Comcal sept oct 2014 issuu by St. John‘s College Santa Fe

COMMUNITY

CALENDAR ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE SEPT/OCT 2014 SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

VOL. 5.14

JOHN GAW MEEM AND RICHARD WEIGLE SURVEY THE LAND DONATED BY THE MEEM FAMILY.

In this Issue: St. John’s College—50 Years Lectures Concerts November Community Seminars Graduate Institute

Celebrate with St. John’s College

Don Cook Don Cook was a founding tutor who came to St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 1965, directly from graduate school at the University of California-Davis. “I always loved the big ideas, the

1964 2014

philosophical questions, and that of course got me hooked on them. And I never gave that up; so when I sort of pursued a career in chemistry, it seemed trivial in a way, like I was just working on things that didn't matter, and all these great ideas

St. John’s College first graduating class.

were out there. So when I read about St. John’s College in the Saturday Review, it just clicked into place as something that had been missing in my life. I could go to a place and learn. And I was primarily a learner. I used to drive my professors in graduate school nuts because I’d go take these courses in mathematics and whatever interested me, and my research would be kind of secondary. I didn't fit in too well in graduate school, but I fit in very well at St. John’s.” Please visit www.sjc.edu regularly for updated information on the 50th anniversary.

Lectures are free and open to the public and are followed by a question-and-answer period.

Galileo’s Hermeticism Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, September 5, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Paolo Palmieri, University of Pittsburgh, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

The high priests of positivism have handed down a myth about Galileo: that he was the founder of modern mathematical-experimental science and that his revolutionary achievement consisted chiefly of dismantling the constructs of the late medieval cosmos, eradicating its roots in the doctrines of Aristotle and his late scholastic followers. This lecture presents an image of Galileo as a crypto-hermetist, aiming the spotlight at the intersections of his existential pathway with early modern European culture. His work involved Archimedean mathematics, judicial astrology, reconciliation of conflicting truths at the limits of heresy through Biblical hermeneutics, a daemonic aesthetics of light and darkness, the discipline of self-repression vs. libertine sexuality, emotional self-control, and, finally, the magic of experiential learning. Paolo Palmieri teaches history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, with a focus on European modernity and the seventeenth century. His many interests include Montessori method, pragmatism, phenomenology, post-humanism, and their intersections with the sciences.

Liberal Education in America and The Cold War Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, September 19, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Walter Sterling, Dean of St. John’s College, Santa Fe

Plato portrayed vividly that one could not hope to understand the goals or problems of education without understanding how they are shaped by the existing political regime. The ideal of liberal education in America was, perhaps quietly, bolstered by the great contests of regimes in the 20th century. Can it flourish here, or anywhere, absent such a contest?

All the Matter of the Living Air: Dreams and the Western Tradition Saturday, September 20, 2:30 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center Lael Gold, Ph.D., Class of 1989, St. John’s College, Santa Fe, and founder of Productive Slumber

Besides providing refreshment, can slumber be productive? Lael Gold will discuss unexpected intersections between dreams and the Western tradition, considering the relationship among prophetic, philosophical, and scientific modes of knowing, and the potential role of dreams in personal and civic life. She will share little-known but well-documented stories of dreams in history and provide a few simple but powerful tools for making good use of our dreams.

Lael Gold holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught for eight years and spent a semester studying with the head of the university’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. She is a Faulkner scholar and former keynote speaker at the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference; she contributed the essay “A Mammy Callie Lagacy” to Faulkner’s Inheritance. She is the founder of Productive Slumber (www.productiveslumber.com), a business devoted to restoring awareness of the value of nighttime dreams. She is also a standup comedian.

Intentions and History in Livy and Plutarch: The Case of Cato Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, October 3, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Jane D. Chaplin, James I. Armstrong Professor of Classics, Middlebury College

Nowadays, when reading Livy and Plutarch, there is an overwhelming preference for the first five books of Livy, filled as they are with the heroism of Lucretia, Mucius Scaevola, Virginia, and Camillus. There is also a tendency to read clusters either of Plutarch’s Roman lives or of the Greek ones, in an attempt to learn about one civilization or the other. Yet another standard approach is to treat Livy and Plutarch as historical sources, mining them for information about antiquity. Good reasons underlie these ways of reading the two authors but they ignore the manifest intentions of both writers. Livy treated Rome’s early history in summary fashion and devoted increasing amounts of space to the more recent past, and Plutarch deliberately paired notable Greeks and Romans. This lecture focuses on Cato the Elder as a way of examining whether and how authorial intent matters to us as readers.

Jane Chaplin has taught at Middlebury College since 1992. She teaches courses in Greek, Latin, and Greek and Roman history. Her area of scholarly expertise is historiography; most of her published work concerns the Roman historian Livy.

The (Plato’s) Cave, and the Cave Beneath the Cave, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, October 10, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Jonathan Hand, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

At the beginning of book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates gives “an image of our nature (physis) with respect to its education and lack of education,” namely that famous “cave” in which humans live as prisoners unless and until they are liberated by philosophy. The reference to nature would suggest that this initial condition of unfreedom and ignorance is true everywhere and always—in any society whatsoever, except the lucky few whose souls are turned around and led out. Is this still true, or have modern science, progressive egalitarianism and secularism transformed that condition? Or are we moderns only in a different kind of “cave,” a “cave beneath the cave,” as one recent student of Plato's claimed? Such questions are taken up by Hegel in the Phenomenology and continue to be of capital importance.

Architecture and Aesthetic Education Steiner Lecture Friday, October 17, 8 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Roger Scruton, Oxford

People imagine that the humanities curriculum is centered on great books and written knowledge, with some glances at art and music by way of filling in the history. Architecture is treated either as part of art history or as an annex to engineering. In this lecture, Scruton will show the place of architecture in the humane understanding of our environment to illustrate the concept of settlement and to argue that humane education is meaningless if it does not show people how to settle down.

Roger Scruton is the author of over 40 books, including works of criticism, political theory, and aesthetics, as well as novels and short stories. In addition to his authoritative compendia, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (1994), and A Dictionary of Political Thought (3rd Edition, 2007), Scruton has written three important studies in applied philosophy: The Aesthetics of Architecture (1979), Sexual Desire (1986), and The Aesthetics of Music (1997). His latest books are The Soul of the World and a novel, Notes from Underground. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the British Academy. He is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC.

An Informal Visit with Scott Momaday Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, October 31, 3:15 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Momaday is a writer and a painter. Among his awards are a Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Art, and the Premio Letterario Internazionale “Mondello” (Italy’s highest literary award). He is a UNESCO Artist for Peace and a member of the Stanford University Alumni Hall of Fame. He lives in Santa Fe with his wife, the poet Kathleen Johnson.

SANTA FE CAMPUS LAUNCHES NEW MAGAZINE

Rational Animal, a new on-line magazine produced by the Communications office of St. John’s College, Santa Fe, features interesting, quirky, and insightful stories about alumni, students, tutors, staff, and friends of St. John’s College. The magazine was created in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Santa Fe campus. Rational Animal Magazine is now available for free download at the ITunes App Store for IPhone and IPad and Google Play for Droid.

JACQUELYN HELIN AND SHANTI RANDALL IN CONCERT Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series Friday, September 12, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

Violist Shanti Randall and pianist Jacquelyn Helin will perform Bach’s Prelude to the 6th cello suite (1st movement), Shostakovich’s Sonata in C major for Viola and Piano, and Franck’s Sonata in A Minor for Violin (Viola) and Piano. Jacquelyn Helin made her New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall as the winner of the Artists’ International Piano Competition; her European debut was at London’s Wigmore Hall. Recent appearances include concertos with the New Mexico, Richmond, Greenwich, Santa Fe, Mesa, and Redwood symphonies, and numerous solo recitals. She has performed locally with Santa Fe New Music, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Santa Fe Opera, the Taos Chamber Music Group, and Ballet Pro Musica. She is the music director of the United Church of Christ in Santa Fe and is on the faculty of the New Mexico School for the Arts. Shanti Randall, a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has recorded and performed with such major artists as Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Bette Midler, Randy Newman, Björk, Andrea Bocelli, Kelly Clarkson, and Barbara Streisand. He performed as violist in over 350 motion picture scores and is a member of the Hollywood Studio Orchestra. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Opera, played on the Los Angeles “Sundays Live” series radio broadcasts, and appeared as assistant principal violist with the Ojai Chamber Music Festival, among numerous other national and international performances. Admission is free.

PETER PESIC IN CONCERT Wednesday, September 17, 12:10–1:15 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

Peter Pesic (piano), the college’s musician in residence, will perform The Goldberg Project: J. S. Bach: Fourteen Canons on the Goldberg Bass (BWV 1087) and the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988). Admission is free.

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT Friday, October 3, 12:15 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

St. John’s tutor Christine Chen (violin), tutor emeritus David Bolotin (piano), David Felberg (violin), Shanti Randall (viola), and Dana Winograd (cello) will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 14 in E-flat major, K. 449, arranged as a piano quintet, and Ravel's String Quartet in F major. David Felberg is the concertmaster of the Santa Fe Symphony and the assistant concertmaster of the New Mexico Philharmonic. Dana Winograd is the principal cellist of the Santa Fe Symphony and a cellist in the New Mexico Philharmonic. Shanti Randall, who performs at the college with pianist Jacquelyn Helin on September 12, has performed with most of the major professional ensembles in northern New Mexico. Christine Chen performs regularly with Santa Fe Pro Musica and other professional groups; she and David Bolotin have given a number of concerts together at the college. Admission is free.

STEPHEN HOUSER IN CONCERT Sunday, October 12, 7 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

Guitarist Stephen Houser, a tutor at St. John’s College, will perform works by Milan, Scarlatti, Sojo, Sculthorpe, and Albeniz.

Mr. Houser studied classical guitar under David Tanenbaum and George Sakellariou at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, privately with Margarita Escarpa and Kathleen McIntosh, and has performed in master classes given by Julian Bream, David Russell, Aniello Desiderio, and others.

Admission is free.

PETER PESIC IN CONCERT Wednesday, October 29, 12:10–1:15 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

Peter Pesic (piano), the college’s musician in residence, will perform Debussy: Valse romantique (1890); Masques (1904); L’Isle joyeuse (1904); Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, op. 52.

Admission is free.

THE ATRIUM STRING QUARTET Friday, October 24, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

The program includes Haydn’s Quartet in B minor, op. 33, no. 1, Mendelssohn’s Quartet no. 6 in F minor, op. 80, Mendelssohn's Capriccio in E minor, op. 81, no. 3, and Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 8 in C minor, op. 110.

Founded in 2000 in St. Petersburg under the inspiration of Professor Josef Levinson, the Atrium Quartet graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatoire in 2003 and then completed their education as a quartet-in-residenz in Amsterdam. Highly acclaimed by audiences and press, the Quartet has performed throughout Europe, Russia, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Brazil. They received First Prize and Audience Prize of the 9th London International String Quartet Competition in 2003 and Grand-Prix of the 5th International String Quartet Competition in Bordeaux in 2007. Recent appearances include recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall in London, Library of Congress in Washington, and the Frick Museum in New York. The Quartet’s discography includes a CD with works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich and a DVD, Live in Concert in the Netherlands, with music by Tchaikovsky. St. John’s sponsors this concert in conjunction with Performance Santa Fe. Admission is $45. Tickets are available by calling 505-984-8759, or online at https://performancesantafe.org.

COMING IN NOVEMBER Shakespeare: The History Plays

St. John’s College President Mike Peters leads two series of Community Seminar covering Shakespeare’s English History plays. In the fall, Richard II and Henry IV, part 1 will comprise a two-seminar series. In the spring semester, Henry IV, part 2 and Henry V will comprise a second two-seminar series. Shakespeare’s second tetralogy plays covering “The War of the Roses” offer remarkable insight into the overlapping intricacies of the political and the personal with action ranging from the courts, to the battlefields to the flea-bitten inns of London. High politics, shrewd statecraft, low comedy and memorable characters all find keen expression in these plays.

Community members can sign-up for one or both series’.

NOVEMBER Shakespeare: The History Plays Friday, November 14, 4-6pm, Shakespeare’s Richard II Saturday, November 15, 10am-Noon, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I Cost: $125 for Friday and Saturday sessions FEBRUARY Shakespeare: The History Plays *Friday, February 13, 4-6pm: Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II *Saturday, February 14, 10am-Noon: Shakespeare’s King Henry V Cost: $125 for Friday and Saturday sessions *tentative dates, check for date confirmation in upcoming Community Calendar postings and on our webpage http://www.sjc.edu/events-and-programs/santa-fe/community-seminar-series/

EXPERIENCE THE LIBERAL ARTS: A FREE GRADUATE INSTITUTE EVENT TO LEARN ABOUT THE LIBERAL ARTS MASTER’S PROGRAM Saturday, November 8, 1–4:30 p.m. Levan Hall David Carl, director of the Graduate Institute, and members of the St. John’s faculty will lead a discussion on short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. This event is an opportunity for prospective students to participate in a St. John’s College seminar and experience the great rewards of dialogue as learning. Light refreshments will be served following the seminar, during a panel discussion with St. John’s faculty, staff, students, and alumni about the life-changing experience of the Graduate Institute. Information about the application process will also be provided. Space is limited. Please RSVP, before October 28, to Susan Olmsted at santafe.gradadmissions@sjc.edu or 505-984-6083. If you are interested in the Liberal Arts Master's Program at St. John’s College Santa Fe but are not able to attend the event, please contact Susan Olmsted to discuss a personalized visit.