Outreach
Santa Fe Community Seminar Series - Spring 2010
Community Seminars are special opportunities for community members to read and discuss seminal works in the same unique manner as our students. Seminars are discussion-based and small in size in order to ensure spirited dialogue. There are topics to pique every interest, and for many participants the discussion-based learning model is an entirely new experience.
The Community Seminar Series will be offered as four- to six-week seminars meeting one day a week. Weekend seminars meet Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon, and will be accompanied by light refreshments.
Please call 505-984-6117 to register for any of the seminars. Teachers with proof of employment can enroll in a Community Seminar at a 50-percent discount. Community Seminars are free to 11th and 12th grade high school students (limited spaces available).
Plato: Phaedrus and Symposium
Seminar Title: Plato’s Dialogues on Love
Tutor: David Starr
Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus are his principal Socratic dialogues on the topic of love. Both are deeply concerned also with the arts of poetry and persuasion, and with the psychology of love in its variety of forms – erotic, altruistic, and spiritual. They are among the most graceful of Plato’s dramatic portrayals of his hero, conversing with good friends about the most intimate and powerful of human passions and aspirations.
Dates: February 2nd – March 9th (6 Tuesdays)
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Cost: $180
Shakespeare, William: Henry V
Tutor: Laurence Nee
Please join us for this seminar which will follow one of Shakespeare’s most intriguing characters, Henry V, as he assumes rule over England. Through our reading of two of Shakespeare’s most gripping plays—Henry IV, Part Two and Henry V—we will examine the ways in which the man who has been called England’s greatest king addresses numerous foreign and domestic problems: from his war with France and his confrontation with the Church to his efforts to unify England and restore the rule of law. By examining Henry’s relationships with his father, his tavern-dwelling friends, and his fiancé, we will also attempt to understand the cost his public life has had on his private happiness. While considering these and other questions, we will also have the pleasure of discussing two of the most beautiful texts ever written in English.
Dates: February 2nd – March 9th (6 Tuesdays)
Time: 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Cost: $180
James, Henry: The Wings of the Dove
Seminar Title: Henry James, The Wings of the Dove: “Is there Life After Death?”
Tutor: Patricia Greer
The Wings of the Dove is one of Henry James' late masterpieces, a dark, deeply moving, and perhaps tragic study of human consciousness. After we read the novel we will read James' elegant, and relevant, essay, "Is there Life After Death?"
Dates: February 9 - March 9 (5 Tuesdays)
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Cost: $150
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Tutor: David Carl
Conrad’s short novel details the journey of one man, Marlow, up the Congo River at the end of the 19th century in search of another man, Kurtz, who has broken off contact with the Dutch Trading Company for whom both men work. The journey is as much an exploration of the human soul as it is an indictment of European imperialist expansion into Africa in the 19th century. Each man, in his own way, must confront demons from within and from without and struggle to understand his place in a world not entirely of his own making, but for which he nevertheless bears the responsibility. This seminar offers the opportunity to read Heart of Darkness in anticipation of next month’s seminar on Francis Ford Coppola’s film about Vietnam, Apocalypse Now, which is based on Conrad’s novel.
Dates: February 12 – 14th
Time: Friday, 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1 – 3 p.m.
Cost: $180
Shakespeare, William: King Lear
Tutor: Lise Van Boxel
King Lear is perhaps most remembered for its poignant depiction of an elderly man who tries and fails to find consolation for his mortality in his children’s love. While the powerful tragedy of Lear must be confronted, the play is too complex to be reduced to it alone. Mortality, familial love, political and private life are all central themes in this play. By understanding the inter-relation of these themes, we may better understand not only what makes Lear’s life so horrific, but also something of what is required to lead a genuinely good human life.
Dates: February 19th – 21st
Times: Friday, 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1 – 3 p.m.
Cost: $180
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tutor: Keri Ames
Dorian Gray’s legendary beauty seems as much a curse as a blessing. Is beauty ultimately corrupting in Wilde’s novel? What are the proper purposes and values of art? Is art “quite useless” as the preface contends? We will examine what hope might lie in the beautiful and in art, given Wilde’s portrayal of Dorian’s decadent and self-indulgent life.
Dates: Saturday, February 27th (Day Seminar)
Time: 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Cost: $30
Copolla, Francis Ford: Apocalypse Now
Tutor: David Carl
Apocalypse Now is part war film, part psychological investigation, part spiritual journey. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is a film about war on multiple levels: political, personal, spiritual, and psychological. Based on Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness and set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War in the 1960’s, Coppola’s film is one of the most shocking, disturbing, and moving portraits of the tolls of war on the human spirit to have come out of America’s experience in Vietnam.
Dates: March 5 – 7 (Weekend Seminar)
Time: Friday, 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1 – 3 p.m.
Cost: $180
Seminar Title: The Heretical Theology of Meister Eckhart
Tutor: Michael Wolfe
Condemned as a heretic at the end of his life in the 14th century, Meister Eckhart has been reevaluated and celebrated in recent decades as one Christianity’s most subtle and creative thinkers. He is both thoroughly committed to the Christian tradition and daringly original in his understanding of that tradition. Exploring such stages of the path as detachment from images, the birth of the Son in the soul, and the breakthrough of the soul to Godhead, Eckhart’s discourse is both dark and fruitful, stretching human language to the bursting point in a paradoxical effort to give voice to the unsayable.
Dates: March 12th – March 14th (Weekend)
Time: Friday, 6:00 p.m – 8:00 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Cost: $180
Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom!
Tutor: Keri Ames
Thomas Sutpen is a haunting, disturbing, yet captivating character, particularly for Quentin Compson: “the two separate Quentin’s now talking to one another in the long silence of not people in not language, like this: it seems that this demon—his name was Sutpen…” We will undertake a close reading of this challenging novel, asking what heroism might mean in the world of Sutpen.
Dates: April 3rd – May 1st (5 Saturdays)
Time: 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Cost: $150
Dostoevesky, Fyodor: Demons
Tutor: David Starr
The Demons may be Dostoevsky’s best novel; it is the most tightly-plotted of his “Great Novels,” as the five major works of his maturity are called. It is a remarkably prescient depiction, more than forty years before the 1917/1918 Russian civil war, of a brilliantly anarchic revolutionary thinker and his circle. Dostoevsky’s vision proved a shockingly accurate portrayal of the events of the early 20th century. This political novel at the peak of his psychological and literary powers is perhaps his darkest, most ironic work.
Dates: April 6th – May 18th (7 Tuesdays)
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Cost: $210
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Tutor: Laurence Nee
Please join us for this conversation about Elizabeth and Darcy, who arguably embody Jane Austin’s ideal presentation of human love. In addition to examining the pride and prejudice that pose obstacles to their love, we will also consider the other couples depicted in Pride and Prejudice in order to deepen our understanding of the pitfalls which Elizabeth and Darcy avoid. Special attention will be paid to Austin’s unique style of writing, which ironically reveals the depth of human nature amid humorous and elevating prose.
Dates: April 9th – April 11th (Weekend Seminar)
Times: Friday, 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1 – 3 p.m.
Cost: $180
Plato: Hipparchus; Minos; Alcibiades 1
Seminar Title: The Beginning of Philosophy in Three Short Platonic Dialogues
Tutor: Lise Van Boxel
In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates seems repeatedly to suggest that by nature every human being yearns for the good life. On the other hand, he repeatedly fails to convince the people with whom he speaks to do what is required to lead such a life. How can both of these things be true? In these three short works, Plato shows us what aspect of human nature leads us toward a philosophic life, and what aspects of our education and our character hinder us from truly seeking and living the best way of life. Surprisingly perhaps, the very yearnings that incline toward a higher way of life also seem to be partly responsible for dragging us away from it. In this seminar, we will try to understand this apparent contradiction with a view to overcoming it in our own lives.
Dates: April 16th – April 18th (Weekend)
Times: Friday, 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. ; Saturday and Sunday, 1 – 3 p.m.
Cost: $180
Please email questions on the Community Seminar Series and other adult education programs to Kea Wilson at kwilson@sjcsf.edu. If you would like to receive our Community Calendar, including information on future Community Seminars and other events at St. John’s College, either electronically or by mail, please email Nick Giacona your name, preferred delivery method and address.