenders of God's justice.
3. Camus: “The Myth of Sisyphus” from The Myth Of Sisyphus [Waitlist only]
“Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.” In this short story, in the collection of the same name, Camus applies his imagination into a consideration of the ancient myth of Sisyphus, a man condemned to struggle endlessly to push up a hill a great rock that rolls down the hill again every time it reaches the top. Camus understands this myth to portray the general human condition when human beings are considered by themselves without access to standards of eternal value. Camus' text considers, especially, whether men can be happy under such a condition
4. W.E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk
Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, poet, and novelist, best known as one of the primary founders of the NAACP. His essays on race in America, published in 1903, can help us gain perspective on what has been done, and what remains to be done, in race relations. We will read and discuss three of these: Chapter 1, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”; Chapter 3, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”; and Chapter 6, “Of the Training of Black Men.”
5. Faulkner: As I Lay Dying [Waitlist only]
Faulkner's brief, vivid novel raises questions about the meaning and experience of family, in part through its compelling story, but also through its peculiar form of narration, which gives voice to the thoughts of each of its characters, inside and outside the family, living and dead.
6. Montaigne: Essays: “On Repentance”
Michel de Montaigne’s Essays are, in effect, an extended autobiography. In this essay written late in his life, Montaigne looks back on the course his life has taken. His humane, personal, and provocative reflections raise questions about the meaning of human life altogether.
7. Plato: The Republic, Book 1 (327a-354c) [Waitlist only]
Plato’s Republic—perhaps the most famous philosophical work ever written—examines human nature in order to search out the foundations of politics and government. We will read and discuss Book I, in which Socrates has conversations with another old man and several young men on the nature of justice. What is justice? Does it have to do with being fair to others, or is it just a matter of self-interest and the best means of attaining one’s ends?
8. Sartre: “Existentialism is a Humanism” [Waitlist only]
In this lecture delivered in 1946, Jean Paul Sartre attempts to provide a defense of existentialism against some of its most profound criticisms. By way of providing this defense, Sartre raises and addresses many of the basic questions with which existentialism is concerned: What is meaning, action, and freedom? Is there an account of meaning, action, freedom, and the self that might leave the human being with something other than despair? How ought the human behave when he/she confronts the apparent meaninglessness of his/her existence? Sartre's examination of these questions has made "Existentialism as Humanism" one of the most concise accounts of existentialism and its concerns.
9. Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale depicts the devastating effect of King Leontes’ jealousy on his family, his friend, and himself. The play spans 16 years between Leontes’ violent outburst and his eventual reconciliation with his family and friend. Though the effects of Leontes’ passion cannot be undone, the play explores the tension between justice and forgiveness in working toward a resolution of Leontes’ grief and remorse.
10. Sophocles: Antigone [Cancelled]
Sophocles' Antigone completes the story of the downfall and destruction of the family of Oedipus. It is a play about love and loyalty and sacrifice. It forces us to ask what human beings owe to family, country and the gods.
11. Spinoza: “On Miracles”: the preface and Chapter 6 of Theologico-Political Treatise
Spinoza’s discussion of miracles centers on the question of whether there are two distinct and independent powers operating in and directing the events of the world: the power of God as one, and the power of Nature as the other. Or, are the two powers one and the same?
12. Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Perhaps the most provocative American play, A Streetcar Named Desire is set in New Orleans just after World War II, in a neighborhood that is poor but nevertheless possessed of "a raffish charm" with faded gray houses and their ornamented gables and rickety galleries. This is the story of Blanche DuBois, who has been brought up in the tradition of the old rural South. Blanche finds herself struggling to survive in a changing America, and she has demons, among them a delicate, high-strung temperament. She is caught between her obligation to be a lady and the force of her natural human passions and appetites. When she comes to New Orleans, she comes smack up against her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalksi—a man unlike any other she has met.
For more information, please contact Alice Chambers in Community Programs at alice.chambers@sjca.edu or 410-295-5544.
Seminar participants are responsible for their own text. All of the readings will be available at the St. John’s bookstore and most are also available at libraries, online as well as other bookstores.
St. John’s College Bookstore
Mon.-Fri. 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Sat. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Phone 410-626-2540
Email: bookstore@sjca.edu
Orders will be shipped upon request.
Gift certificates available.