I’ve been subscribed to John since last January when the project officially started and as someone who is a mere babe in the woods of literature the Invisible College has completely changed my life.
Not only do I feel that I can engage with the foundational works of the Canon on their own terms, but I feel now more than ever how alive these books are. Without a single test, essay, or homework. Not only that, but the replay value for each episode so high. I’ve listened the Ulysses series probably about 5 times over now, each time revealing something new and profound.
I confess I’m quite Evangelical about the invisible college to any of my literary minded and non literary minded friends alike. Highly, highly, recommend.
I’ve been laughed out of administrators offices for making similar arguments. Nevertheless I think these are great points. It may go without saying, but let’s also create these alternate universities without sports attached to it. The toxicity of American college athletics renders it antithetical to education.
It seems to me that this outfit provides a working paradigm for a new kind of university in the now Quantum Age wherein everyone and everything is instantaneously inter-connected.
With rare exception all conventional "universities" are dominated by and thus promote exclusively left-brained thinking as per the situation described by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
This scholar attempts to introduce and promote more open-ended ways of understanding and being.
He is easily the most interesting scholar in the field of religious studies. Understanding religion in all of its forms is the essential project in this time and place.
I'll admit that this vision of the future made me sad. Can't we do better for education than a sea of free-floating YouTube excerpts and snippets?
The primary problem with Substack as it currently exists is that quality material lives alongside absolute drek, such as Top 10 lists of "best" authors. Even the friendly read-along genre is quite a different thing from rigorous study.
Perhaps I'm resisting this brave new future, but I believe that education requires discipline, and that the most meaningful learning requires a teacher and a student. Those two can exchange roles or overlap, as Paolo Freire imagined, and certainly a teacher is never purely a "master" in the older sense. Even so, credentials matter. And without demonstrating knowledge, as one typically does in a university setting by sitting for exams or writing a thesis, it's hard to say what is actually being learned.
In all this I find myself a man without a country. I have no truck with the Christopher Rufos who are nostalgic for a Great Books era. But decentering authority to the point where there are no credentials and therefore really no expertise seems an unnecessary lurch to the other extreme. Just because the current institutions are crumbling does not mean they cannot be rebuilt more durably.
What the future holds for universities, and humanities in particular, I cannot begin to guess. I suspect it will roll on rusty and clanging for some time until the music suddenly stops and everybody just sort of looks around, maybe for permission, before wandering off the dance floor.
If it means that more smart teachers of literature, like John, create their own Invisible Colleges I'm all for it. John Pistelli's Invisible College is a treasure! His courses teem with knowledge, insight, provocation, humor, and most important--joy. As a first time Ulysses reader, John's courses helped me understand and actually enjoy a book I was previously force-marching through. His courses on Moby Dick, a book I know well, brought new depths of analysis and connections which made that beautiful mess of a book all the more pleasurable.
What John has done seems like a natural and healthy way forward. His lectures carry a weight of responsibility--one senses he's putting his ideas out there for competition and thus he takes the work seriously, and at the same time I sense a level of freedom in his approach that may flow from his knowing this is all his own creation. He's clearly having fun which makes the courses all the more infectious for the listener. Good for you, John! I hope other great readers and writers follow your lead.
Confused about this: "As Lyotard, Eagleton, and Miller all imply, a properly postmodern literary curriculum will first deconstruct all extant metanarratives and then erect the new one of respect for difference"
I understand you're saying that the new metanarrative of "respect for difference" is implied in the other works, but are you also saying, as you seem to be, that the ONLY "purpose" of the postmodern university is to enforce or enact this claimed metanarrative? This sounds an awful lot like you are arguing that in the present day the only use to which universities put themselves is some vagary about "respect" for "difference" which in turn sounds an awful lot like a complaint about wokeness being the problem.
I’ve been subscribed to John since last January when the project officially started and as someone who is a mere babe in the woods of literature the Invisible College has completely changed my life.
Not only do I feel that I can engage with the foundational works of the Canon on their own terms, but I feel now more than ever how alive these books are. Without a single test, essay, or homework. Not only that, but the replay value for each episode so high. I’ve listened the Ulysses series probably about 5 times over now, each time revealing something new and profound.
I confess I’m quite Evangelical about the invisible college to any of my literary minded and non literary minded friends alike. Highly, highly, recommend.
Thank you!
From the first word of this, I loved it. Then you dropped a Matthew Arnold slogan and I fell into euphoria. Could not agree more with this. Amazing.
😮 wow…persuasive and succinct. good 🖋️ writing.
I’ve been laughed out of administrators offices for making similar arguments. Nevertheless I think these are great points. It may go without saying, but let’s also create these alternate universities without sports attached to it. The toxicity of American college athletics renders it antithetical to education.
It seems to me that this outfit provides a working paradigm for a new kind of university in the now Quantum Age wherein everyone and everything is instantaneously inter-connected.
http://newearth.university/about-ne-university
With rare exception all conventional "universities" are dominated by and thus promote exclusively left-brained thinking as per the situation described by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
This scholar attempts to introduce and promote more open-ended ways of understanding and being.
He is easily the most interesting scholar in the field of religious studies. Understanding religion in all of its forms is the essential project in this time and place.
http://jeffreyjkripal.com
Love the return of the transcendentals.
Woolf sounds like she’s anticipating Buckminster Fuller’s postwar “round” house, which was constructed of aluminum, plexiglass and plywood:
https://books.google.com/books?id=kiEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA74#v=onepage
I'll admit that this vision of the future made me sad. Can't we do better for education than a sea of free-floating YouTube excerpts and snippets?
The primary problem with Substack as it currently exists is that quality material lives alongside absolute drek, such as Top 10 lists of "best" authors. Even the friendly read-along genre is quite a different thing from rigorous study.
Perhaps I'm resisting this brave new future, but I believe that education requires discipline, and that the most meaningful learning requires a teacher and a student. Those two can exchange roles or overlap, as Paolo Freire imagined, and certainly a teacher is never purely a "master" in the older sense. Even so, credentials matter. And without demonstrating knowledge, as one typically does in a university setting by sitting for exams or writing a thesis, it's hard to say what is actually being learned.
In all this I find myself a man without a country. I have no truck with the Christopher Rufos who are nostalgic for a Great Books era. But decentering authority to the point where there are no credentials and therefore really no expertise seems an unnecessary lurch to the other extreme. Just because the current institutions are crumbling does not mean they cannot be rebuilt more durably.
What the future holds for universities, and humanities in particular, I cannot begin to guess. I suspect it will roll on rusty and clanging for some time until the music suddenly stops and everybody just sort of looks around, maybe for permission, before wandering off the dance floor.
If it means that more smart teachers of literature, like John, create their own Invisible Colleges I'm all for it. John Pistelli's Invisible College is a treasure! His courses teem with knowledge, insight, provocation, humor, and most important--joy. As a first time Ulysses reader, John's courses helped me understand and actually enjoy a book I was previously force-marching through. His courses on Moby Dick, a book I know well, brought new depths of analysis and connections which made that beautiful mess of a book all the more pleasurable.
What John has done seems like a natural and healthy way forward. His lectures carry a weight of responsibility--one senses he's putting his ideas out there for competition and thus he takes the work seriously, and at the same time I sense a level of freedom in his approach that may flow from his knowing this is all his own creation. He's clearly having fun which makes the courses all the more infectious for the listener. Good for you, John! I hope other great readers and writers follow your lead.
Thank you!
Confused about this: "As Lyotard, Eagleton, and Miller all imply, a properly postmodern literary curriculum will first deconstruct all extant metanarratives and then erect the new one of respect for difference"
I understand you're saying that the new metanarrative of "respect for difference" is implied in the other works, but are you also saying, as you seem to be, that the ONLY "purpose" of the postmodern university is to enforce or enact this claimed metanarrative? This sounds an awful lot like you are arguing that in the present day the only use to which universities put themselves is some vagary about "respect" for "difference" which in turn sounds an awful lot like a complaint about wokeness being the problem.