COMMUNITY CALENDAR ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE September/October 2013 SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
VOL. 5.13
Piano, Violin, and Cello Friday, October 11, 12:10 p.m.
In this Issue: Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series Community Seminars, Concerts, Art, Bookstore
Reading maketh a full man. — Sir Francis Bacon
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DEAN’S LECTURE AND CONCERT SERIES Please join us for the fall 2013 Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. All Dean’s lectures and concerts are free and open to the public and are followed by a question-and-answer period.
The Active Struggle Against Evil: Solzhenitsyn’s Response to Marx and Tolstoy Friday, September 6, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Daniel J. Mahoney, Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship, Assumption College This lecture will examine Solzhenitsyn’s defense of the “active struggle” against political evil as an essential part of what one might call his philosophical Christianity. The Russian writer’s defense of moral and political agency will be shown to be a self-conscious response to the historical determinism of both Marx and Tolstoy as well as to Tolstoy’s pacifistic appropriation of Christianity. Professor Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College. He has written extensively on French political philosophy, religion and politics, and anti-totalitarian thought. He is the author of many books, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology (which has been translated into French and Romanian), and is the editor, along with Edward E. Ericson, Jr., of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005. The Other Solzhenitsyn: Ruminations on the World’s Most Misunderstood Writer and Thinker will be published by St. Augustine’s Press in 2014. Mahoney received the Prix Raymond Aron in 1999.
Another Universe: Ancient China, Mind, and Landscape First Annual Rohrbach Lecture Friday, September 13, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center David Hinton, poet, essayist, and translator The ancient Chinese picture of the cosmos is fundamentally different from the picture that has dominated our Western tradition, and it has produced the distinctive form of Chinese culture. However distant it may seem, it also feels remarkably contemporary in our secular and scientific age. In this picture, the cosmos is a living and harmonious whole, constantly selfgenerating (and, so, female in nature), and humans are an integral part of that whole. With its focus on the interweaving of consciousness and landscape, this worldview is what we now call “deep ecology.” Drawing on his new book, Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, Hinton will introduce this worldview, show how it shaped the arts in ancient China, and talk about how it also shapes immediate experience. The lecture will include a slide presentation and readings of poetry and essays from Hunger Mountain.
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David Hinton’s translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the texture and density of the originals. He is the first translator in over a century to translate the four seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, and Mencius. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Award from the PEN American Center. His new book of essays is Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, which was on the Best-Books-of-2012 list at The Guardian. Hinton’s work can be seen at www.davidhinton.net
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The Anger of Achilles and its Source: A Reading of Book One of the Iliad Friday, September 20, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Adam Schulman, tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis “Anger—sing goddess the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles.” Why is it that “anger” is the first word of the first great book of Western civilization (and of the St. John’s College curriculum)? Why did Homer choose to write an epic poem of some 15,000 lines about the anger of Achilles? Why should anger be an important theme, if not the central theme, of all of classical literature? How might reflection on anger form at least the starting point, if not also the core, of a liberal education? These are questions Adam Shulman hopes to illuminate, and perhaps to answer, through a close reading of the first book of the Iliad. Adam Schulman has been a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, since 1989. He received a bachelor of arts in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1980, a bachelor of arts in physics and philosophy from Oxford University in 1982, and a master of arts in history of science from Harvard University in 1985. Four years later, Harvard conferred a doctorate degree in history of science.
Hobbes’ Mortal God Wednesday, October 2, 3:15 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center Jay Smith, tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe What role does Hobbes’s theological critique play in his political science? And why does Hobbes call his sovereign a “Mortal God”? To begin to respond to these questions, the lecture will look at the last parts of “The Leviathan”— that is, the parts dealing with his (re)interpretation of scripture and his critique of “The Kingdom of Darkness.” Jay Smith earned his bachelor of arts degree from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 1977, a master of arts in philosophy from Marquette University in 1979, and a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University in 2002. Before joining the St. John’s faculty in 2001, Mr. Smith worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and as an environmental consultant.
Self-Knowledge: The Key to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Friday, October 4, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Robert Berman, professor of philosophy, Xavier University of Louisiana Given the desirability of self-knowledge so natural to philosophy, it should come as no surprise that it plays a role in a philosophic book such as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Yet self-knowledge does not appear in the nearly comprehensive catalogue of topics covered by the Phenomenology, which ranges from perception to the search for explanatory scientific laws, from the struggle of life and death and the lord-servant relation to the misery of
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it — ARISTOTLE
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asceticism, from observation of nature to membership in political, moral, and religious community. Instead, as this lecture proposes, self-knowledge stands out as the key to understanding why Hegel’s phenomenological investigation encompasses such a broad range of topics and what unites them as parts of the argument as a whole. Appreciating this proposal depends upon addressing several interrelated questions, and doing so is the main focus of this lecture: Exactly what conception of self-knowledge is at work in the Phenomenology? How does it come to be so central to the argument, and why should it play the crucial role it does? Robert Berman, who received his doctorate in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 1982, taught for several years in the New School’s Lang College and in the Graduate Faculty. He is professor of philosophy at Xavier University in New Orleans, where he has taught since 1988. Berman is the author of numerous papers on Hegel and is currently completing a book on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
Holism: Philosophy, Language, and Things Friday, October 11, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Joshua Kates, associate professor of English, Indiana University In this lecture, Joshua Kates will explore a major perspective in 20th century philosophy — holism, shared by Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and, a figure from the later 20th century, Donald Davidson. He first will try to make clear the fundamentals of this standpoint, along with its considerable power. By way of conclusion, he hopes to lay out some of the problems or puzzles it raises, especially ones that pertain to interpretation and to the imaginary. Joshua Kates is the author of two books on Jacques Derrida, Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of Deconstruction and Fielding Derrida: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, History, and the Work of Deconstruction. Kates has articles appearing or about to appear in differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (“Against the Period”) and diacritics (“Historicity and Holism: The Example of Deleuze”), which are parts of his current project tentatively titled “Historicity and Holism.” Since 2005, Kates has been an associate professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was a tutor at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, from 1991 to 2005.
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Finding the Higgs Particle: Sweet Dream or Nightmare? Friday, October 25, 3:15 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Melissa Franklin, professor of physics, Harvard University This lecture will focus on how the Higgs boson was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider and why scientists were looking for it for so long. Professor Franklin will include a description of how both the accelerator and the detector work and also discuss what happens next and how it affects the physicists working in particle physics and the rest of the world. Melissa Franklin is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University and chair of that department. She is an experimental particle physicist who studies proton-proton collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider. Franklin has worked on the Collider Detector at Fermilab since 1983. She is a collaborator on the ATLAS experiment, where she works with more than 3,000 physicists. She is presently studying the properties of the Higgs boson. Born and raised in Canada, Franklin received her bachelor of science degree from the University of Toronto and her doctorate from Stanford University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard before joining the Harvard faculty in 1989.
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COMMUNITY SEMINARS Community Seminars are special opportunities for community members to read and discuss seminal works in the same unique manner as do our students. Seminars are discussion-based and small in size in order to ensure spirited dialogue. There are topics to pique every interest, and for many participants the discussion-based learning model is an entirely new experience. To register for any of the seminars described below, please call 505-984-6109 or use our online registration form. Teachers with proof of employment can enroll in a Community Seminar at a 50-percent discount. Community Seminars are free to 11th-and 12th grade high school students (limited spaces available).
Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way Tutor: Richard McCombs Dates/Times: Six Tuesdays, September 10 – October 15, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Cost: $210 Stages on Life’s Way, by Sören Kierkegaard, investigates the logic of personal, spiritual growth. Kierkegaard conducts his investigation by creating various characters who tell and interpret stories from their own lives so as either to praise romantic love for its joys and ennobling struggles or to blame it for its sorrows and illusions. Mr. McCombs recently published a book entitled The Paradoxical Rationality of Sören Kierkegaard.
Michael Ondaatje, Part I: In the Skin of a Lion Tutor: Lise van Boxel Dates/Times: Three Tuesdays, September 17 – October 1, 7-9 p.m. Cost: $105 How do you distinguish poetry from prose? If you think you have resolved this question, Michael Ondaatje’s work should change your mind. He is not wedded to conventional sentence structure; he is not interested in providing the reader with a continuous narrative. Rather, he arouses the reader’s imagination and passions with vivid descriptions and musical phrases so as to pull the reader into the experience and perspective of his characters. Ondaatje uses the main character of In the Skin of a Lion, Patrick Lewis, as a kind of fulcrum that unifies various vignettes about the immigrant workers who laid the foundations for a metropolis. Lewis is intent upon saving these workers, who contributed so much to the city, from anonymity. By means of his quest, we are given the chance to dwell imaginatively in the lives of these workers. What might seem to be a tale of social and political justice is perhaps, in the end, a story about love. More precisely, it is the story of a lover. The mood of In the Skin of a Lion is akin to that of a beautiful daydream. This novel is the precursor to Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which pulled Ondaatje into the mainstream of public consciousness when it was made into a film that won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
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Michael Ondaatje, Part II: Coming Through Slaughter Tutor: Lise van Boxel Dates/Times: Three Tuesdays, October 8 – October 22, 7-9 p.m. Cost: $105 If you missed the boat for “Michael Ondaatje, Part I,” but would like to join us now, we welcome you aboard for “Michael Ondaatje, Part II: Coming Through Slaughter.” Ondaatje’s fruitful disregard for prose structure, his intermingling of prose and poetic forms, and his vivid depiction of sensory experiences are fully manifest in this book. Coming Through Slaughter is a biography about Buddy Bolden, one of the greatest trumpet players (cornet, to be precise) and arguably the first jazz musician. There are no recordings of Bolden’s horn playing. He appears in only one photograph. Bolden was opposed to permanence, and Ondaatje’s style is perfectly suited to communicating this opposition. Bolden’s world is fluid, visceral, punctuated by lust, violence, and profound moments of emotional intimacy. The world you enter in this book is not one of polite conversation and teatime sandwiches without crusts. It is a world of sweat and grit—raw, quick-paced, often brutal. It is the world of the early Jazz Age; it reads like jazz; it is a heck of a ride!
The Novels of Jane Austen, Part I Tutor: Mike Bybee Dates/Times: Five Wednesdays, September 18 – October 16, 7-9 p.m. Cost: $175 Superficially Jane Austen severely limited the scope of her novels to narrow social interactions—yet, she managed somehow to subject her society to a critical appraisal, the power of which we can hardly overstate. She managed this effect by subverting her audience’s narrative expectations and by deploying a delicious albeit subtle irony verging on sarcasm—among other strategies. Two centuries later, however, we live with enormously different narrative expectations, in a time of palpably increasing democratic and social tolerance. Thus, we might well wonder what value these novels’ critical, reflective, and reflexive lessons might have for us about oppression, misogyny, financial inequity, and intellectual elitism. What is the locus of morality? What constitutes the authentic moral fabric of a society? We will explore these questions and more in our discussions of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. In the spring, we will complete the canon with Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.
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Three Early Films by Terrence Malick: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line Tutor: David Carl Dates/Times: Friday, November 22, 5-7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, November 23 and 24, 10 a.m.-noon Cost: $105 Malick’s Tree of Life exploded on the movie world in 2011 when it won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography for the 2012 Academy Awards. In the international film magazine Sight and Sound, 16 critics voted Tree of Life one of the 10 greatest films ever made, and it was ranked as one of the 100 greatest films ever made in the magazine’s overall poll. But before Tree of Life, Malick made a series of movies that first established his reputation as one of America’s most important filmmakers. Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), and, after a 20-year hiatus, The Thin Red Line (1998) marked Malick as one of the most original and searching independent directors in the United States. We will spend the weekend charting the formal and thematic development of the first 25 years of Malick’s career to better understand the artist who produced Tree of Life 13 years later. Please view all three of these films on your own before attending class. We will only watch various scenes from the movies to facilitate discussion.
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LUNCHTIME CONCERTS Music for Piano and Clarinet Friday, September 20, 12:10 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center Robert Marcus, clarinet Peter Pesic, piano There is no charge for admission. Dr. Robert Marcus, for many years a professor of medicine at Stanford University and now a resident of Santa Fe, will join the college’s musicianin-residence, Peter Pesic, for a program of works for clarinet and piano. The concert will feature Sonata in A Major, op. 100, by Johannes Brahms, and Sonata in D Major, op. 94, by Sergei Prokofiev. 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.
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Piano, Violin, and Cello Friday, October 11, 12:10 p.m. Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center David Bolotin, piano Christine Chen, violin Dana Winograd, cello There is no charge for admission. The trio will perform Piano Trio no. 1 in D Minor, op. 49, by Felix Mendelssohn, and Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor, op. 40, by Dmitri Shostakovich. Dana Winograd is the principal cellist with the Santa Fe Symphony. Christine Chen is both a tutor at the college and a member of various professional orchestras in Santa Fe. David Bolotin is a tutor emeritus.
EVENING CONCERT Violin and Piano Friday, September 27, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center Krzysztof Zimowski, violin Jacquelyn Helin, piano There is no charge for admission. Violinist Krzysztof Zimowski and Steinway Artist Jacquelyn Helin will perform Sonata no. 1 for Violin and Piano in G Major, op. 78, by Johannes Brahms; “Mythes� for Violin and Piano by Karol Szymanowski; and Sonata no. 1 for Violin and Piano in F Major, op. 80, by Sergei Prokofiev. Zimowski is the concertmaster of the New Mexico Philharmonic, and Helin is a well-known local pianist who has given several solo concerts at the college.
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Coming Soon! THE MANHATTAN PIANO TRIO Friday, November 8, 7:30 p.m. Great Hall, Peterson Student Center A free performance of piano works of Haydn, Brahms, and Smetana.
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ART SHOW College Arts and Crafts Show and Sale: Opening Reception Saturday, September 21, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Art Gallery, Peterson Student Center Local alumni join faculty, staff, and students in a celebration of creativity, focus on arts and crafts, including pottery. Come by and shop early for the holidays. After the opening reception, the Gallery will be open selected hours or by appointment.
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VISIT THE ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE BOOKSTORE
> Singing School by Robert Pinsky Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges Hunger Mountain by David Hinton Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
FALL HOURS Monday 8:45 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Tuesday 8:45 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Wednesday 8:45 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Thursday 8:45 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Friday 8:45 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Closed Saturday Sunday 12-6 p.m.
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