Not Persuaded 2016
SUMMER CLASSICS at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico
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“
What is the meaning of life? That was all— a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
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~ Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
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J
ane Austen, her paper doll body clipped from the pages of Persuasion, running away
from the book but captured on the screen of an (already out of date) iPhone. The illustration, by Boston-based artist Polly Becker, adorns the cover of the 2016 Summer Classics brochure you hold in your hands. Or is it the text you downloaded for viewing on a
screen? What does it mean that
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Ms. Austen is, at least in this illustration, among
said that Generations X,Y, and Z, the post-
as a reader is as timeless as the imperative
those fleeing print for pixels?
Millennials, are so deficient in focus that 140
to write. The value of deep and challenging
characters is the sum total of what they want
discussion is older than the Agora and as fresh
to know about any topic. It is said that printed
as someone discovering, for the first time, that
books will be replaced by e-books and that
her mind can be changed.
Maybe the key is that iPhone. St. John’s has been offering Summer Classics sessions for 25 years; scores of participants have come, read, discussed, and emerged from the seminar chrysalis challenged and changed. And so we expect it will be for the next 25 years, despite
only authors with the marketplace heft of a J.K. Rowling or a Stephen King will survive the burly, Amazon-ian competition.
We are unpersuaded by visions of a dumbeddown, anti-intellectual future. Jane Austen in print. Jane Austen in pixels. Jane Austen in an
ephemeral technologies and information
We won’t quote Mark Twain about death and
as yet undreamed of format. Jane Austen will
delivery systems.
exaggeration. But you know the aphorism we
endure. She can run, but she can’t hide from
mean. Recent trends suggest that print is far
St. John’s.
All of us have read the articles that—without a
hint of irony—prophesy the death of
the book. The predicted causes are many. It is
from dead. Even adolescents—“digital natives,” in Marc Prensky’s parlance—prefer books in hand at least as often as books in cyberspace. Either form of embrace suggests that books and
To the next quarter century of passion for books and to those who continue to read and discuss them!
readers are here to stay. So take heart. Here at St. John’s, all summer, people will gather around seminar tables and discuss works that have stood the test of every technology since Gutenberg. The urge to delve
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“A fondness for reading, properly directed, must be an education in itself.� ~ Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
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What
?
is the Summer Classics program
It’s a chance to study timeless works of fiction and non-fiction, poetry,
St. John’s has been offering these unique seminars since 1990, and they
science, the arts, and philosophy from the Western and Eastern traditions.
seem to grow more popular each year. It is easy to understand why. Summer
Whether you enroll in one weeklong seminar or in many, whether you are a
in beautiful Santa Fe. Unmatched intellectual rigor and camaraderie.
first-time participant or are returning for another taste of the St. John’s
A world-class opera house up the road (and we can drive you there!).
approach to the great books, you will find yourself immersed in an
Spectacular mountain scenery, hiking, and bicycling— right from campus.
atmosphere of penetrating and collaborative inquiry.
A dining scene that captures most major cuisines on the planet. Squawking
Seminars are led by members of the St. John’s faculty and are limited to 18
raven wake-up calls and the most gorgeous sunsets you can imagine.
participants. In the St. John’s tradition, seminar leaders pose questions and
As you peruse the offerings in this brochure, imagine yourself here. If you are
guide discussion; they are not lecturers or “experts.” All participants engage
a Summer Classics veteran, we look forward to welcoming you back and ask
in lively, in-depth conversation. No prior knowledge of the work under
that you consider introducing a friend to the program. Is there a better place
discussion is required and only that work is discussed, offering a rare
to spend a week or a summer? A better gift for a curious mind?
opportunity to engage singularly with the ideas and with your fellow
Please be a part of Summer Classics 2016.
students. All you need is the desire to explore, to talk about your exploration, and to open your mind to books and insights—yours and those of others.
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Weekly Schedule of Events REGISTRATION Sunday, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Peterson Student Center
OPEN HOUSE Thursday, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Graduate Institute, Levan Hall
OPENING RECEPTION Sunday, 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Peterson Student Center
MUSIC ON THE HILL Wednesday, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Athletic Field
SEMINARS Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to noon a.m.-noon and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Classrooms
CLOSING LUNCH Friday, noon to 1:30 p.m. Coffee Shop
MORNING MINGLE Monday and Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Schepps Garden
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OPERA Wednesday and Friday, 8:30 p.m. Santa Fe Opera House
Santa Fe Opera WEEK I: JULY 11–15 Wednesday, July 13 Mozart, Don Giovanni, 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 15 Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, 8:30 p.m. WEEK II: JULY 18-22 Wednesday, July 20 Gounod, Roméo et Juliette, 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 22 Mozart, Don Giovanni, 8:30 p.m. WEEK III: JULY 25-29 Wednesday, July 27 R. Strauss, Capriccio, 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 29 Gounod, Roméo et Juliette, 8:30 p.m.
Orchestra section tickets are available to Summer Classics attendees at a reduced rate. They may be purchased when you register or until sold out. Van transportation is available for $10 per person per opera. If you wish to attend pre-opera talks, you must arrange for your own transportation. Tickets are limited. For more information about the Santa Fe Opera, please visit www.santafeopera.org.
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eminar Schedule
WEEK I: July 11–15 Morning Intimacy with the Divine: Readings from the Indic Tradition EVA BRANN AND PATRICIA GREER
Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear
ERIKA MARTINEZ AND DAVID TOWNSEND
Afternoon Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Lessing’s Laocoön
JUDITH ADAM AND WARREN WINIARSKI
JIM CAREY AND RICHARD MCCOMBS
Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Virginia Woolf, Two Novels: Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse
NANCY BUCHENAUER AND TOM MAY
Melville’s Pierre; or, The Ambiguities
ELIZABETH ENGEL AND DAVID TOWNSEND
JIM CAREY AND FRANK PAGANO
Morning and Afternoon Science Institute: The Origins of Algebra
The Darkness of the Heart in Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel
GUILLERMO BLEICHMAR AND PETER PESIC
MARSAURA SHUKLA AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
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The Magic of Macondo: An Exploration of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive
Charles Sanders Peirce: An Introduction
VICTORIA MORA AND PETER PESIC
MIKE BYBEE AND GRANT FRANKS
Afternoon Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive
Three Short Works of Dostoevsky CHESTER BURKE AND CARY STICKNEY
VICTORIA MORA AND PETER PESIC
WEEK II: July 18-22 Morning Milton’s Paradise Lost EVA BRANN AND JANET DOUGHERTY
Fear, Profit, and Honor: Statecraft and Foreign Policy in Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War MIKE PETERS AND NED WALPIN
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead and Lila CLAUDIA HAUER AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
Five Plays of Aeschylus ERIC SALEM AND CARY STICKNEY
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon DAVID CARL AND MEAGAN EVANS MCGUINNESS
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady JUDITH ADAM AND MARSAURA SHUKLA
Morning and Afternoon Science Institute: Experimental Foundations of Quantum Mechanics GUILLERMO BLEICHMAR AND GRANT FRANKS
WEEK III: July 25-29 Morning Herodotus’s Persian War EVA BRANN AND DAVID CARL
History of the United States of America During the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Adams JOSEPH WALTER STERLING III AND JOSEPH WALTER STERLING IV
RON HAFLIDSON AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
The Depth of the Soul: The German Sermons of Meister Eckhart JOHN CORNELL AND TOPI HEIKKERÖ
Afternoon Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto Death RICHARD MCCOMBS AND RAONI PADUI
Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth DAVID CARL AND MEAGAN EVANS MCGUINNESS
Morning and Afternoon Science Institute: Is Heat Real? WILLIAM DONAHUE AND HOWARD FISHER
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lets th “For the e mi sense like a nd follow s wander wind them, , and wh blown it ca rries en one ~An sh ony i p mou on th wisdom s, T he B e wat awa hag ava ers.� y dG ita
Seminar Descriptions
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No occupation is serious, not even when a bullet through the heart is the penalty of failure. ~Author, from
JULY 11-15
WEEK
“When
one
MORNING: 10 A.M. TO NOON
Intimacy with the Divine: Readings from the Indic Tradition EVA BRANN AND PATRICIA GREER
Many great works of Indian literature describe the individual’s relationship with the Divine as an intimate union of body and spirit. Such unions may express as the love between mother and child, as the love between student and teacher, as the love between two friends, or even as the passion between lover and beloved. We will read four classic texts that explore some of these relationships: The Bhagavad Gita, from around 300 BCE; The Origin of the Young God, by the great sixth-century dramatist Kalidasa; The Gita Govinda, Jayadeva’s long erotic poem written in the early thirteenth century; and the poetry of Lalla, a female mystic poet from fourteenth-century Kashmir.
These works are beautiful, challenging, and—we will discover—philosophical, metaphysical, and more. Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear JUDITH ADAM AND WARREN WINIARSKI
One of the most profound and timeless of Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear tells the story of an old, great king dividing his kingdom among his three children during his lifetime so that it might be perpetuated after his death. No sooner does he act than an abyss of disloyalty, destruction, and death opens up before him, stripping him of all but his very humanity. The play explores the themes of nature and legitimacy, family and politics, ambition and loyalty, duty and enduring love. In an extended discussion of the play, act by act, the seminar will attempt to elucidate the meaning of the human dilemmas given focus in the play.
we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” ~ William Shakespeare, King Lear
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Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melville’s Pierre; or, The Ambiguities
NANCY BUCHENAUER AND TOM MAY
JIM CAREY AND FRANK PAGANO
The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins only gradually came to be appreciated for its distinctive imagery and music with its first publication in 1918, nearly 30 years after his death. Its range extends from the ecstasy felt by the poet in seeing the flight of a falcon at dawn to the numbing darkness of a world “bleared, smeared” by human toil and trade; from the beauty of a brook treading its way through weeds and wilderness in Scotland to the paradox of a world filled at once with immense human suffering and the grandeur of God. We will begin our reading of Hopkins with his great ode The Wreck of the Deutschland, moving on from there to feel and to try to fathom the “forged feature” of his rich language, rhythm, and rhyme in a selection of his greatest poems.
Herman Melville is undisputedly one of the greatest American novelists. Yet his later novels were not well received by the critics and reading public of his time. Two were especially rejected by his contemporaries, Moby Dick and Pierre. Moby Dick stretches the conventions of the sea adventure to their limit. Pierre breaks the bounds of the Gothic novel. In this seminar we will read Pierre, in which Melville demolishes the conformity of the nineteenth-century novel and invents the twentieth-century novel.
“What would the world be, once bereft Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
The Darkness of the Heart in Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel MARSAURA SHUKLA AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
The Magic of Macondo: An Exploration of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude ERIKA MARTINEZ AND DAVID TOWNSEND
We will be immersing ourselves in two of the most haunting films ever made, Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. Both are films that directly address the mysteries of love and erotic longing, by two directors who had a lifelong fascination with the paradoxes and perversities of desire. Expect to be teased, provoked, disturbed, shaken, and transported as you take the search for Carlotta to its devastating conclusion and as you try to peep into the secret heart of Belle de Jour. What IS the object of our yearning, what makes us yearn for it, and what is real when we love?
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is the touchstone of magical realism. This unconventional and mesmerizing narrative chronicles six generations of the Buendía family, beginning with José and Ursula Arcadio Buendía, founders of the village of Macondo. The novel opens with a second-generation member of the Buendía family and the nearly simultaneous evocation of wild beginning and fatal end: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Complete Poems
bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.” Together, we will find our way through this rich and enchanting tale.
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“Once in a lifetime The longedfor tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.� 16
~ Sophocles, Philoctetes
Virginia Woolf, Two Novels: Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse ELIZABETH ENGEL AND DAVID TOWNSEND
AFTERNOON 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Lessing’s Laocoön JIM CAREY AND RICHARD MCCOMBS
Lessing is a great figure of the Enlightenment who was deeply admired by both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. We will begin with Sophocles’s Philoctetes, among whose themes are friendship, loneliness, suffering, and the conflict between honor and expediency. Then we will move on to Lessing’s Laocoön, a treatise that makes some use of Philoctetes as it gives an account of the nature and limits of painting and poetry. Lessing explores the essential possibilities of the static medium of painting and the temporal medium of poetry and their essential differences.
In two deeply affecting novels, Virginia Woolf depicts a texture and tangle of emotion, joy, pain, and struggle in brilliant language and images. On a day in June, Clarissa Dalloway’s gentle, tender world is invaded by the agony and despair of Septimus, a war veteran. Mrs. Ramsey strives to raise eight children while doing her best for her husband, friends, and community. Both novels depict a battle against time, as Woolf’s intellect and passions raise the human spirit to wonder, imagination, and defiance.
MORNING AND AFTERNOON 10 A.M. TO NOON AND 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
The Science Institute: The Origins of Algebra GUILLERMO BLEICHMAR AND PETER PESIC
Algebra is an omnipresent aspect of modern mathematics, yet why does it continue to perplex and unnerve so many students and intelligent adults? This session will examine the Greek, Babylonian, and Arabic sources from which algebra came, centering on the crucial texts in which the striking (and strange) innovation of symbolic mathematics emerged. Our work will involve participant presentations and discussions of problems and solutions from Euclid, Diophantus, al-Khwrizm, Girolamo Cardano, François Viète, and René Descartes. See page 33 for more information about the Science Institute.
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JULY 18-22
WEEK
two
MORNING 10 A.M. TO NOON
Milton’s Paradise Lost EVA BRANN AND JANET DOUGHERTY
Milton wrote his epic poem to “justify the ways of God to man.” His Lucifer is a hero of Achillean proportions, and he has some of the best dialogue. He attempts to make evil his good. But when Lucifer becomes Satan he facilitates the coming of the Redeemer and his own undoing. He transforms our progenitors into recognizably ornery and passionate humans, while Milton’s beautiful poetry makes visible the Paradise we have never seen. Fear, Profit, and Honor: Statecraft and Foreign Policy in Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War MIKE PETERS AND NED WALPIN
Thucydides claims his analysis of the devastating war between Athens and Sparta was written to be an everlasting possession rather than a time-bound record of specific events. Through our reading of The Peloponnesian
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War we will consider such perennial topics as: why states go to war and how wars are conducted—the link between strategy and tactics; the challenges of maintaining peace and ending warfare after it has begun; and the connection between culture, governmental structures, leadership, and domestic politics and the conduct of foreign and security policy. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead and Lila CLAUDIA HAUER AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Lila focus on a Calvinist minister and his unlikely family in a small town in Iowa. Gilead reveals the Reverend John Ames’s haunting letter to the young child he will not live to see grow up, and Lila completes the saga with the account of Ames’s unlikely marriage to the young runaway, Lila. Robinson’s novels portray love and life in the American midwest—mingling themes of religion, racism, friendship, and history.
Five Plays of Aeschylus ERIC SALEM AND CARY STICKNEY
Aeschylus was the first of the three great tragedians of Athens, and his trilogy, the Oresteia, is the only surviving complete example of the form we are told all their works originally took. It describes the birth of the city, hence of what may be called western civilization, in the aftermath of the Trojan War. He imagines Clytemnestra at least as fully as Homer did her sister Helen and makes her doings and sufferings even more memorable. We will discuss one play a day, starting with his earliest, The Persians, followed by three days on the Oresteia, and finishing with Prometheus Bound.
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive
DAVID CARL AND MEAGAN EVANS MCGUINNESS
VICTORIA MORA AND PETER PESIC
Milkman Dead, so named for his extended years at his mother’s breast and for a mistake on his grandfather’s post-slavery identity papers, is on a quest. When that quest begins, it seems to be a search for treasure; but, as Song of Solomon unfolds, Milkman discovers a family, national, and racial history full of ghosts and blood; he must learn to speak to strange and powerful women, and, ultimately, he encounters his own bare self. Milkman’s inchoate and almost halfhearted mission to find something—a sack of gold—that he believes he is owed becomes an exploration of what it is to be a person in the grips of history and a meditation on the nature and uses of freedom.
Our traversal of Marcel Proust’s monumental series of novels, In Search of Lost Time, continues this summer with The Prisoner and The Fugitive. In these two closely connected novels, Proust reaches the intense center of his masterwork in telling the story of Albertine, the narrator’s attempt to keep her a captive under his control, and her escape. These accounts of love, obsession, jealousy, and loss reach depths of human feeling and narrative energy that stretch the limits of literature. Those who have not participated in the preceding years of this series of seminars would need to have read all the prior volumes.
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AFTERNOON 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive VICTORIA MORA AND PETER PESIC
There are two identical sections of this seminar. Please see the seminar description for the morning section. Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady JUDITH ADAM AND MARSAURA SHUKLA
Considered by many to be Henry James’s greatest novel, The Portrait of a Lady tells the story of Isabel Archer, a spirited, young, American woman who is brought to Europe, left an heiress and proposed to by a wealthy, handsome, and kind British lord, all in short order. From this fairy-tale beginning, James draws the haunting portrait of, as he put it, “a young woman affronting her destiny.” Isabel’s quest for a life characterized by freedom, individuality, and authenticity has all the nobility of a great tragedy, but a peculiarly modern one.
MORNING AND AFTERNOON 10 A.M. TO NOON AND 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
The Science Institute: Experimental Foundations of Quantum Mechanics GUILLERMO BLEICHMAR AND GRANT FRANKS
In physics, everything changed after 1900, when Max Planck posited the existence of a tiny “quantum of action,” h. This session will investigate phenomena and reproduce key experiments that led to quantum mechanics, the deeply peculiar but thoroughly tested and widely accepted theory of how the particles that make up the world interact. Laboratory work will be supplemented with discussion of papers by key figures in the development of the theory, including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. See page 33 for more information about the Science Institute.
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JULY 25-29
WEEK
three
MORNING 10 A.M. TO NOON
Herodotus’s Persian War EVA BRANN AND DAVID CARL
Herodotus’s Persian War is an unclassifiable, inexhaustible book. Is it the world’s first history or ethnography or anthropology? Is it an accurate eyewitness travelogue of real countries or a muse-inspired tale of imagined places? Does this new Odysseus trump Homer’s epic, which he seeks to rival? How does Herodotus regard his own activities—sightseer’s eyewitness reports, curiosity-seeker’s anecdotes, canny reporter’s inside stories? Is he a skeptic or a true believer in the secular and divine wonders he encounters? Is the Persian War an entertainment or a deep inquiry into the relation between the peripheral Barbarians, inhabiting the land around the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas, and the centrally located Greeks? We will read the whole book as it works its way up to the climactic confrontation
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between some tiny Hellenic city states and the huge Barbarian empire—each magnificent in opposing ways. Questions galore! History of the United States of America During the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Adams
party of Jefferson and Madison, advocates of states’ rights and regional diversity, forged a strong national government and national awareness. We will explore together the surprising story of this country’s emergence as a great nation on the world’s stage.
JOSEPH WALTER STERLING III AND JOSEPH WALTER STERLING IV
Charles Sanders Peirce: An Introduction
Adams’s histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations are widely viewed as among the greatest works of American history ever written, perhaps even the nonfiction prose masterpiece of the nineteenth century in America. Adams crafted the gold standard of American historiography—groundbreaking in its day, with its reliance on original archival material, focus on international relations, synthesis of economic and diplomatic history, and attention to the wider background of American culture. He presents a rich narrative with an intriguing cast of characters, from Aaron Burr to Napoleon Bonaparte, as he traces in detail the paradox of how the
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)— philosopher, logician, scientist, mathematician—is very possibly the greatest thinker you have never heard of. Although he is correctly called the “father of American pragmatism,” that label is deeply misleading if “pragmatism” is thought (wrongly) to mean “unprincipled opportunism.” On the contrary, Peirce’s pragmatism responds profoundly to problems in Kant’s transcendental philosophy, proposing new ways of understanding our relation to what we know and insisting on the unbroken connection between knowing and doing. Peirce is recognized by many as the most original
MIKE BYBEE AND GRANT FRANKS
“As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning. It’s impossible for someone who is human to have all good things together, just as there is no single country able to provide all good things for itself.� ~ Herodotus
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and penetrating American philosopher, and anyone who studies his work will be forever changed by the experience. Three Short Works of Dostoevsky CHESTER BURKE AND CARY STICKNEY
We will read three short works by Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground (1864), The Eternal Husband (1870), and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (1877). Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky’s first major work and contains ideas that he continued to mine for the rest of his life; ideas such as that of the antihero, in whom real or imagined criminality coexists with something that resembles saintliness; or such as one origin of existentialism: the impossible but ineluctable burden of taking
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full responsibility for one’s own and possibly every other’s life and deeds. The Eternal Husband, a novella, was written between The Idiot and The Demons and centers on an encounter between a cuckold and his wife’s lover sometime after her death. “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” is Dostoevsky’s last published short story, appearing several years before The Brothers Karamazov. It is both absurdly comical and deeply moving. These three works will give us a chance to see in a concentrated form much of the greatness of one of the greatest writers who ever lived.
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park RON HAFLIDSON AND KRISHNAN VENKATESH
While many of Jane Austen’s novels were adored soon after their publication and still are today, this cannot be said of her third novel, Mansfield Park. Characterized alternately as her “problem novel,” a “wicked comedy,” even as a “tragedy,” Mansfield Park has consistently stirred controversy. Much of that controversy arises from the novel’s heroine, Fanny Price. Is Fanny a moral exemplar? A self-righteous know-itall? A tedious bore? A stubborn woman? All of the above? None of the above? In this seminar we will consider not only what to make of Fanny, but also what Austen is communicating to us through her most controversial heroine.
The Depth of the Soul: The German Sermons of Meister Eckhart JOHN CORNELL AND TOPI HEIKKERÖ
“Though it be called unknowing, there is in it more than all knowing; for this unknowing draws you away from all understood things, and from yourself as well.” (Sermon I) The Sermons of Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) are among the supreme expressions of medieval mysticism. A central notion in his teaching is captured by the Middle High German word grunt, which means soil, ground, and bottom. In Eckhart’s writings it refers to a depth or ground of the soul to which reason has no access. Symmetrically, there is God beyond the Triune God. Although Eckhart’s ideas were declared heretical, they inspired later philosophers and poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins and Martin Heidegger. As an introduction we shall first read his “Talks of Instruction” and then take up his renowned German sermons.
AFTERNOON 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death RICHARD MCCOMBS AND RAONI PADUI
This great work of philosophical anthropology investigates what it means to become a self: that is, a free being which embraces its momentous responsibility both by striving for sublime ideals and by working to know itself in the light of these ideals. It chillingly diagnoses many evasions and perversions of the task of selfhood and hints at the way in which spiritual sickness rightly endured and resisted can lead to health and happiness.
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Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth DAVID CARL AND MEAGAN EVANS MCGUINNESS
Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth asks what happens when a vital, intelligent, self-aware person is also a commodity, carefully cultivated and self-promoted. Lily Bart, a sparkling socialite, seems—when not balked by rival or circumstance—to waver unexpectedly in her purpose just as she is about to catch her man. She is, as she puts it, “horribly poor—and terribly expensive;” but, despite her beauty and her well-laid plans, she remains unwed and increasingly desperate for financial support. This is due, in part, to the interference of her all-too unprofitable affinity for Lawrence Selden, a threadbare lawyer—scornful of Lily’s social ambitions but drawn to her vitality—who could never afford the life for which Lily has been trained.
MORNING AND AFTERNOON 10 A.M. TO NOON AND 2 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
The Science Institute: Is Heat Real? WILLIAM DONAHUE AND HOWARD FISHER
We will explore the nature of heat through experiments and readings from some of the earliest investigators, raising questions about the relation between heat and temperature. We see Black and Gay-Lussac trying to understand heat as a new kind of substance and to measure its quantity. Through discussion and experiment we will explore and evaluate this approach. Our study concludes with readings from Maxwell’s Theory of Heat showing how
“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, ~ Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
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heat is related to mechanical powers such as friction and work and arguing that heat is a manifestation of the motion of small particles. From this new perspective, we will consider how the earlier theories can best be understood and how Maxwell’s theory raises new questions and problems about the reality of heat. See page 33 for more information about the Science Institute.
little healing in its touch. What Lily craved but compassion holding its breath.�
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“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.�
~ Albert Einstein
Complete
Listing of Summer Programs
Graduate Institute
DEGREE PROGRAMS
Many who have enjoyed Summer Classics choose to continue their St. John’s experience by completing the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts Program (MALA). In discussion-focused classes, students of the MALA dive deeper into Western literature, religion, philosophy, science, and history. Over the course of four semesters, the MALA provides the opportunity to explore enduring, fundamental questions through engaging discussion, careful reading, and thoughtful writing. Similar to Summer Classics, we read only original texts, and our classes are entirely devoted to deepening our understanding of these works—no lectures, no exams, just the earnest exploration of ideas and our own thinking about these ideas. In order to accommodate a wide range of students, a number of options provide flexibility: students may begin the program in the fall, spring, or summer semester, take the segments in a number of different sequences—such as four summer semesters—take time off between segments, and transfer between the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses at the start of any segment. The Santa Fe campus also offers the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics. In this threesemester program, students immerse themselves in the thought of India, China, and Japan while studying Classical Chinese or Sanskrit. The program introduces students to the breadth and richness of these traditions and how the conversation among them lends insight into the fundamental and enduring questions of humankind. For more information contact santafe.giadmissions@sjc.edu or 505-984-6083.
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NON-CREDIT PROGRAMS Islamic Classics Summer Program The Islamic Classics Summer Program is an eight-week, not-for-credit introduction to the fundamental texts of Islam. The program is discussion-focused and participant-driven. Studies are divided among three aspects of Islam: Sufi literature from ‘Attar, Rumi, and Ibn al-‘Arabi, foundational religious texts: the Qur’an and Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad, and philosophy and theology from great thinkers such as Avicenna, Ibn Tufayl, and Averroes. Tuition is $4,980 for the eight-week session.
Summer Language Program: Homeric Greek A rigorous and rewarding nine-week study of Homeric Greek, this class constitutes excellent preparation for both graduate school comprehensive exams and future reading in the original language of other ancient Greek authors. The class will include grammar lessons, extensive drills, exercises, and quizzes, as well as careful readings and translations of selections from the Iliad and the Odyssey. As students translate these texts they use seminar-style discussions to explore their literary and philosophical qualities. By the end of the class, successful students have acquired a solid foundation in ancient Greek, equivalent to at least one year’s college-level study. Tuition is $2,980 for the nine-week session.
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Cinema Studies The Cinema Studies program consists of two four-week sessions dedicated to cultivating the skills necessary to become better readers of great films. Over the course of the summer students develop a number of approaches to the study of film, including consideration and discussion of plot, narrative structure, storyline, and character development. We will study technical aspects of filmmaking such as cinematography, editing, lighting, sound design, set design, acting, directing and screenwriting. We will also read from classic works of aesthetic theory and film criticism. Tuition is $4,980 for the eight-week session and $2,540 for just one four-week session.
Screenwriting Workshop The Screenwriting Workshop will take a select group of qualified screenwriting students through an intensive, four-week, seminar-style workshop in which each student has the opportunity to conceive, outline, write, rewrite, and polish a full-length screenplay over the course of four weeks. The workshop will be led by a professional Hollywood screenwriter with experience conceiving, pitching, writing, and re-writing within the Hollywood system. Tuition for the Screenwriting Workshop is $3,000 for students who are also participating in the 2015 Summer Film Institute (either or both sessions) or $5,000 for students who are only enrolled in the workshop.
For more information on the above programs visit: www.sjc.edu/grad, contact SantaFe.GISummer@sjc.edu, or 505-984-6050
Science Institute For the third year, Summer Classics will include offerings from the Science Institute. The Science Institute draws on St. John’s College’s tradition of teaching science through the discussion of original texts and hands-on experimentation. Each weeklong session is an intensive immersion in landmark topics and texts, with twice-daily seminars centered on discussion among participants. The Science Institute is open to those who want to delve more deeply into the questions raised by science and mathematics and requires only an acquaintance with high-school mathematics.
Three weekly seminar options Two sessions daily 10 a.m. to noon | 2 p.m. to 4 p.m July 11-15 The Origins of Algebra July 18-22 Experimental Foundations of Quantum Mechanics July 25-29 Is Heat Real? Mr. Pesic, tutor emeritus and musician-in-residence, is the director of the Science Institute at St. John’s College, Santa Fe.
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Summer Academy 2016 SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO June 26-July 2, The Shock of Beauty July 3-9, Wrestling the Unknown July 10-16, The Art of Seeing
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND July 17-23, Beginnings July 24-30, Justice, Freedom, and Law
The Summer Academy at St. John’s College offers 15- to 18-year-olds the opportunity to experience the college through an immersive, weeklong course of study based on a specific theme. Students delve into a diverse collection of texts and engage in stimulating discussions that highlight questions central to the human mind and spirit. With exciting classroom activities and numerous off-campus group excursions, the Summer Academy program provides opportunities to build friendships both in and out of the classroom. Summer Academy seminars are led by St. John’s College faculty and employ the college’s discussion-driven, collaborative method of learning. Participants are encouraged to express their opinions, to listen, and to discuss openly what they do and don’t understand. Through this process, students’ minds are sharpened and their views on education are transformed. For more information visit: www.sjc.edu/summeracademy or contact SantaFe.Academy@sjc.edu, Annapolis.Academy@sjc.edu or 800-331-5232. Tuition for each session is $990.
Tuition includes room and board, books, activity fees, and transportation to and from the airport. Students may participate in multiple sessions, and financial aid is available.
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General Information
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, The Portrait of a Lady
Santa Fe Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the nation, consistently ranks among the best places to visit in the United States. The city is a magnet for those interested in creative arts, for intellectuals, and for lovers of outdoor recreation. In addition to St. John’s, it is home to other institutions of learning and research, including the Santa Fe Institute, the School for Advanced Research, the Museum of New Mexico History, and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Hiking, nature walks, road and mountain biking, and white water rafting opportunities abound in Santa Fe and nearby recreational areas. July offers such events as Spanish Market, the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts and Crafts show, the International Folk Art Market, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the world-renowned Santa Fe Opera. Additionally, Santa Fe’s best outdoor music happens right on campus Wednesday nights during Summer Classics: Music on the Hill presents live music in a family-friendly, relaxed atmosphere including gorgeous sunset views. St. John’s is located only three miles from Santa Fe’s historic downtown plaza and within walking distance of four major museums and the famous Canyon Road art galleries.
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2016 SUMMER CLASSICS REGISTRATION, FEES, POLICIES, AND ACCOMMODATIONS
REGISTRATION Register online: http://www.sjc.edu/ programs-and-events/summer-classics/ Register by email: santafe.classics@sjc.edu Register by phone: 505-984-6105
Summer Classics Tuition Tuition for Summer Classics is $1,250 per individual seminar. Tuition includes registration, books and other course materials, weekday lunches, special events, and library and gym access. A $250 non-refundable deposit for each seminar is required to hold your space and to receive seminar materials. Balances must be paid in full by June 6, 2016. Those registering after June 6 must pay in full at the time of registration.
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Science Institute Tuition Tuition for the Science Institute is $1,900 per week. For full-time, licensed teachers (K-12) with proof of employment, Science Institute tuition is $800 per week. Tuition includes registration, books, and other course materials, as well as weekday lunches. Multiple Seminar Discount Individuals registering for two seminars will receive a $100 discount on the total cost, and those registering for three or more seminars will receive a $250 discount. Teacher Tuition Assistance St. John’s College offers tuition assistance to a limited number of full-time licensed teachers (K-12). With proof of current employment as an educator, participants will receive a 50-percent discount on tuition per Summer Classics seminar (see Science Institute tuition, above, for discount information). Discounts will be available to the first 30 teacher registrants. No additional discounts are offered for multiple seminars. When applying online, please provide the name and address of your place of employment and contact information of someone who is authorized to verify your employment. For additional questions about this discount please contact: santafe.classics@sjc.edu. College Counselor Scholarships St. John’s College offers a limited number of college counselor scholarships to introduce St. John’s College to professionals who inform young people about college opportunities. The program offers counselors a personal experience with a St. John’s College seminar. College counselors are eligible to enroll in any seminar, including the Science Institute. College counselors interested in attending a Summer Classics week should not register
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online, but should contact Carolyn Kingston in Enrichment Programs at 505-984-6105 or santafe.classics@sjc.edu to learn more about the program and to request an application. Minors Participants under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian and must notify the Summer Classics office that he or she is a minor at the time of registration. Persons under the age of 18 may find our Summer Academy more appropriate for their participation. Cancellations Cancellations made prior to June 1, 2016, will receive a full refund minus the $250 deposit; cancellations thereafter forfeit the full payment. If you need to cancel your registration, please contact the Advancement Office at: Summer Classics St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505 Email: santafe.classics@sjc.edu.
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Accommodations The college offers housing in a limited number of suites on campus. Accommodations are simple yet comfortable, with five single-occupancy bedrooms arranged around a shared living room. Suites share a double bathroom. Housing is located about a five-minute walk from the classrooms and dining area. Due to the cool summer evenings, our accommodations are not fitted with air conditioners. An ethernet port is provided in every room as well as a telephone for local or calling-card calls. Wireless service is available in most areas throughout campus. Cell phone service can be unreliable in some parts of campus. Room and board fees are $525 per week per person. Payment for housing is due at the time of registration. Room and board fees include accommodations, linens, and meals from Sunday dinner through breakfast on Saturday. A linen exchange is offered to individuals staying more than one week. All rooms are single occupancy. Housing is available on a first-come, firstserved basis. If suite housing is no longer available, the college will be happy to place you on a wait list, or dormitory-style space may be available. Use of the college gymnasium is available during your stay. The college gymnasium offers exercise equipment, racquetball and basketball courts, showers, and locker room. If you anticipate having any special needs during your stay on campus, please inform the Summer Classics office at the time of registration. Due to limited space on campus we cannot accommodate early arrivals or late departures. Room keys will be available at
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registration on Sunday. Checkout time is 10 a.m. on Saturday. Please make travel arrangements to accommodate this schedule. General tourist information is available from the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Bureau at www. santafe.org or by calling 1-800-777-2489. Transportation to Santa Fe The closest major airport is in Albuquerque, a one-hour drive from Santa Fe. Travel reservations from the airport to Santa Fe may be made with an airport shuttle service or by visiting www.SantaFe.com. The Santa Fe airport also operates a limited number of commercial flights. Limited public transportation is available within Santa Fe by bus. For greater flexibility, a rental car is recommended.
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Illustrations by Polly Becker www.pollybecker.com
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-984-6000 | www.sjc.edu