COMMUNITYCALENDAR

A PUBLICATION OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO VOL. 2.12

MARCH/APRIL 2012

In this Issue:

Dean’s Lectures, Concerts, Theatre, Art, Events

Presented in conjunction with

Friends of Santa Fe Jazz,

Santa Fe Concert Association

Saturday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.

Great Hall, Peterson Student Center

JULIAN POLLACK TRIO

DEAN’S LECTURE AND CONCERT SERIESPlease join us for the spring 2012 Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. All lec-tures are free and open to the public. Evening lectures take place in the GreatHall, starting at 8 p.m., and afternoon lectures take place in the Junior Common Room, starting at 3:15 p.m.

“THE TEACHING OF VIMALAKIRTI AS A CORE TEXT”Friday, March 2, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterMalcolm David Eckel, professor of religion, Boston University

There is no charge for admission

“The Teaching of Vimalakirti” (Vimalakirtinirdesa) is one of the best-knownand most influential Indian texts in East Asian Buddhism. Its ideal of the enlightened layman who confounds the wisdom of the monks had great appealfor worldly Chinese literati, and its model of the encounter dialogue helpedshape the practice of Zen. This lecture will explore the way the “Vimalakirti”criticizes and subverts the standard aspects of Buddhist narrative to expressthe Mahayana concept of emptiness and create a new image of what it means tobe an enlightened sage.

Malcolm David Eckel is professor of religion and director of the Core Curriculum at Boston University, where he received the Metcalf Award forTeaching Excellence and served as Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Humanities. Before joining Boston University, he served as associate professor and administrative director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. His research focuses on the concept of“emptiness” in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. His publications includeBhaviveka and His Buddhist Opponents; Buddhism: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Holy Texts, Sacred Places; To See the Buddha: A Philosopher’sQuest for the Meaning of Emptiness; Jnanagarbha’s Commentary on the Distinction Between the Two Truths: An Eighth Century Handbook of Madhyamaka Philosophy; and “Is There a Buddhist Philosophy of Nature?”in Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Buddhism and Ecology.

ANTIQUITY AS A POLITICAL PROJECTWednesday, March 28, 3:15 p.m.Junior Common Room, Peterson Student CenterFrank Pagano, tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

There is no charge for admission

The modern world is often asserted to be the result of a political and scientificproject constructed by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke. In this lecture,Mr. Pagano will argue that the ancient Greek world is the result of a projectmade by the Greek poets and historians. The lecture will concentrate on the

contributions of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and Sophocles. To make this argu-ment, he will bring together what everyone has learned from the ancient histo-ries and tragedies: that custom was not the king of the Persians, that Oedipusprobably did not kill his father, and that Zeus and Prometheus were in cahoots.What we call the West, then, has always been a project. Prometheus rules theWestern horizon.

Frank Pagano has been a member of the St. John’s College faculty since 1983.He earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1969 and a doctorate from Boston College in 1981, and then held several academic positions at the University of New England. From 2001 to 2004, Paganoserved as director of the St. John’s College Graduate Institute.

WORDSWORTH AND KEATSWorrell LectureFriday, March 30, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterRon Sharp, professor of English, Vassar College

There is no charge for admissionThis lecture examines the ways in which two English Romantic poets recon-ceived the nature of the spiritual.  Focusing on William Wordsworth’s “TinternAbbey” (also known as “Lines”) and “Immortality Ode” and on John Keats’sodes and letters, Ronald Sharp will explore both Wordsworth’s natural super-naturalism and Keats’s more secular religion of beauty.

Ronald Sharp is a professor of English at Vassar College, where he was deanfrom 2003 to 2008. Prior to this, he held several positions at Kenyon College(acting president, John Crowe Ransom Professor of English, and provost) andalso was editor of The Kenyon Review. His special interests include nine-teenth-century British literature, contemporary poetry, Australian literature,Romanticism, and the literature of friendship. The author or editor of sixbooks, Sharp also is a frequent contributor to a variety of journals, includingNew Literary History, Paris Review, New England Review, Australian Literary Review, American Literature, Keats-Shelley Journal, and TheWordsworth Circle.

A graduate of Kalamazoo College, Sharp holds a master’s degree from theUniversity of Michigan and a doctorate from the University of Virginia. He isthe recipient of fellowships from various foundations, including the AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities,the Ford Foundation, and the National Humanities Center.

DESCARTES’ GOOD BOOK: READING THE DISCOURSE ON METHODFriday, April 6, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterStuart Warner, associate professor of philosophy, Roosevelt University

There is no charge for admissionThere is near unanimity among readers of Descartes about what constitutes thesubstantive core of the Discourse on Method: the doctrines of mind-body dualism, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. There is alsonear unanimity among readers of the Discourse that while Descartes does in-deed embrace these positions, the arguments by which he attempts to establishthem are dubious at best. Equally evident, if not more so, is the projectDescartes announces in the final part of this work: the aim of arriving at scien-tific knowledge capable of making us like masters and possessors of nature. Buthow that project is related to the doctrinal core of the work is far from clear. Now, a careful reading of the Discourse reveals that its doctrines are conveyedthrough a mode of presentation in which misdirection reigns and a surfacemeaning can become simultaneously transparent and opaque. Indeed, there is atension between what appears to be the clearly chiseled elements of the doctri-nal core of the Discourse, and the ironic, undulating mode of presentation outof which they emerge.  This lecture will explore Descartes’ mode of presentationand consider whether our understanding of the substantive core (and the projectof the work) needs to be revised in the light of it.

Stuart D. Warner is associate professor of philosophy at Roosevelt University.He also has been a visiting professor at the Committee on Social Thought atthe University of Chicago and has participated in more than 125 Liberty FundColloquia. The director of the Montesquieu Forum, which is devoted to thestudy of the classical and European background of the American Founding period, Warner is the author most recently of a bilingual edition of LaRochefoucauld’s Maxims and a translation of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters.He has published essays on Montesquieu, Hume, Locke, Hegel, Burke, andBentham and has taught dozens of different courses, including classes onPlato’s Republic, Phaedrus, and Apology of Socrates, Herodotus’ History,Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, Montesquieu’s Spirit ofLaws, Crime and Punishment, Madness and Violence, and Philosophy inFilm.

T.S. ELIOT’S OTHELLOSteiner LectureFriday, April 13, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterChristopher Ricks, professor of the humanities, Boston University

There is no charge for admission

Fifty years ago, everyone who cared about T.S. Eliot or about Shakespeare’stragedies knew that Eliot’s pregnant pages of eighty-five years ago, on the lastgreat speech of Othello, were un-ignorable — wrong-headed perhaps, but need-ing to be reckoned with. These days, Eliot on Othello usually finds itself eitherneglected or disparaged. Christopher Ricks hopes to give the grounds for be-lieving that Eliot’s words are great criticism, not only of this particular haunt-ing case but as establishing some truths about great criticism.

Christopher Ricks is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, having formerly been professor of English at Bristol and at Cambridge. He is a member of the Association of LiteraryScholars, Critics, and Writers, of which he was president (2007 to 2008). Hehas edited and also teaches in the Boston University’s Core Curriculum. In2004, he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and he is known both forhis critical studies and for his extensive editorial work, including The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987) and The Oxford Book of English Verse(1999), among many other volumes. Ricks is the author of numerous othersworks, including those focused on the oeuvres of Keats, Eliot, Tennyson, Beckett, Dylan, Lowell, and Pound. In 2010, Waywiser Press publishedRicks’s anthology Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American.

WAGNER’S TRISTAN: THOUGHTS OLD AND NEWFriday, April 20, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterElliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus, St. John’s College, Annapolis

There is no charge for admission

In this lecture, Elliott Zuckerman will revisit his five decades of opinionsabout Tristan, exploring such subject as the dangers of music, sex and meta-physics, Tristan’s self-analysis, the triumph of Isolde, Wagner the Ventrilo-quist, and the Egotistical Sublime. 

Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor emeritus at St John’s College in Annapolis, wherehe began teaching in 1961. Before that, he taught at Columbia and at the NewSchool. He holds a bachelor’s degree in humanities and a master’s degree anddoctorate in European cultural history from Columbia as well as undergradu-ate and graduate degrees in English from Cambridge University. He was aKellett Fellow, sent by Columbia to Clare College, Cambridge. At St. John’s,he was an Andrew W. Mellon Tutor. In addition, he was director of the

Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Santa Fe in the 1960s and oftentaught in the G.I. in the following two decades.

A life-long musician, Zuckerman holds a professional certificate from theChatham Square Music School in New York, where he studied piano with therevered teacher Vera Maurina Press. He played solo and chamber recitals inNew York, Cambridge, and Annapolis, and has lectured on musical and othersubjects on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1970s, he gave the MetropolitanOpera Guild lecture on a new production of Die Meistersinger. He is the author of The First Hundred Years of Wagner’s Tristan (1962) and many published lectures on opera, music theory, and prosody. He has composedand recorded three song-cycles and published two collections of poetry. A painter as well, Zuckerman had a highly praised one-man show at theMaryland Hall for the Creative Arts in 2010.

RE-THINKING DIFFERENCEFriday, April 27, 8 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterDan Dahlstrom, professor of philosophy, Boston University

There is no charge for admissionAccording to Heidegger, the difference between being and beings is the most essential difference of all. Not surprisingly, it is a constant in his thinking frombeginning to end. Yet in the course of his work, he re-thinks this difference fundamentally, recognizing its at times ambivalent sense and even insisting onthe need to abandon various versions of it. Re-thinking that difference plays a crucial role in his clarification of what he dubs the basic, post-metaphysicalquestion (Grundfrage) and in his call for a different sort of thinking, beginningin the mid-1930s. Crucial to this development is a sustained, critical reading of Nietzsche’s work. This lecture will examine the significance of the way Heidegger re-thinks the difference between being and beings, in the light of hiscontroversial interpretation of Nietzsche’s “metaphysics.”  

Before arriving at Boston University, Dan Dahlstrom taught at Santa ClaraUniversity, Catholic University of America, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). He has been awarded a number of grants, including a Mellon Foundation Grant for work on medieval logic in the Vatican MicrofilmLibrary, two Fulbright awards, a summer grant from DAAD (German Aca-demic Exchange Service) for research in Tübingen, a summer grant from theNational Endowment of the Humanities for work at Princeton University onGerman thought and letters, a Humboldt award for research in Cologne onthe thought of Kant, Hegel, and eighteenth century German aesthetics, and,more recently, support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for research on

Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to a

wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of th

acquiring as much money as possible, ...and care so little about

he soul ...?— SOCRATES

Heidegger’s later thought. In recent years, Dahlstrom served on the executivecouncil of SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), co-hosting its 43rd annual conference in Boston (2004); he also hosted the 40thannual meeting of the North American Heidegger Conference (2006). NamedBoston University’s first John R. Silber Professor in 2011, Dahlstrom has pub-lished widely, having written more than 90 articles and edited 16 collections.

AN AFTERNOON WITH WRITER TEDDY WAYNESunday, April 29, 3 p.m.Worrell LectureGreat Hall, Peterson Student CenterTeddy Wayne, author of Kapitoil

There is no charge for admission

Teddy Wayne, winner of the 2011 WhitingWriters’ Award, is the author of Kapitoil, thestory of Karim Issar, a young, introspective financial wizard from Qatar who arrives inNew York City in 1999, devises a computerprogram (Kapitoil) that predicts oil futures,and then begins to question the moral implica-tions of a creation that generates record profits for his company. Praising thiscritically acclaimed debut novel, writer Jonathan Frazen says that Kapitoil“does what novels can do better than any other art form: Show us a familiarworld through unfamiliar eyes.” The novel was named a Best Book of theYear by The Huffington Post, Booklist, the Kansas City Star, and Large-hearted Boy.

Wayne is a graduate of Harvard University and of Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught fiction and creative nonfiction writing. He currently resides in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, theNew York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, McSweeney’s, the Wall StreetJournal, and elsewhere. Awarded the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize,Wayne also was a finalist for the New York Public Library 2011 Young LionsFiction Award, a 2011 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize runner-up, and the recipient of a 2010 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.

THE SECOND ANNUAL EXQUISITE EXHIBITPresented by students of St. John’s College Friday, April 13, 6 to 8 p. m., opening receptionShow runs through April 21, hours varyArt Gallery, Peterson Student CenterThere is no charge for admissionSponsored by students in the College’s Writing Club, this event refers to amethod by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled.Each collaborator adds to the composition in sequence, either by following arule, or being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.The technique, invented by Surrealists, is similar to an old parlor game calledConsequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for further contribution.

Surprised by what seemed like a collective consciousness forming in theirwritings, members of the Writing Club began to wonder about the magic ofcollaborative work. The Exquisite Exhibit was the answer, with individual collaborations between artists and a “collaborative display” of artists. Thisexhibit will showcase any medium an artist is inspired to present, with an expanded display of textiles, textures, yarn work, and weaving.

The opening features music by several college groups and hors d’oeuvres. For exhibit hours following the Friday reception, call 505-984-6000.

LUNCHTIME AND AFTERNOON CONCERT

SCHUBERT’S CHAMBER MUSIC IVAriel Winnick (SF11, SFEC12), violinMeghan Kase (SF14), cello Peter Pesic, pianoWednesday, April 11, 12:10-1:15 p.m.Junior Common Room, Peterson Student CenterThere is no charge for admission

St. John’s students Ariel Winnick and Meghan Kase join Peter Pesic, musi-cian-in-residence and tutor, in the final performance in a series of informalconcerts devoted to the chamber music of Franz Schubert. The three willperform the Fantasy in C major (D 934) and the Trio in E-flat major (D 929).

Ariel Winnick graduated from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, in 2011, and isnow a graduate student in Eastern Classics on the Santa Fe campus. He enjoys playing classical music and traditional folk music of Appalachia, Ireland, and French Canada. He plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass guitar,musical saw, and spoons, and also writes music. Mr. Winnick has beenspending time with distinguished musicians and scholars since 1987.

Meghan Kase is a sophomore at St. John’s College. She graduated from Central Bucks High School East in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where she wasa member of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, the Bucks County Festival Orchestra, and the Bucks County Youth Orchestra. She was also a member ofthe Sartoria Competition Award-winning MARAH Quartet and has studiedunder Sarah Yoon and Mary Pitcairn.

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 inphysics. He has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the John SimonGuggenheim Memorial Foundation. Mr. Pesic is also a Visiting Scholar atHarvard University.

SENIOR RECITALYi Ji, piano (SF12)Sunday, April 22, 3 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student CenterThere is no charge for admissionSt. John’s senior Yu Ji will give a piano recital that includes Beethoven’sPiano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, op. 31, no. 2 (“The Tempest”) and otherworks. Mr. Ji was the pianist for the College community’s production ofCabaret two years ago and for its production Sweeney Todd in spring 2011.He also gave a two-piano recital this past fall together with tutor DavidBolotin.

EVENING CONCERTS

JULIAN POLLACK TRIOJulian Waterfall Pollack, piano,Noah Garabedian, bass,Evan Hughes, drumsPresented in conjunction with Friends of Santa Fe Jazz, Santa Fe Concert Asso-ciationSaturday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student Center$30-$75 admission, 50 tickets free to the St. John’s College communityon a first-come, first-served basisPianist/composer/arranger Julian Waterfall Pollack is a classically trained mu-sician who has opened at the Blue Note for such illustrious figures as ChickCorea and Gary Burton and has performed and recorded with Joshua Redman,Nicholas Payton, and Miguel Zenon. He has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center as well as at numerous jazz venues and festivals around theworld and is the artistic director of the jazz series at the Mendocino Music Festival. His most recently published song collection is Infinite Playground.Performing with Pollack will be bassist Noah Garabedian, the recipient of aJohn Coltrane National Scholarship and a 2007 finalist for the TheloniusMonk Institute of Jazz graduate program, and drummer Evan Hughes, whohas collaborated with such figures as Joe Lovano, John Scofield, and George Garzone.

This special event is a benefit for the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. For ticket information, contact the Lensic Box Office (www.lensic.com or 988-1234).

This is my simple religion. There is no need for te

brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosoph

MUSICAL

Performance by the St. John’s College communitySaturday, March 3, 8 p.m., Sunday March 4, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.Great Hall, Peterson Student Center$10 admission at the door, free for St. John’s students, faculty, and staffMan of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, andmusic by Mitch Leigh, is inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth centurymasterpiece Don Quixote. It tells the story of the “mad” knight as a musicalplay-within-a-play performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaitsa hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Quixote’s dream is Everyman’s dream. His tilting at windmills is Everyman’sgreat adventure. As with all the best allegorical tales, the oppressive mood of the fight against eternal evil is heightened by the sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic attempts of the hero to right all the wrongs of the world. At times both inspiring and thought-provoking, the story is very entertaining and verymoving, and will warm the hearts of everyone whose spirits were ever raised bythe prospect of a victory by the underdog against all odds. The musical is performed by a cast of St. John’s students, faculty, and staff andis directed by Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin.

MUSIC ON THE HILL™ 2012 BENEFIT EVENTSBring your family and friends to enjoy great cuisine at local restaurants andsupport the summer 2012 season of Music on the Hill™. Our restaurant partners will donate 20% of the evenings’ sale of food and beverages to help us mount our popular free concert series.

Tuesday, March 6, at Junction, 530 S. Guadalupe St.Co-hosted by Barraclough and Associates and KSFR.Door prize is a gift certificate for Junction.

Tuesday, April 3, at Il Piatto, 95 W. Marcy St. Co-hosted by Verve Gallery of Photography and KSFR.Door prize is photo print from Verve Gallery.

For details visit www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on Outreach.

emples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own

hy is kindness.— THE DALAI LAMA

EventsSUMMER CLASSICSUnlock new realms of thought not only in the words of Eastern and Western Civilizations’ greatest authors, but also in the company of inquiring minds around the seminar table.

Join us for Summer Classics in Santa FeWeek I: July 9-13Week II: July 16-20Week III: July 23-27Seminars cover a wide range of topics and interests. 2012 offerings include seminars on works by De Tocqueville, Proust, Aristophanes, Darwin, GrahamGreene, Toni Morrison, Edgar Allen Poe, Puccini, and more.

Summer Classics participants also are invited to explore the vibrancy of his-toric Santa Fe and attend cultural events, including St. John’s College Musicon the Hill™ concert series, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and theworld-renowned Santa Fe Opera.

The complete schedule for Summer Classics 2012 and seminar details are available on our website at: http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/outreach/SF/SC/classics.shtml.

For a brochure or to register, please call 505-984-6117 or emailmspray@sjcsf.edu.

GRADUATE INSTITUTEEncounter the Eastern ClassicsSaturday, April 14Levan Hall, second floorPlease join us for the second annual Encounter the Eastern Classics event,where you will have the opportunity to participate in a St. John’s College semi-nar and experience the great rewards of dialogue as learning. St. John’s tutor Mr. Krishnan Venkatesh* will lead the discussion on Yoshida Kenko’s Essays inIdleness, an insightful, engaging, and often humorous text from medieval Japan. Following the seminar, you can enjoy light refreshments while continuing the conversation with St. John’s faculty, staff, current students, and alumni. During the subsequent panel session, you can learn more about the graduateprogram and the application process.

Experience for yourself what makes the Eastern Classics program unique, exciting, and life-changing. We look forward to having you there!

Space is limited. Please RSVP to Katie Widlund atkatiescarlett.widlund@sjcsf.edu or phone 505-984-6050, before Wednesday, March 28.**

* Tutors are subject to change, and a second tutor may be added according to attendance. ** If you are interested in the Eastern Classics program at St. John’s Santa Fe, but are not able to

attend the event, please contact Katie Widlund to discuss planning a personalized visit.

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