Wednesday, April 15, 2009

'Specimen Days' & On Forgiveness: St. Francis College



St. Francis College, located in Brooklyn Heights, continues its inspiring, reflective and creative schedule of literary, philosophical and artistic events:

TONITE: Wednesday, April 15, 6 PM:
He Is Speaking . . . Are You Listening? - WALT WHITMAN IN BROOKLYN
Presented by:
The Walt Whitman Project & The English Dept. of SFC

Readers include current St. Francis College students and alumni.

Mr. Greg Trupiano, Director of The Walt Whitman Project will provide context and background concerning Walt Whitman in Brooklyn Heights mid-nineteenth century.
Dr. Ian S. Maloney, Assistant Academic Dean/Associate Professor of English, St. Francis College will comment on Whitman and on Specimen Days.

Walt Whitman describes his prose memoir Specimen Days as a “huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-’65, Nature-notes of 1877-’81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards” and “the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.” This memoir is nonetheless an evocative and moving recollection of a great life. Members of the St. Francis College community, led by Assistant Academic Dean Ian S. Maloney, the author of the introduction to the Barnes & Noble edition of Specimen Days, will read selections concerning the poet in antebellum Brooklyn, his life during the Civil War, and his final years in post-war America. The readers include Stefan Fagan, Noel T. Jones, Allison Rutledge, Jaime Squeri, and Hakim Williams. Vocalists Nicole Mitchell and Leslie Mitchell perform songs from 19th-century America. Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D., is the event curator.

Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served

Walt Whitman – Specimen Days
Wed, Apr 15, 2009 starting at 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Founders Hall


TOMORROW: Thursday, April 16, 2009, 11:15 AM:

As part of its annual Yom Hashoah Observance, Holocasut Remebrance Day, a Scholar will Tackle Question of “What is Given in Forgiving?”

Who: Philosophy Scholar Jeffrey Bernstein, Ph.D.
What: Yom Hashoah Observance – Holocaust Remembrance Day
Where: St. Francis College – Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education
180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
When: Thursday, April 16
11:15am – 12:30pm

St. Francis College continues its tradition of observing Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day with a lecture conducted by Philosophy Professor Jeffrey Bernstein from the College of Holy Cross.

Professor Bernstein will discuss, “What is Given in Forgiveness?” broaching the ideas, themes and underlying questions concerning forgiveness as presented in Holocaust survivor and famed Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal’s book, The Sunflower.

Dr. Bernstein, who received his doctorate in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy with areas of specialization centered on the work of Baruch Spinoza, German Philosophy, and Jewish Thought. He is currently exploring these figures within the context of the Philosophy of History.

Annual Yom Hashoah Observance at St Francis College
Thu, Apr 16, 2009 starting at 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture and Education (Room 7402)

Links here:

http://www.stfranciscollege.edu/eventsListing.aspx

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo