This spring there will be four fantastic Slow Reads. Slow Reads are pretty much what the name implies, an opportunity to read a significant text, usually a ‘big book,’ over the course of a semester. These classes typically meet once a week for one credit, are open to all students, have no pre-requisites, and students can take more than one in a semester. Happily, next spring’s Slow Reads are being offered on days that do not conflict with each other. They are listed in the course schedule under the departments offering them. If you have an advisee who is looking to stretch their intellectual muscles, suggest a Slow Read!
Laudato Si. This Slow Read will work deliberately through Pope Francis’ greatly influential and complex encyclical on the environment, inviting students to respond critically to a major environmental text that advances its positions from a theological perspective.
Juan Arroyo - POLT 21000 - Monday 4:00-4:30
Middlemarch. Middlemarch, by George Eliot, is thought by many to be among the very greatest novels written in English. It is considered a classic of literary realism, examining the details of provincial English life in the fictional town of Middlemarch during a period of extraordinary social and technological change. It teems with marvelously drawn characters, compelling situations, and no small amount of humor.
Kasia Bartoszynska - ENGL 29400-01 – Friday 2:00-3:15
Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. Jefferson Cowie won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for this compelling history of resistance to the Civil Rights Movement as a foreshadowing of our current political polarization. Cowie describes how resistance to the granting of full citizenship to Native Americans, enslaved people, and Black people has long been justified by appeals to the concept of ‘freedom.’ Professor Cowie will be meeting personally with the seminar during a visit to campus this spring.
Michael Smith - HIST 20001 – Thursday 2:35-3:50
The Aeneid. Virgil’s Aeneid is the great Roman epic poem. In 9,896 lines of dactylic hexameter, it tells the legendary tale of the flight of the survivors of the Trojan War to their founding of the city of Rome. The story abounds in adventure, romance, cruelty, and violence, as well as powerful meditations on destiny, love, and duty. The Aeneid was written in imitation of the Greek epic masterpieces, Iliad and Odyssey and this seminar concludes a cycle of Slow Reads of the Classical epics.
Robert Sullivan - ENGL 29400-02 – Wednesday 4:00-5:15