COMMUNITY CALENDAR A PUBLICATION OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
MARCH/APRIL 2012 VOL. 2.12
JULIAN POLLACK TRIO Presented in conjunction with Friends of Santa Fe Jazz, Santa Fe Concert Association Saturday, April 21, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
In this Issue: Dean’s Lectures, Concerts, Theatre, Art, Events
DEAN’S LECTURE AND CONCERT SERIES Please join us for the spring 2012 Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. All lectures are free and open to the public. Evening lectures take place in the Great Hall, starting at 8 p.m., and afternoon lectures take place in the Junior Common Room, starting at 3:15 p.m.
“THE TEACHING OF VIMALAKIRTI AS A CORE TEXT” Friday, March 2, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Malcolm David Eckel, professor of religion, Boston University There is no charge for admission “The Teaching of Vimalakirti” (Vimalakirtinirdesa) is one of the best-known and most influential Indian texts in East Asian Buddhism. Its ideal of the enlightened layman who confounds the wisdom of the monks had great appeal for worldly Chinese literati, and its model of the encounter dialogue helped shape the practice of Zen. This lecture will explore the way the “Vimalakirti” criticizes and subverts the standard aspects of Buddhist narrative to express the Mahayana concept of emptiness and create a new image of what it means to be an enlightened sage. Malcolm David Eckel is professor of religion and director of the Core Curriculum at Boston University, where he received the Metcalf Award for Teaching Excellence and served as Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Humanities. Before joining Boston University, he served as associate professor and administrative director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. His research focuses on the concept of “emptiness” in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. His publications include Bhaviveka and His Buddhist Opponents; Buddhism: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Holy Texts, Sacred Places; To See the Buddha: A Philosopher’s Quest for the Meaning of Emptiness; Jnanagarbha’s Commentary on the Distinction Between the Two Truths: An Eighth Century Handbook of Madhyamaka Philosophy; and “Is There a Buddhist Philosophy of Nature?” in Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Buddhism and Ecology.
ANTIQUITY AS A POLITICAL PROJECT Wednesday, March 28, 3:15 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center Frank Pagano, tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe There is no charge for admission The modern world is often asserted to be the result of a political and scientific project constructed by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke. In this lecture, Mr. Pagano will argue that the ancient Greek world is the result of a project made by the Greek poets and historians. The lecture will concentrate on the
contributions of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and Sophocles. To make this argument, he will bring together what everyone has learned from the ancient histories and tragedies: that custom was not the king of the Persians, that Oedipus probably did not kill his father, and that Zeus and Prometheus were in cahoots. What we call the West, then, has always been a project. Prometheus rules the Western horizon. Frank Pagano has been a member of the St. John’s College faculty since 1983. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1969 and a doctorate from Boston College in 1981, and then held several academic positions at the University of New England. From 2001 to 2004, Pagano served as director of the St. John’s College Graduate Institute.
WORDSWORTH AND KEATS Worrell Lecture Friday, March 30, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Ron Sharp, professor of English, Vassar College There is no charge for admission This lecture examines the ways in which two English Romantic poets reconceived the nature of the spiritual. Focusing on William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (also known as “Lines”) and “Immortality Ode” and on John Keats’s odes and letters, Ronald Sharp will explore both Wordsworth’s natural supernaturalism and Keats’s more secular religion of beauty. Ronald Sharp is a professor of English at Vassar College, where he was dean from 2003 to 2008. Prior to this, he held several positions at Kenyon College (acting president, John Crowe Ransom Professor of English, and provost) and also was editor of The Kenyon Review. His special interests include nineteenth-century British literature, contemporary poetry, Australian literature, Romanticism, and the literature of friendship. The author or editor of six books, Sharp also is a frequent contributor to a variety of journals, including New Literary History, Paris Review, New England Review, Australian Literary Review, American Literature, Keats-Shelley Journal, and The Wordsworth Circle. A graduate of Kalamazoo College, Sharp holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate from the University of Virginia. He is the recipient of fellowships from various foundations, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the National Humanities Center.
DESCARTES’ GOOD BOOK: READING THE DISCOURSE ON METHOD Friday, April 6, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Stuart Warner, associate professor of philosophy, Roosevelt University There is no charge for admission There is near unanimity among readers of Descartes about what constitutes the substantive core of the Discourse on Method: the doctrines of mind-body dualism, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. There is also near unanimity among readers of the Discourse that while Descartes does indeed embrace these positions, the arguments by which he attempts to establish them are dubious at best. Equally evident, if not more so, is the project Descartes announces in the final part of this work: the aim of arriving at scientific knowledge capable of making us like masters and possessors of nature. But how that project is related to the doctrinal core of the work is far from clear. Now, a careful reading of the Discourse reveals that its doctrines are conveyed through a mode of presentation in which misdirection reigns and a surface meaning can become simultaneously transparent and opaque. Indeed, there is a tension between what appears to be the clearly chiseled elements of the doctrinal core of the Discourse, and the ironic, undulating mode of presentation out of which they emerge. This lecture will explore Descartes’ mode of presentation and consider whether our understanding of the substantive core (and the project of the work) needs to be revised in the light of it. Stuart D. Warner is associate professor of philosophy at Roosevelt University. He also has been a visiting professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and has participated in more than 125 Liberty Fund Colloquia. The director of the Montesquieu Forum, which is devoted to the study of the classical and European background of the American Founding period, Warner is the author most recently of a bilingual edition of La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims and a translation of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. He has published essays on Montesquieu, Hume, Locke, Hegel, Burke, and Bentham and has taught dozens of different courses, including classes on Plato’s Republic, Phaedrus, and Apology of Socrates, Herodotus’ History, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, Crime and Punishment, Madness and Violence, and Philosophy in Film.
T.S. ELIOT’S OTHELLO Steiner Lecture Friday, April 13, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Christopher Ricks, professor of the humanities, Boston University There is no charge for admission Fifty years ago, everyone who cared about T.S. Eliot or about Shakespeare’s tragedies knew that Eliot’s pregnant pages of eighty-five years ago, on the last great speech of Othello, were un-ignorable — wrong-headed perhaps, but needing to be reckoned with. These days, Eliot on Othello usually finds itself either neglected or disparaged. Christopher Ricks hopes to give the grounds for believing that Eliot’s words are great criticism, not only of this particular haunting case but as establishing some truths about great criticism. Christopher Ricks is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, having formerly been professor of English at Bristol and at Cambridge. He is a member of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, of which he was president (2007 to 2008). He has edited and also teaches in the Boston University’s Core Curriculum. In 2004, he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and he is known both for his critical studies and for his extensive editorial work, including The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987) and The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999), among many other volumes. Ricks is the author of numerous others works, including those focused on the oeuvres of Keats, Eliot, Tennyson, Beckett, Dylan, Lowell, and Pound. In 2010, Waywiser Press published Ricks’s anthology Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American.
WAGNER’S TRISTAN: THOUGHTS OLD AND NEW Friday, April 20, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus, St. John’s College, Annapolis There is no charge for admission In this lecture, Elliott Zuckerman will revisit his five decades of opinions about Tristan, exploring such subject as the dangers of music, sex and metaphysics, Tristan’s self-analysis, the triumph of Isolde, Wagner the Ventriloquist, and the Egotistical Sublime. Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor emeritus at St John’s College in Annapolis, where he began teaching in 1961. Before that, he taught at Columbia and at the New School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in humanities and a master’s degree and doctorate in European cultural history from Columbia as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from Cambridge University. He was a Kellett Fellow, sent by Columbia to Clare College, Cambridge. At St. John’s, he was an Andrew W. Mellon Tutor. In addition, he was director of the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Santa Fe in the 1960s and often taught in the G.I. in the following two decades.
A life-long musician, Zuckerman holds a professional certificate from the Chatham Square Music School in New York, where he studied piano with the revered teacher Vera Maurina Press. He played solo and chamber recitals in New York, Cambridge, and Annapolis, and has lectured on musical and other subjects on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1970s, he gave the Metropolitan Opera Guild lecture on a new production of Die Meistersinger. He is the author of The First Hundred Years of Wagner’s Tristan (1962) and many published lectures on opera, music theory, and prosody. He has composed and recorded three song-cycles and published two collections of poetry. A painter as well, Zuckerman had a highly praised one-man show at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in 2010.
RE-THINKING DIFFERENCE Friday, April 27, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Dan Dahlstrom, professor of philosophy, Boston University There is no charge for admission According to Heidegger, the difference between being and beings is the most essential difference of all. Not surprisingly, it is a constant in his thinking from beginning to end. Yet in the course of his work, he re-thinks this difference fundamentally, recognizing its at times ambivalent sense and even insisting on the need to abandon various versions of it. Re-thinking that difference plays a crucial role in his clarification of what he dubs the basic, post-metaphysical question (Grundfrage) and in his call for a different sort of thinking, beginning in the mid-1930s. Crucial to this development is a sustained, critical reading of Nietzsche’s work. This lecture will examine the significance of the way Heidegger re-thinks the difference between being and beings, in the light of his controversial interpretation of Nietzsche’s “metaphysics.” Before arriving at Boston University, Dan Dahlstrom taught at Santa Clara University, Catholic University of America, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). He has been awarded a number of grants, including a Mellon Foundation Grant for work on medieval logic in the Vatican Microfilm Library, two Fulbright awards, a summer grant from DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) for research in Tübingen, a summer grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities for work at Princeton University on German thought and letters, a Humboldt award for research in Cologne on the thought of Kant, Hegel, and eighteenth century German aesthetics, and, more recently, support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for research on
Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to a
wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of th
Heidegger’s later thought. In recent years, Dahlstrom served on the executive council of SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), co-hosting its 43rd annual conference in Boston (2004); he also hosted the 40th annual meeting of the North American Heidegger Conference (2006). Named Boston University’s first John R. Silber Professor in 2011, Dahlstrom has published widely, having written more than 90 articles and edited 16 collections.
AN AFTERNOON WITH WRITER TEDDY WAYNE Sunday, April 29, 3 p.m. Worrell Lecture Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Teddy Wayne, author of Kapitoil There is no charge for admission Teddy Wayne, winner of the 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award, is the author of Kapitoil, the story of Karim Issar, a young, introspective financial wizard from Qatar who arrives in New York City in 1999, devises a computer program (Kapitoil) that predicts oil futures, and then begins to question the moral implications of a creation that generates record profits for his company. Praising this critically acclaimed debut novel, writer Jonathan Frazen says that Kapitoil “does what novels can do better than any other art form: Show us a familiar world through unfamiliar eyes.” The novel was named a Best Book of the Year by The Huffington Post, Booklist, the Kansas City Star, and Largehearted Boy. Wayne is a graduate of Harvard University and of Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught fiction and creative nonfiction writing. He currently resides in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, McSweeney’s, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. Awarded the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Wayne also was a finalist for the New York Public Library 2011 Young Lions Fiction Award, a 2011 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize runner-up, and the recipient of a 2010 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.
acquiring as much money as possible, ...and care so little about
he soul ...?— SOCRATES
THE SECOND ANNUAL EXQUISITE EXHIBIT Presented by students of St. John’s College Friday, April 13, 6 to 8 p. m., opening reception Show runs through April 21, hours vary Art Gallery, Peterson Student Center There is no charge for admission Sponsored by students in the College’s Writing Club, this event refers to a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to the composition in sequence, either by following a rule, or being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed. The technique, invented by Surrealists, is similar to an old parlor game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for further contribution. Surprised by what seemed like a collective consciousness forming in their writings, members of the Writing Club began to wonder about the magic of collaborative work. The Exquisite Exhibit was the answer, with individual collaborations between artists and a “collaborative display” of artists. This exhibit will showcase any medium an artist is inspired to present, with an expanded display of textiles, textures, yarn work, and weaving. The opening features music by several college groups and hors d’oeuvres. For exhibit hours following the Friday reception, call 505-984-6000.
LUNCHTIME AND AFTERNOON CONCERT SCHUBERT’S CHAMBER MUSIC IV Ariel Winnick (SF11, SFEC12), violin Meghan Kase (SF14), cello Peter Pesic, piano Wednesday, April 11, 12:10-1:15 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center There is no charge for admission St. John’s students Ariel Winnick and Meghan Kase join Peter Pesic, musician-in-residence and tutor, in the final performance in a series of informal concerts devoted to the chamber music of Franz Schubert. The three will perform the Fantasy in C major (D 934) and the Trio in E-flat major (D 929). Ariel Winnick graduated from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 2011, and is now a graduate student in Eastern Classics on the Santa Fe campus. He enjoys playing classical music and traditional folk music of Appalachia, Ireland, and French Canada. He plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass guitar, musical saw, and spoons, and also writes music. Mr. Winnick has been spending time with distinguished musicians and scholars since 1987. Meghan Kase is a sophomore at St. John’s College. She graduated from Central Bucks High School East in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where she was a member of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the Bucks County Festival Orchestra, and the Bucks County Youth Orchestra. She was also a member of the Sartoria Competition Award-winning MARAH Quartet and has studied under Sarah Yoon and Mary Pitcairn. Peter Pesic is a tutor and musician-in-residence at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. He attended Harvard and Stanford Universities, obtaining a doctorate in physics. He has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Mr. Pesic is also a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University.
SENIOR RECITAL Yi Ji, piano (SF12) Sunday, April 22, 3 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center There is no charge for admission St. John’s senior Yu Ji will give a piano recital that includes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, op. 31, no. 2 (“The Tempest”) and other works. Mr. Ji was the pianist for the College community’s production of Cabaret two years ago and for its production Sweeney Todd in spring 2011. He also gave a two-piano recital this past fall together with tutor David Bolotin.
EVENING CONCERTS JULIAN POLLACK TRIO Julian Waterfall Pollack, piano, Noah Garabedian, bass, Evan Hughes, drums Presented in conjunction with Friends of Santa Fe Jazz, Santa Fe Concert Association Saturday, April 21, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center $30-$75 admission, 50 tickets free to the St. John’s College community on a first-come, first-served basis Pianist/composer/arranger Julian Waterfall Pollack is a classically trained musician who has opened at the Blue Note for such illustrious figures as Chick Corea and Gary Burton and has performed and recorded with Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, and Miguel Zenon. He has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center as well as at numerous jazz venues and festivals around the world and is the artistic director of the jazz series at the Mendocino Music Festival. His most recently published song collection is Infinite Playground. Performing with Pollack will be bassist Noah Garabedian, the recipient of a John Coltrane National Scholarship and a 2007 finalist for the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz graduate program, and drummer Evan Hughes, who has collaborated with such figures as Joe Lovano, John Scofield, and George Garzone. This special event is a benefit for the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. For ticket information, contact the Lensic Box Office (www.lensic.com or 988-1234).
This is my simple religion. There is no need for te
brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosoph
MUSICAL
Performance by the St. John’s College community Saturday, March 3, 8 p.m., Sunday March 4, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center $10 admission at the door, free for St. John’s students, faculty, and staff Man of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh, is inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote. It tells the story of the “mad” knight as a musical play-within-a-play performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Quixote’s dream is Everyman’s dream. His tilting at windmills is Everyman’s great adventure. As with all the best allegorical tales, the oppressive mood of the fight against eternal evil is heightened by the sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic attempts of the hero to right all the wrongs of the world. At times both inspiring and thought-provoking, the story is very entertaining and very moving, and will warm the hearts of everyone whose spirits were ever raised by the prospect of a victory by the underdog against all odds. The musical is performed by a cast of St. John’s students, faculty, and staff and is directed by Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin.
MUSIC ON THE HILL™ 2012 BENEFIT EVENTS Bring your family and friends to enjoy great cuisine at local restaurants and support the summer 2012 season of Music on the Hill™. Our restaurant partners will donate 20% of the evenings’ sale of food and beverages to help us mount our popular free concert series.
Tuesday, March 6, at Junction, 530 S. Guadalupe St. Co-hosted by Barraclough and Associates and KSFR. Door prize is a gift certificate for Junction. Tuesday, April 3, at Il Piatto, 95 W. Marcy St. Co-hosted by Verve Gallery of Photography and KSFR. Door prize is photo print from Verve Gallery. For details visit www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on Outreach.
emples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own
hy is kindness.— THE DALAI LAMA
Events >
SUMMER CLASSICS Unlock new realms of thought not only in the words of Eastern and Western Civilizations’ greatest authors, but also in the company of inquiring minds around the seminar table.
Join us for Summer Classics in Santa Fe Week I: July 9-13 Week II: July 16-20 Week III: July 23-27 Seminars cover a wide range of topics and interests. 2012 offerings include seminars on works by De Tocqueville, Proust, Aristophanes, Darwin, Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, Edgar Allen Poe, Puccini, and more. Summer Classics participants also are invited to explore the vibrancy of historic Santa Fe and attend cultural events, including St. John’s College Music on the Hill™ concert series, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the world-renowned Santa Fe Opera. The complete schedule for Summer Classics 2012 and seminar details are available on our website at: http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/outreach/SF/SC/classics.shtml. For a brochure or to register, please call 505-984-6117 or email mspray@sjcsf.edu.
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GRADUATE INSTITUTE Encounter the Eastern Classics Saturday, April 14 Levan Hall, second floor Please join us for the second annual Encounter the Eastern Classics event, where you will have the opportunity to participate in a St. John’s College seminar and experience the great rewards of dialogue as learning. St. John’s tutor Mr. Krishnan Venkatesh* will lead the discussion on Yoshida Kenko’s Essays in Idleness, an insightful, engaging, and often humorous text from medieval Japan. Following the seminar, you can enjoy light refreshments while continuing the conversation with St. John’s faculty, staff, current students, and alumni. During the subsequent panel session, you can learn more about the graduate program and the application process. Experience for yourself what makes the Eastern Classics program unique, exciting, and life-changing. We look forward to having you there! Space is limited. Please RSVP to Katie Widlund at katiescarlett.widlund@sjcsf.edu or phone 505-984-6050, before Wednesday, March 28.**
* Tutors are subject to change, and a second tutor may be added according to attendance. ** If you are interested in the Eastern Classics program at St. John’s Santa Fe, but are not able to attend the event, please contact Katie Widlund to discuss planning a personalized visit.