Dear Friammers, The recent outpouring of literary interest on the FRIAM list suggests that perhaps the "City University of Santa Fe" might offer a "coffee house" seminar in which we read from Robert's Wonderful List. I have found a highly qualified person to lead such a seminar.
Now, before you all imagine all the graduate credits you are going to
accumulate, you should recall that CUSF is just me and a few other old guys
and a web page. Still, the idea is that Santa Fe should someday have
graduate programs in many of the fields it does best and that a good way to
foster that idea is to start doing it in whatever way we can. So, over the
last year we have taught three such seminars, on "emergence", on
"mathematical thinking" and on "EvoDevo", the study of what we are learning
about the history of life from the study of its development. These
seminars have involved graduate level discussions of materials led by
scholars with advanced degrees relevant to the materials at hand.
The reason I am writing is to try and gauge what sort of seminar to offer.
One point is clear. Like all the C.U.S.F seminars so far, I would like to
explicitly devote some portion of each session to achieving a common
understanding of crucial passages in the texts we are reading, before we
begin to discuss our reactions to those texts.
So far so good! The big question I have concerns the role of writing in the
seminar. Some of you have suggested that you might enjoy the opportunity to
do some writing as a part of the seminar (a few hundred words a week, max).
Our potential leader is certainly qualified to respond to our writing and
would look forward to doing so. The idea would be to use the readings on
the list as points of departure, thematically or stylistically, for a bit of
writing of our own.
So, my question is: (1) would you be interested in a Seminar
on Robert's Wonderful List AND, if so, (2a) would you be interested in
reading and discussion only, or (2b) would you also like some writing to be
part of what we do? Here, again, is the list:
Don Quixote
Moby Dick or The Whale
Ulysses
Diamond Age, The
Glass Bead Game, The or Siddartha
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
Pride and Prejudice
Heart of Darkness
The Iliad or The Odyssey
War and Peace
Dear FriammersII.docx
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