On Monday, October 14 at 5 pm Eastern Time, we will have a Casual Conversation with Thomas H. Luxon, Dartmouth Professor of English, Emeritus and Cheheyl Professor and Inaugural Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL). His faculty listing may be found here: https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/thomas-h-luxon . His faculty entry links to his downloadable cv.
This Casual Conversation should have particular resonance for us. Professor Luxon teaches John Milton and William Shakespeare, and many of us were faced with challenging works by these authors in the very first term of our attendance at the College: Paradise Lost and King Lear. (Moby Dick rounded off the reading list for those first ten weeks.) Indeed, Professor Luxon has a primary focus on scholarship in Paradise Lost, and you can watch and listen to one of his eight Milton MiniLectures (or more than one) at:
https://dartmouth.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%2235ce9149-f77e-4467-ae92-acad0124c40f%22 .
The last of the Milton MiniLectures is just under 13 minutes long and is titled BibleStory:MiltonStory:
https://dartmouth.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ddd20206-66c4-4507-9f05-ac8d0106004e .
He is clear, and his discussion is a compelling example of teaching humanities in the liberal arts tradition. He allows us to explore Milton with him as a gentle guide.
The most important reason to spend time with Professor Luxon is not to delve into Paradise Lost or catch up on what we should have been doing nearly 60 years ago in our Freshman English Seminar. Rather it is to consider why the humanities are important and the value of a liberal arts education, especially in this time of intense focus on the sciences part of the arts & sciences. And in this consideration Professor Luxon comes with a unique credential. In 2017, Dartmouth College Press published a book titled What Are the Arts and Sciences [a guide for the curious], edited by Dan Rockmore. The book has 28 short chapters, each of which describes a different discipline. As Rockmore writes in his Preface:
This book is in some sense also a brief introduction to the subjects of today’s liberal arts by members of a faculty at a liberal arts college. The liberal arts ethos is built on a curiosity of the world at large and a belief in the importance and necessity of inspiring and fostering that broad-based curiosity. The kinds of flexible minds and critical thinking engendered by such an education have perhaps never been more in need than they are today.
Professor Luxon was chosen to write the chapter “What Is English?” He writes toward the end of his essay that the “primary task” of English scholars is “of explaining how the language is used artistically and imaginatively to delight, instruct, and move readers’ hearts and minds.” He continues:
Most important, though, English students study the limitless ways we human beings use language, sound and sense, to produce meaning. . . . [T]he kinds of questions we are asking are questions that are asked of literature created at all times. Poets and scholars concern themselves with the same big questions philosophers and scientists ask—Where did we human beings come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? What makes life worth living? How do we make meaning?
The Casual Conversation series is intended to bring classmates together, at least online, but also to foster in each of us the curiosity that will assist us in pursuing answers to those same questions. Perhaps we found the liberal arts fostered personal inquiries about meaning back when we attended college, or even later on. But whatever we have done in the past, we need not at this stage in our lives give up on employing all the tools at our disposal, including especially the study of literature in all its myriad forms and expression to seek to understand our place in the universe and on this Earth.
Finally, note that in 2010 Professor Luxon “received the President's Good Steward Award from the Campus Compact for New Hampshire. . ... The award honors a faculty, administration, or staff member who has contributed his or her professional expertise in service to the wider community and who has significantly advanced public service on their campus. Luxon’s citation noted in particular DCAL’s collaborations with the Tucker Foundation to offer seminars on community-based learning.” https://dcal.dartmouth.edu/node/1426 .
Join Professor Luxon to explore the study of English literature then (55 years ago) and now, with a man whose career has been devoted to bringing the joys and rigors of that study to generations of Dartmouth students.
Please let me know if you wish to attend by emailing me by the close of business Friday, October 11 at arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
Arthur Fergenson