blog.shimer

The Shimer Rationalists

Shimer, as Sam Sandmel has already noted, attracts all sorts.  Being a Great Books college, however, I should venture to say that its diversity of greatest note would be, not necessarily one of culture or of interests in general, but rather one of books.  Shimer attracts the avid readers of any number of different genres, from fans of post-structuralism, to Jacques Lacan aficionados, and, yes, even to dogmatic Aristotle/Aquinas-types.  A perk of this diversity in literary taste is that, no matter your interests and despite the tiny student population, you can probably find someone at Shimer to meet with on a regular basis to talk over a text you're interested in.

 
Our Analytic group's sourcebook

My first experience with such a reading group is thanks to Joe Bradshaw (now in his fourth year at Shimer), who kindly did the student population a favour in hosting an analytic philosophy reading group once every week or so at his apartment.  Analytic philosophy (the philosophical school that dominates philosophy departments in the Anglophone world) is not much read in the Shimer core, nor are electives often offered with a major analytic component  in their reading requirements, so I am grateful to Joe for providing an opportunity I shall perhaps never see again: a discussion of Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein with other Shimerians.  Whether or not discussion-based classes foster skills applicable to the whole of life, they certainly teach one how to get to the meaning of a text with the assistance of others.  I never would have caught half of what I learned from the writings we discussed together had I read them on my own, so it was with a distinct pleasure that I attended the meetings with Joe and friends to talk over the obscurer points of that week's reading.  Schoolwork, alas, eventually put a stop to our fun, but not before some of us devised a means of continuing our bookish past-time into the summer.

 
Our Rationalist group's first sourcebook

During one of our last meetings, one among us (I believe Sam Elalouf, a fellow second year) suggested that, over the summer, we organise a similar book club, now with a different philosophical theme so as to attract other students.  Sam, Joe, and myself decided, after throwing around some ideas, to dedicate the book club to the early modern rationalists: René Descartes, Benedictus de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and their quasi-rationalist successor, Immanual Kant.  Of the four, only two (Descartes and Kant) were represented in the core, and even in their cases, a second reading never hurt anybody; moreover, each of us had read at least one of the authors before, so we would have someone each session who would be less than completely in the dark about the reading.  All in all, therefore, ours seemed a good selection, and quickly enough we had compiled a reading list and schedule for the group.  Sam helpfully placed notices for our first meeting around the Shimer floor, and he and I both spread news of the group by word of mouth.

 
Our Rationalist group's second sourcebook

After a few initial hitches, the group was set in motion: every week we would meet at Sam's place, hang out, possibly have dinner or engage in some other social activity, and sit in a circle around a (non-octagonal) coffee table to work through any problems, questions, interpretations, etc. we had concerning the text of the week.  It was easily my favourite part of the summer: relaxing on a large couch with a list of questions about Spinoza's views on immortality, the prospect of a long, illuminating conversation to follow, with the further prospect of dinner, ice cream, or a movie beyond that.  And I know of nowhere outside Shimer where I might have had the chance to enjoy it.

 

I have two papers due by the end of the week.

Shimer tries to stay away from tests and that's pretty great. There are no late-night cram sessions for the next day's quiz on electromagnetic induction, and you will never find yourself scrambling to memorize the dates and times during which all the important Federalist Papers were written. It's all good and dandy and you think you're getting off easy. Easy that is, until your first paper is assigned.

Writing a Shimer essay is a bit of an undertaking. Not only are you facing the grading eye of a faciliator who knows academic writing like the back of their hand, but you're always dealing with having to construct some original idea upon which to base your paper. I once wrote an essay breaking down what Derrida actually means in his  brilliant but rather opaque "Différance," but that's the only truly expository essay I've had to write. I chose it as a paper topic because I felt intimidated by assigment and didn't think I had a good enough understanding of Derrida to really speak about him in a critical sense. This instance was an anomaly and probably the least I would be able to get away with. My other Shimer paper topics have been more creative and more exciting, which is the typical expectation.

I once wrote about how communism would mean the downfall of the fashion industry (my Social Sciences I class had several rousing discussions about Marx), and for another paper, I discussed the Equal Right Ammendment, posing Mary Wollstonecraft and Carol Gilligan's viewpoints against each other. And all that was just my freshman year. As the readings get harder, so do the essays, but this is something I think my peers and myself have handled beautifully. With every paper that's due, whether it's on Hegel or thermodynamics, come incredibly thoughtful and innovative theses. Shimer approaches papers as an opportunity to better explore and elaborate on a concept in your class that you found particularly resonant. This opportunity is very well utilized.

So I have two papers to complete. One is due tomorrow. I'm writing about entropy and it will be more of an explanation of the phenomenon than anything else (not unlike my Derrida paper) because while I adore the natural sciences, they are hardly my strong point. Then there's my essay for Social Sciences IV. It's due on Friday. For that I am taking Geertz's conception of "thick description" in anthropology and seeing if it applies to the Foucault's conception of the way the discourse on human sexuality ought to be. 

The latter paper topic is, I'm afraid, still in its more gestational period. No fretting, though. It will be turned in on time and come the end of the day on Friday, I will be happy and paper-free. It's the very thought that keeps me trucking. And if it turns out my papers were a bust, Shimer faciliators always offer the very generous chance to rewrite.

Alright.  I should actually probably go work on the essays. Writing about writing papers feel strange after awhile. It's a little too meta for my tastes, and probably not the most productive form of procrastination.

"The Other Place"

Being in Oxford, one learns fairly early on to refer to "the other place" rather than (shh. . .) Cambridge. Yes, you may hear reference to "Oxbridge" - the two universities are more like each other than any other place is like either. But together they epitomize what Freud (after Ernest Crawley, who I imagine as an Oxford man) called the "narcissism of small differences." The two places are both versions of the same thing, really, which makes them both rather jealous of the other. There are differences, many, small and large. But I won't go into that here, as I tread on rather uneven ground as it is. 

Anyway, we (I, Ari, Adrian, Howard and Kieran) went along to the other place this past Saturday and took in some of the sights. (I am scooping Kieran, here, by the way, whom I bribed to blog about this [remember, Kieran?] and who has yet to post, as far as I can see.) But I don't want to steal all his thunder, so I'll confine myself to posting a couple of pictures of our jaunt to Magdalen College, where I dragged Kieran and Ari to see one of my favorite places in the other place: the Library of Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps"). Pepys was, among other things, a diarist of the era of the Restoration in England, graduating from Magdalen in 1654. His Library (which includes his diaries, in six volumes, all in a shorthand he learned as a student there for note-taking) is a charming littlish room (it's all about the same size as Shimer's own collection at 3424 S. State Street). The books themselves are arranged in a spiral around the perimeter according to their size (what say you Colleen¹ - think it would simplify things?). One of the prize volumes is the first half of William Caxton's translation into English of Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. 1480). That was interesting to see for Ari, who's writing a thesis based in part on the Narcissus episode (alas, the volume was open rather to the illustration of Phaeton). Sitting just on the banks of the Cam River that runs through town, Magdalen is a beautiful setting for the Library. And, in fact, the College has another illustrious alumna in our very own Bev Thurber. So, you might say this is a shout out to our home girl Bev from her peeps after their encounter with Pepys.

And with that groan-inducing effort (I'll work on it) I throw it over to Kieran, who I am sure will have much more edifying reports from the other places we saw in the other place (ok, ok). 

Ari at the Library entrance. 

Ari and Kieran at the College Gate.

 

 1 Colleen McCarroll is Shimer's Librarian and Bookstore Manager.  She is not known for arranging books by size--at least not yet!

Shimer Public Lecture - J. Scott Lee

    The first of this spring’s Shimer College lecture series, the 30th public lecture series, was “Rethinking Universities & Hutchins: Faculty and Student Resistance to Core Text Curricula” by J. Scott Lee. Of course, at Shimer, there is not much of a “resistance” to reading core texts, so much as complete enthusiasm towards the idea.
    J. Scott Lee is the Executive Director and Co-founder of ACTC, the Association for Core Texts and Courts. This organization promotes individuals and groups in the journey to achieve general study, in and out of schools, of texts that have proven to be classic or particularly significant to our cultural canon. They hope to advance liberal education through the integration of core texts into general educational institutions. Lee  also discussed the importance of reading Robert Maynard Hutchins as a source of self-assessment for institutions and of understanding about the Great Books program.
    During the question and answer session, he discussed the conferences his program hosts annually and how liberal education is exhibited in a “persuasively experiential” way through panels with short papers on the idea of core text curricula. He also shared a letter with us from a professor at Notre Dame who shared that her students from ND's Program of Liberal Studies were dual-majoring in many different topics and broad-minded in their future pursuits.
    Lee left the audience wondering about the future of liberal arts educations in other institutions and solidly reaffirmed in their belief in their advocacy about Shimer’s core text approach.
Photograph by Miles Stepto

Reflections Inspired by a Crumpled, Scrawled-upon Essay

Around Shimer, February means a couple of things: the coming darkest depths of winter, a gradual sense of adjustment to a new set of classes, and, of course, the Michel de Montaigne Scholars Competition. I’ve been involved with the competition in one fashion or another for the last three years, having been the recipient of a half-tuition award in 2008 and serving on different panels in 2009 and 2010 after enrolling at Shimer.

Whether talking to parents, prospective students, or trustees, I often find myself with cause to reflect on what exactly makes the Montaigne competition such a unique experience, but am unfortunately usually left with the distinct impression that I haven’t done a terribly good job expressing myself. Recently, however, I stumbled across something that reminded me in a profound way how illuminative of an experience the weekend was.

I spent most of this last winter break doing one of the least enjoyable activities known to humankind: packing and moving. After a few years of vague but mostly apathetic discontent with where we were living, my father and I decided to look at the possibility of moving, and very quickly found a house not too far away that fit us perfectly. This, of course, was only a fraction of the battle. In the process of sifting through, categorizing, and packing years of accumulated debris and possessions, however, I found, lo and behold, the copy of Montaigne’s “On the Art of Conversation” that I had marked to hell for my own competition. As I flipped through the pages and read the chicken-scratched notes that I surely thought profound at the time, I began to remember how beneficial an experience it truly was.

Prior to my time at Shimer, my academic habits were of questionable rigor at best. I spent my high school years at a Jesuit school in Detroit, disagreed in a vague and inarticulate sense with most of what was thrown at me, and left mostly unsatisfied. Though I put a good deal of effort into the reading and writing for my English classes, the type of analysis which I found was required of me for Montaigne’s essay was invigoratingly unlike anything I’d ever experienced. From not understanding his many and varied references to writers of the Classical canon to his almost taunting invitations to disagreement, I found that Montaigne challenged me in a way that few other writers had.

The discussion, of course, was no different, redefining my standards of what a class could be, and leaving me with an instant desire to sit around the table again. I found for the first time that I was able to learn just as much from my peers as from ‘the teacher’ (who, in the case of a Montaigne seminar, doesn’t actually participate at all), and was hooked.

In short, Montaigne was a transformative and illuminating experience for me, and I think it holds the potential to be the same for any prospective Shimerian. I’d invite anyone to shoot me an email to talk about it, and if you aren’t already signed up, I hope you’ll consider it.

If you'd like to talk to Erik about the Montaigne Competition, please email admission@shimer.edu and we will forward it to him.  Also, here's a picture of him from the competition in 2008: 

 

Moves & Mobiles

Dinah, first year Shimer student, joins us to show what she did with her writing week - a week which at Shimer is similar to exam week at other institutions.  During this week, students either take comprehensive exams or do semester projects, which require 40 hours of work on some approved topic.  Semester projects are always at least partially essays, but many have a creative component--as Dinah's does.  On page 21 of our catalog, you can read more about comprehensive exams and semester projects.  We hope you enjoy Dinah's reflections on how she got to Shimer and how it's changing her, and how she used writing week to reflect on it all.

      This is the written portion of my writing week final, along with pictures of my final project.  I wanted to show how  education re-ignited and connected my passions.

 

                     I left Indiana as a beginning graffiti artist and activist. I moved to New Jersey for a day, then realized I did not want to live in New Jersey. I got rid of 2/3 of my possessions. I came to Chicago with 3 bags of laundry, 4 milkcrates of books, a mattress, a job, a couple boxes of odds and ends, and a rented room. My craft supplies and spraypaint were lost to my mother's attic, and my creativity was lost to my confusion. The first four months or so moved like a blur; wake up, bike to work, bike home, sit in room alone and read, go to bed, repeat. I read over 20 books that fall. I read more about labor movement and organization. I read a lot of Hesse. I still had no idea what I was doing, or wanted to do; I just knew that this was not it. I had spent the previous year working with community organization, activism, and radical politics. There wasn't a shortage of information to stop me from doing anything, just an inability to use it properly.
                              I have always had trouble formulating ideas and thoughts into coherent sentences or art forms. This was not helped by a year of instability and confusion. The creativity block I experienced was possibly the most painful experience I've encountered. I realized I did not have the ability to express myself, because I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to say. Ideas were constantly swirling around my head: statistics and figures, radical theories, beautiful and horrifying historical documents. They all hung over me. I could not decipher this. The year I had spent trying to learn, and the following year spent trying to effectively apply it, were fruitless. These were ideas I did not fully grasp. I couldn't bend them to fit, I couldn't shape them and view them from every angle, I lacked the true understanding to really make anything out of my own thoughts. Philosophers and historians dangled over my head, intangible. I became more uninspired; I hid my paints under my bed, and the dogs eventually chewed up all of my art pencils. I drank more tea and picked up a third job.
                       The decision to go back to school had more intense consequences than quitting a job or two and racking up more student loans; I was engulfed with creative energy. As this year pushed on, it has only become stronger. I have introverted greatly. I have found that I am in my head 80% of the time. As I bike to work I try to wrap my mind around the previous day's Sociology reading. I laugh at the similarity of drivers throwing temper tantrums to the tantrums of chimpanzees. My people-watching skills are now verging on creepy. I do math problems in my head for fun; this is the most surprising, really. I am astounding myself daily.

                              This mobile took me an obscene amount of time to make. I started working on it early, and sacrificed a lot of sleep. I gathered all of my focus statements, written papers, handouts, homework, notes, and more than a few journal entries. I attempted to cut them all into perfect squares. I drew a scaled design of a mobile, calculated how many paper birds I would need to really make this happen, and tried to figure out the paper crane size in relation to how big I wanted the mobile to be. . I hand-cut then hand-painted each piece of paper with water colors, ironed, and folded each bird. The folding and stringing process are what took the longest; the most intricate steps are rarely seen. I skimmed each paper as I painted and folded it, and it was mind-blowing to see just how much I came across this semester, even in the course I dropped after four weeks.

                          This mobile represents a lot to me. On the most superficial level, it is a reminder to all the first year students as to just how much we have accumulated thus far. This project, for me, is the manifestation of my last year. I have taken the things that I wanted so badly to know and have conceived my own ideas from them. I can take ideas apart, I can reshape them, I can combine and reduce them to my liking. They are no longer foreign, unreachable ideas floating above me. I have found a new creative medium through understanding. In Natural Science we discussed the opposition to science due to the idea that knowledge takes away from the “magic” of nature and the beauty in the unknown. This concept has never made sense to me, especially now. The only thing ignorance does is keep one in the passive position. I've found more than empowerment in knowledge though, I have found comfort, and I have found immense beauty.

End of Term

Here we are at the end of the term in Oxford, and I regret that I haven’t sent our news for more than a month! So let me offer a belated season’s greetings with some news from a more-than-ordinarily-chilly Oxford. We have finished up courses and embarked on our various holiday plans: travel, reading toward tutorials and theses in the Spring, and just relaxing after a very busy term. 

I realize I haven’t said much yet about the range of subjects folks are studying here. So I want to pay tribute to everyone’s hard work this term with just a list of some of the tutorials that they’ve undertaken over the last few months - the list isn’t exhaustive, though it might exhaust you just reading it: “Christian Mysticism,” “Druidism and Paganism,” “History and Practice of Observational Astronomy,” “Early Writing Systems,” “Chinese Literature,” “Feminism,” Proust,” “Philosophy of Mind,” “French Lyric Poetry,” “Psychology of Religion” and “Classical Guitar” to name, literally, a few. Next term promises just as rich a harvest of ideas, with “Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” “Government and Politics of the U.S.,” and “History of Consciousness through Material Studies” a few of the courses we have planned. 

 

Meanwhile  a number of us have been making the most of their time in Oxford getting out of tutors’ rooms and the Library in extracurriculars (like Lance Dyke in the 2008-2009 program*). Bob Carpenter has been up at around 5 every morning through the term to train with the Hertford College crew. We look forward to cheering him and his boat on when they compete in the “Torpids” races on the Thames just south of town in February. And Ari Robbins’ been studying with the Cafe Reason Butoh Dance Theater in nearby Headington; he’s planning a tutorial on Butoh next term to dovetail with the topic of his thesis. And, of course, Adrian has been getting to know the geese in Port Meadow!

 

Finally, before I sign off, I will leave you with some visuals. The first two shots below were taken in the Chapel of New College. New College has been giving us rooms (as they did our last time through) so we occasionally have had classes in the “Rew Nooner Spoom.” (The room was named for William Spooner, Warden of New College from 1903 to 1924 and eponym of the “spoonerism,” the transposition of letters in phrases to sometimes hilarious effect: Spooner is reported to have bellowed "Three cheers for our queer old Dean!" to a Hall full of undergraduates on the occasion of one of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s birthdays. How’s that for some amusing Oxfordiana?) 

 

We went to the Chapel following the end of our last class last week. We had been reading Henry Adams’ Mont Saint Michel and Chartres and we thought it’d be a good idea to take a look at some of the very fine Gothic architecture Oxford has been graced with (though it post-dates the Cathedral at Chartres by a few centuries). 

 

 

 

Click on this last image below and you’ll get a clip of a little gathering we had in rooms lent us a former Shimerian-in-Oxford, Kim Gumino, who is in the process of setting herself up here. As you’ll see, we had tutors and students in for what in Oxford is known as "end of term drinks,” though I assure you all the fun was perfectly good and clean. I offer the video clip as evidence of this. It’s of Howard Ruan, who studied Classical Guitar this term. You’ll hardly believe me that he’s studied it seriously only since he’s been in Oxford; he is primarily a bassist. He and his tutor, Rikky Rooksby offered bravely to perform some duets for our end of term party. (Some of you may have had the chance to learn from Dr. Rooksby as well - he has a widely popular line of instruction books on guitar and composition.) So, I leave you with a bit of their gracious playing and wish you all a similarly beautiful holiday.

 

 

 

* (See http://shimerinoxford.blogspot.com/2009/02/fencing-part-deux.html on Lance's career as a fencer for Oxford University.) 

 

The Shimer Video Blog Marches into November.

As we roll into the beginning of the end of the fall semester at Shimer, please join our intrepid video bloggers for their Shimerian insights.  

4th year video blogger Adrian shows us around her digs in Oxford, and comments On Agression and the local water fowl: 

 

 

Adrian also gives us an idea of what her workload is like as a Shimer-in-Oxford student: 

 

 

 

While we hear from Jean-Paul Sartre, standing in for a rather stressed out 2nd-year video blogger:

 

 

 

Our 3rd-years turn out to be masters of explaining Shimer jargon: 

 

 

 

And our 1st year, upon realizing that winter in Chicago may require strategies unknown to her while growing up in Texas, appeals to a wise grandmother for help: 

 

 

 

Third Time's the Charm

My name is Noah LeBien and this fall I began classes at Shimer College. This is not my first shot at College; after graduating high school I went to the College of Wooster in Ohio, before transferring to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When I found neither to be a good fit I took a year off, unsure of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do, wondering if it was worth it at all to take a third stab at the academic world.

Then I found Shimer. I stumbled upon an article about the Great Books programs on Wikipedia, of all places. I was intrigued by the whole history behind the program and was drawn even more into it when I read about a small Great Books College in Chicago.

I decided to give Shimer a call and set up an appointment to visit and sit in on a class. After the first visit, I remember being surprised at the size of Shimer. The intimacy and friendliness of the staff and students that I spoke with made me realize how much the community knew when to take something seriously and when to be relaxed. I left satisfied, and though I did not participate in the class discussion, it left an impression.

I remember a few days after my visit, my father, who works for the Chicago Tribune, approached me about this small school he had heard about that he thought might interest me. A Tribune article about the controversy involving Shimer’s president had just appeared. I took the coincidental timing of the article, my father's advice, and my visit as a good sign, so I started an application.

When I was invited to do an interview after submitting my application I was excited, not only because I had another chance to visit the school, but because I would get to support my application and my essays personally. This more personal touch to the school is something unique and it is strange to try and explain it to someone who hasn’t been here. Though my experience here hasn’t been that long, it seems like an environment that is small but not constricting, intimate but not overwhelming. I assume my interview went well, because within a month I was moving into an apartment in Bridgeport and participating in orientation.

A specific discussion early on in the year inspired me to write this post:

In my Natural Sciences 2 we were given parts of On the Soul by Aristotle as our first reading assignment, and someone brought up the point that we have come so far in our knowledge of the mind and soul that there isn’t much we can get out of old text anymore. The writers of the Great Books did not have our technical advantages, true, but in spite of this they managed to make things  so influential with so little. Even 100 years from now many things we know and take for granted will be considered irrelevant, but these thinkers will still be relevant because of the weight their ideas have had on human history. This is what permits worthwhile study.

My first thoughts and experiences at Shimer have been centered on the question of why the Great Books have this continually potent freshness, and why it feels necessary to study them. I realized that it seems one can’t dig deep into this question anywhere else.

The Last Supper at Magdalen College

 

Especially for those of you taking "Humanities 1" this semester, let me offer a few photos I took recently of the Last Supper. As you may have already guessed, I haven't made a quick trip to Milan, and this isn't Leonardo Da Vinci's work. It's a copy, on canvas, (probably) by Giampietrino, a "shadowy" contemporary of the master's who seems to have made something of a career doing knock-offs of his work. The painting was almost certainly done in the presence of the original, though probably not under Leonardo's supervision. It's moved a number of times in the last 400 years, first around Italy and thence in 1790 to London, where it finally came into the hands of the British Royal Academy. During World War Two it was rolled up for safe keeping and stayed that way for decades in the Royal Academy's basement. At long last the Academicians went looking for a place where they could show it to best effect, i.e. up high where the perspective wouldn't be distorted, rather than simply sitting at eye level as it had for the century or so that Academy students had been set to copy it. And so it came at last in 1993 to the antechapel in Magdalen (pronounced 'maudlin,' or just 'maggie') College, Oxford (which space is also roughly contemporary to the painting, as it happens). 

 

That's where I saw it a couple of weeks ago on the one day a year that Oxford opens its doors wide to the public and we all troop through seeing sights that are otherwise difficult of access. As you can see from the photos, while it sits suitably high on the wall as intended, this makes the painting hard to examine in much detail. I had to scramble around a bit just to get these shots without the antechapel's north pillar (or "pier" in the technical lingo) in the way. So, my apologies to those who want a good close look.**

Then again, you might be consoled to know that Lord Piers Rodgers, Secretary of the Royal Academy (and no relation to the pillar) admitted (on the occasion of its formal installation at Magdalen) that another reason for hanging it up so high was to keep viewers from being confronted by what he politely called the "rather overemphatic handling of some of the figures." In fact, when the painting was unrolled for the first time right after the war, pre-eminent British art historian (and former Magdalen College Fellow) Sir Kenneth Clark pronounced it an "ugly thing" and had it rolled back up. And those of you who are reading (or have read) Leo Steinberg's book on the Last Supper know what a hard time he gives most copyists (though I admit I can't remember what he says of this one specifically).

Yet as much as Steinberg also demonstrates that Il Cenacolo was painted to be seen (felt?) within the confines of the Santa Maria delle Grazie, I was happy enough with my distant brush with it at Magdalen. In fact, I am thinking about arming myself with a proper tripod for my camera and going back in to get some more detailed shots (a challenge in the chapel's low light). Till then, I hope you'll not look too askance on my own modest copies of a copy.  

** I point the adventurous to a nifty "virtual" tour of all of Magdalen College, including the antechapel, at this website:

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/magdalencollege/

If you click on the circle at the far left of the Chapel on the map (the biggest dark-blue bit down at the lower right hand corner above the "High Street") you will be able to get a 360-degree view of the entire room, including the painting (though with the pier in the way, I'm afraid). Here's a view of Magdalen from "the High" just to give you a sense of the place: