COMMUNITY
CALENDAR ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE MAY/JUNE 2014 SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
In this Issue: Summer Lecture Series, Concerts, Theatre, Summer Classics, Film Institute, Greek Institute,
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FIFTY YEARS OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE IN SANTA FE
As experienced through the original works of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and scientists, a St. John’s education is founded on radical and innovative inquiry into questions that are fundamental to human life. Students pursue this education through thoughtful, lively, and participant-driven conversations unconfined within the limits of specialized fields. They confront important ideas for themselves—ponder, discuss, critique, and think beyond them. Students are invited to join a community of learners in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico who are curious and passionate about the ideas that have shaped the world in which they live. They graduate with the ability to think boldly, collaborate effectively, and explore fearlessly, ready for any path they choose.
In addition to the undergraduate program, St. John’s College offers graduate degree programs based on these same principles: the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts, on both campuses, and the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics, on the Santa Fe campus.
• St. John’s College, Santa Fe celebrates its first commencement ceremony.
• Ground is broken in April for the Santa Fe Campus. Seventeen months later in September 1964, the College welcomes the first class of 88 freshmen: 55 men and 33 women.
• A ribbon cutting ceremony
• Originally called the
takes place for the newly built administrative services building known as the “Tower Building” and later renamed Weigle Hall.
“Teachers Institute in Liberal Education,” the Graduate Institute officially opens.
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1964 2014 St. John’s College is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus. It was a bold and visionary move to establish a campus in Santa Fe, offering our distinctive, and in many ways radical academic program to more students, and demonstrating conclusively that the St. John’s program has no geographic or cultural bounds. The 50th Anniversary is an opportunity to celebrate this important step in the history of St. John’s College. It will serve as a reminder of the lives and communities changed by the college and its distinctive, integrated academic program. From June 2014 to June 2015, the Santa Fe campus will host special events and programs celebrating its 50th anniversary. For more information, visit www.sjc.edu.
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Originally called "The Institute for the Study of the Eastern Classics," the Eastern Classics Program begins through the Graduate Institute.
Master of Arts in Eastern Classics St. John’s College
• Named after famed architect and campus founder John Gaw Meem, the Meem Library opens. Mr. Meem generously donated the land on which the College sits.
• The Summer Classics Program is established, bringing the St. John’s College experience to a wider community.
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SUMMER LECTURE SERIES
Join us for a series of informal lectures, sponsored by the college’s Graduate Institute. Beginning on Wednesday, June 18, the series continues for six consecutive Wednesday afternoons, concluding July 23. Free and open to the public, each lecture is followed by a question-and-answer period.
July lecturers include novelist, poet, and essayist N. Scott Momaday; Marci Lingo of Bakersfield College; and St. John’s College tutors Jacques Duvoisin and Jay Smith.
What Hegel’s Reading of Newton Teaches us about Newton, Nature, and Spirit Wednesday, June 18, 3:15 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center John Anders, doctoral candidate in economics, Texas A&M University
Hegel’s reading of Newton can be seen as a detailed working out of some problems inherent in the way Newton proceeds in Prop. 1 of the Principia. In particular, Hegel shows that Newton is wrong to think of centripetal and centrifugal forces as separate, independent things; a complete account of planetary motions must include whatever third reality underlies both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Hegel’s reading of Newton also forms part of the transition from Consciousness to Self-Consciousness. Accordingly, when we understand the problems Hegel finds in Newton, we can better understand how a natural philosopher is always investigating her own consciousness even as she thinks that she is investigating a world that is entirely other than her consciousness.
After graduating from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 2003, John Anders earned a master of arts in philosophy and in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. He then worked as an adjunct instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, while his wife earned her doctorate in English literature there. Anders also recently earned a master of arts in economics from UNLV. While working on his degree, he published articles on issues in Aristotle, the history of mathematics, and logic. In fall 2014, Anders will start a doctorate in economics at Texas A&M University. Aside from his academic responsibilities, John tries to balance child rearing with his love of hiking, bristlecone pines, and keyboard polyphony. Usually the two year old tips the scales.
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Nagarjuna's Imperishable Promissory Note Wednesday, June 25, 3:15 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center April Olsen, doctoral candidate, Tulane University
Nagarjuna was a 2nd century Indian Buddhist philosopher who articulated the doctrine of emptiness (shunyata) and is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Madhyamika (“Middle Way”) school, an important tradition of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. After graduating from Notre Dame in 2000, April Olsen spent a decade teaching middle and high school in inner-city Chicago and in rural San Diego County. She received a master of arts in liberal arts from St. John’s College in January 2012, earning rare honors for her master’s oral, “The Philosopher-Physician of Nietzsche's The Antichrist.” In August of that year, she earned a master of arts in Eastern classics, also from St. John’s. She currently is a philosophy doctoral student at Tulane University, where she is teaching undergraduate classes in Buddhism. Her academic interests include the psychology of punishment in Plato and Nietzsche and comparisons with Eastern thought.
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BREAD LOAF LECTURES
The Bread Loaf School of English, a graduate program of Middlebury College, has been offering courses in literature, writing, and the teaching of writing at St. John's College for more than a dozen summers. The courses are augmented by lectures by distinguished artists and writers, which are free and open to the public.
Luci Tapahonso, Navajo Poet Laureate Tuesday, June 24, 7 p.m. Junior Common Room Peterson Student Center
Kylene Beers, Former President, National Council of Teachers Tuesday, July 1, 7 p.m. Junior Common Room Peterson Student Center
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Music is a moral law. It gives soul to
the universe, wings to the mind, flight
to the imagination, and charm and
gaiety to life and to everything. — Plato
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LUNCHTIME CONCERT Chopin and Debussy Peter Pesic, piano Friday, May 9, 12:10 – 1:15 p.m. Junior Common Room Peterson Student Center There is no charge for admission Peter Pesic continues his tour of music of the 20th century with a program that features Debussy’s Mazurka (1891), Valse romantique (1890), Masques (1904), L’isle joyeuse (1904), and Images book I (1905), and Chopin’s Ballade in F minor, op. 52.
Peter Pesic is a tutor emeritus and musician in residence at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. He attended Harvard and Stanford, obtaining a doctorate in physics. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He also is a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
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Farm Hall Wednesday, May 7, 7 p.m. James A. Little Theatre Free, but RSVPs requested: http://tinyurl.com/farmhall The American Institute of Physics’ Center for History of Physics presents a staged reading by St. John’s College students of Farm Hall, a new play be David Cassidy, the distinguished historian and writer.
It’s July 1945. Germany is in defeat and the atomic bombs are on their way to Japan. Under the direction of Samuel Goudsmit, the Allies are holding some of the top German nuclear scientists—among them David C. Cassidy is a science historian and professor of Heisenberg, Hahn, and Gerlach—captive in Farm natural science at Hofstra Hall, an English country manor near Cambridge, University. He is author of England. As secret microphones record their converUncertainty and Beyond Uncertainty. sations, the scientists are unaware of why they are being held or for how long. Thinking themselves far ahead of the Allies, how will they react to the news of the atomic bombs? How will these famous scientists explain to themselves and to the world their failure to achieve even a chain reaction? How will they come to terms with the horror of the Third Reich, their work for such a regime, and their behavior during that period? This one-act play, directed by Rory Gilchrist (SF16), is based upon the transcripts of these conversations as well as the author’s historical work on the subject. The reading will be following by an audience discussion.
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Celebrating its ninth season, Music on the Hill™ is a signature Santa Fe summer event. St. John’s College would like to thank the Santa Fe community and the concert series’ lead sponsors— Los Alamos National Bank, Verve Gallery, Chalmers Capitol Ford—for supporting our annual event. From early June to late July, local and nationally known musicians offer free weekly Wednesday-evening concerts in a wide range of jazz styles.
Concerts take place on the college’s athletic field from 6 to 8 p.m. Parking is available close to campus, and a free shuttle runs between Museum Hill and the college’s athletic field. For details, click here [link to MOTH web page]. Concertgoers may picnic on the field. Food and water and sodas are available for purchase from Walter Burke Catering. Please note that NO PETS are allowed on campus, and that bicycles must be parked in designated areas.
THE SUMMER 2014 LINEUP IS: June 11
July 9
Bert Dalton’s Brazil Project
Annie Sellick Jazz Standards
June 18 Brian Wingard Jazz Saxophone
July 16
June 25
July 23
Clairdee, with Dmitri Matheny Jazz Vocals and Flugelhorn
Manzanares Nuevo Latino
SuperSax New Mexico
This project is made possible in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Unlock new realms of thought in the words of Western Civilization’s greatest authors and in the company of inquiring minds around the seminar table. Join us for Summer Classics in Santa Fe Week I: July 7-11 Week II: July 14-18 Week III: July 21-25 Summer Classics in Santa Fe has been expanded to more than twenty seminars over the course of three weeks, representing a wide range of topics. Participants can choose among seminars on works by philosophers Augustine, Descartes, Montesquieu, Nietzsche, Plato, Plutarch, and Schopenhauer; the Buddha and Sufi master Ibn al-‘Arabi; novelists Conrad, Eliot, Faulkner, Forster, and Proust; short-story authors Munro and O’Connor; poets Dante, Milton, and Whitman; playwright Shakespeare; and naturalist Eugene Marais.
Summer Classics participants are invited to explore the vibrancy of historic Santa Fe and attend cultural events, including St. John’s College Music on the Hill™, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the world-renowned Santa Fe Opera.
The complete schedule for Summer Classics 2014 and seminar details can be found here HERE.
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June 9 – August 7, 2014
NEW THIS YEAR…AN EXTRA WEEK OF HOMERIC GREEK!
Introducing this year…an extra week of Homeric Greek! The Graduate Institute in Santa Fe would like to call your attention to the summer Greek Institute, a multi-week course in ancient Greek. This summer we have added a ninth week and changed our pacing to that of an “accelerated” course. Intensive language programs across the country are known for their high attrition rate (often around 50%) and extreme stress: that is why the Greek Institute is not an “intensive.” While our program still will require an enormous amount of work and dedication and will necessarily entail memorization, drills, quizzes, and tests, it also will leave space for participants to appreciate the unique opportunities of a Santa Fe summer, from afternoon lectures here at St. John’s to the Santa Fe Opera. In short, the extra week in this summer’s program is meant to facilitate
a more humane, healthier pace, as well as an even deeper immersion in this beautiful language.
The aim of this course is to prepare participants to read in classic Homeric Greek works. It also will prepare graduate students attending other institutions to pass a language exam in Ancient Greek. The course’s grammar text will be Homeric Greek, 4th edition, by Pharr, Wright, and Debnar. (Note that earlier editions will not suffice.) Following the completion of the grammar component, participants will immerse themselves in a careful reading of selections from the Iliad and Odyssey. This year’s tutors will be Llyd Wells and Alan Zeitlin, veterans from last year’s inaugural program. Returning as well will be popular assistant Thomas Conroy.
Classes will be small, allowing each individual more time to learn. No previous experience in Greek is necessary to apply.
Tuition for summer 2014 is $2,900, considerably lower than tuition for comparable study at other institutions. On-campus room and board is available at very reasonable rates. For further information, please contact Zoe Haskell at 505-984-6050 or GreekInstitute@sjc.edu.
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JUNE 15 – AUGUST 8, 2014 | SANTA FE There’s still a chance to participate in the inaugural summer of the St. John’s College Film Institute.
What is the Film Institute? It is an
Although the first deadline has passed, the initial call for applications met with such a wonderful response that to accommodate the many requests, we have decided to start a waiting list of participants for a second section of the Institute. This new section also welcomes part-time participants: people interested in taking only the seminar or the tutorial segments of the Institute, or people only able to attend for some portion of the full course. Pricing will be adjusted accordingly. The application deadline for this new section of the Film Institute is April 11, and the deadline for full tuition is May 1.
Applications can be found at www.sjc.edu/gradprograms/sf_film.shtml. For further information, please contact Zoe Haskell at 505-984-6050 or filminstitute@sjc.edu.
eight-week program approaching great works of cinema as visual poetry, bringing the St. John’s approach to this modern art form. Each week focuses on a great director, spanning the 1920s to the 1970s. The program also will feature lectures and workshops by film industry professionals to help students develop a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of filmmaking. With nightly classes, film showings at local cinemas, and tutorials on works of film analysis (frequently written by the directors themselves), this program will attempt to approach all sides of film as a liberal art, exploring its unique status as visual communication in time and its contribution to the ideas of our culture. The Film Institute will be taught by David Carl and Krishnan Venkatesh, among other tutors. Classes will be small, allowing each individual more time to learn.
Tuition for full-time study (eight-week program) is $4,900. On-campus room and board is available.
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www.sjc.edu
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