Mary Anna Barbey

September 14, 2022: SEASON OPENER

Mary Anna Barbey (VC 58, 73) discusses her life as a journalist and novelist in Switzerland and her new English translation of her 2004 French novel Prosperity Mill (Independently published 2022).

Susannah Marshall was fourteen when the strike broke out at Prosperity Mill. For months, her small town in North Carolina would be shaken by scenes of conflict, terror and even murder.

Sixty-five years later, a renowned historian, Susannah returns to her hometown in a final attempt to understand the world-famous walkout led by the communists. Will she discover some clue, some piece of information that will put her mind at rest? What role did her own family play in the tragic events? And if she finds the truth, will anyone want to hear her story?

Based on the history of the 1929 textile strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, this work of fiction explores the way historical conflict can impact individual lives. By reviving events almost forgotten, Susannah's quest also reaffirms the importance of passing on stories from one generation to the next.

Mary Anna Pope Barbey was born in Durham, North Carolina. She grew up in Connecticut, then married and moved to Switzerland where she has lived for over sixty years. She has published twelve books in French. Her translation of Prosperity Mill is her first publication in English.

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Bryan W. Van Norden

 

Kano Toshun Yoshinobo (1747-1797). The Three Laughers of Tiger Ravine, 1886 (Fenollosa-Weld Collection).

September 23, 2020.

Bryan W. Van Norden, Professor of Philosophy on the James Monroe Taylor Chair at Vassar, talks about his recent monograph, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (Columbia UP, 2017).

Are American colleges and universities failing their students by refusing to teach the philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and other non-Western cultures? This biting and provocative critique of American higher education says yes. Even though we live in an increasingly multicultural world, most philosophy departments stubbornly insist that only Western philosophy is real philosophy and denigrate everything outside the European canon. In Taking Back Philosophy, Bryan W. Van Norden lambastes academic philosophy for its Eurocentrism, insularity, and complicity with nationalism and issues a ringing call to make our educational institutions live up to their cosmopolitan ideals.

 

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Michael Halpin McCarthy

October 3, 2018. 

Michael Halpin McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Vassar College, returns to talk about his recent book Toward a catholic Christianity: A Study in Critical Belonging (Lexington 2017).

"Michael Halpin McCarthy’s Toward a catholic Christianity offers a compelling account of how one might deftly combine intellectual seriousness and ethical sensitivity with creative fidelity to the Catholic Church. McCarthy’s vision of Christian discipleship continues to extend the path blazed by his illustrious predecessors John Henry Newman, Bernard Lonergan, S.J., and Charles Taylor. Few scholars would be able to produce a work that reflects such historical learning, philosophical depth, and religious wisdom. McCarthy’s description of ‘critical belonging’ captures beautifully what it means for one to love the church today—not naïvely, but as an adult. If the church drives you crazy, you ought to read this book; if the church does not drive you crazy, you ought to read this book."  -- Stephen J. Pope, Boston College 

Meredith J. Gill

March 28, 2018.

Meredith J. Gill, Professor of 15th and 16th Century Italian Art at the University of Maryland, talks about her latest book Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2014).

 (Cambridge 2014).

"In this beautifully written and deeply thoughtful book, Meredith Gill, one of the best scholars working in the field of medieval and Renaissance art history, tackles a highly compelling subject that has been “hidden in plain sight.” It considers the difference between medieval and Renaissance angelology, offering close readings of angels in the literary tradition and the visual arts (such as Guariento, Melozzo da Forlì, Raphael, and Rosso). It explores angels’ relationship to the immaterial, as graceful bodies imbued with aria, and their meaning in the history of devotion and philosophy. Gill’s writing style is in harmony with her topic, and her deeply engaging prose never fails to transport the reader into its beauty and mystery. Drawing upon earlier excellent work on St Augustine, Gill’s extensive but lightly worn knowledge of Christian thought—a rare achievement amongst art historians today—lays the foundation for every chapter. The book is an essential read not only for art historians, but for anyone with an interest in medieval and Renaissance Christianity."   --Kathleen Christian, The Open University

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Michael Corris

"Self-Regarding Man" 2017 from The Fourth Book -- Michael Corris

March 7, 2018 (Repeated March 14)

Michael Corris, the artist, critic, art historian, and Professor of Art at the Meadows School of Art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas talks about the Conceptualist art movement and about his book Leaving Skull City: Selected Writings on Art (Press du Réel, 2016).

"Beginning with his work as a participant in the collective Art & Language, Corris's texts include critical surveys of conceptual art, the Artist Placement Group, the early work of Ad Reinhardt, “Young British Art” of the 1990s, and a mordant satire of management in art education. Leaving Skull City is filled with theoretical reflections on the social, philosophical, and political dimensions of contemporary art. Many of these concepts will seem familiar, as they drift in art's contemporary discourse. Yet, these ideas were hardly uncontroversial when first formulated in the context of conversations throughout the New York artworld of the 1970s."


Video of Michael talking about his current exhibition at the Lilian Bloch Gallery in Dallas

Danielle Allen

April 5, 2017.

Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, will contribute to our series on the role of liberal arts education in contemporary society by discussing her recent work on language and politics: Education and Equality (Chicago University Press, 2016) and Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Norton, 2014).

"Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation's founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America's cardinal text”  -- David M. Kennedy.

 “Education and Equality mounts a powerful philosophical argument for putting ‘participatory readiness’ for civic and political life at the center of American education. Developing a rich, pragmatic account of the purposes of schooling, Allen shows the poverty of reductionist notions of education as preparation for work and global economic competition alone. To achieve the political equality that is indispensable for democratic governance, a humanist education for all is required. A must read for all concerned about the future of American education and American democracy.”  -- Leo Casey, executive director, Albert Shanker Institute 

40:41 minutes.

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Stella Beratlis

Photo: Jeremy Center (www.ogalthorpe.com)

November 16, 2016.

Stella Beratlis, Modesto California's Poet Laureate and managing librarian at Tracy Library of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, talks about poetry and librarianship, and reads from and discusses her new book of poems Alkalai Sink, (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2015).

57:45 minutes.

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Martha C. Nussbaum

September 28, 2016.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, discusses her book Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, just published by Oxford University Press.

"Written with her usual mix of grace, precision, passion, and breathtaking scope, Nussbaum probes two seemingly polar emotions underlying our notions of justice-anger and forgiveness. She finds them part of the same vindictive drama, and each problematic. Her call is to move beyond them to become 'strange sorts of people, part Stoic and part creatures of love.' The book offers an important and timely challenge, a most worthwhile and enlightening read for those interested in philosophy, psychology, law, politics, religion-or simply living in today's world." -- C. Daniel Batson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Kansas

45:14 minutes.

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Maxine McClintock

Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial, Riverside Park, New York by Penelope Jencks

April 27, 2016.

For our last discussion of the season in our series on the value of liberal arts education in contemporary society, historian Maxine McClintock, emeritus teacher at Trinity School in New York, talks about her book Letters of Recommendation (Collaboratory for Liberal Learning, 2014) and the role of the liberal arts in secondary education.

"This is a remarkable and rewarding book. In the best tradition of John Dewey's vision of education as a journey that makes for more fully formed, flourishing human beings as well as a more informed citizenry, Maxine McClintock has constructed an intricate and compelling account not just of the fictional student Emilia's winding "senior year odyssey" toward college (and beyond) but also of the mentor-mentee educative process by which both share insights, learn, and develop through intellectual exchanges. The erudition here is striking and subtle. William James, Randolph Bourne, Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, and scores of other major thinkers appear and serve to propel the narrative as well as the analysis, provoking much bigger questions and concerns than simply: where should Emilia go to school? This is a book that interrogates the proper and best role of intellectuals and educators in society. It ponders the city "as educator." It critiques and embraces the drawbacks as well as the opportunities provided by Emilia's elite private school. It investigates the history of ideas and the "purposes of a liberal arts education" in a democracy. And it challenges readers to consider how self-awareness is and might be enabled via education as the book probes how and why this is not happening more in the U.S. At the core of this book, then, lies the so-called "education crisis" and the "crisis of the humanities" as integral to the "dysfunctional meritocracy" endemic to the contemporary educational landscape." -- Christopher M. Nichols.

54:57 minutes.

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Jennifer Church

December 2, 2015.

Jennifer Church, Professor of Philosophy at Vassar, talks about perception, imagination, and her book Possibilities of Perception, published in 2013 by Oxford University Press.

"Possibilities of Perception is a stimulating, wide-ranging treatment of perception in its many guises that should be of interest to a commensurately wide audience." --The Review of Metaphysics  

45:10 minutes.

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Michael S. Roth

November 25, 2015. 

In the second edition of our series on the value and uses of liberal arts education in contemporary society, intellectual historian Michael S. Roth,  President of Wesleyan University, talks about his book Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, published in 2014 by Yale University Press.

"Conflicting streams of thought flow through American intellectual history: W. E. B. DuBois’s humanistic principles of pedagogy for newly emancipated slaves developed in opposition to Booker T. Washington’s educational utilitarianism, for example. Jane Addams’s emphasis on the cultivation of empathy and John Dewey’s calls for education as civic engagement were rejected as impractical by those who aimed to train students for particular economic tasks. Roth explores these arguments (and more), considers the state of higher education today, and concludes with a stirring plea for the kind of education that has, since the founding of the nation, cultivated individual freedom, promulgated civic virtue, and instilled hope for the future. "

41:50 minutes.

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