Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock

Since 2021, the Center has offered an annual summer course for the Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock. Inspired by current public debates, the course brings together scholars from different humanities disciplines. Together, the presentations demonstrate how depth of knowledge can enlighten conversations. In summer 2021, presenters addressed “Legacies of Violence,” which analyzed the aftereffects of violence in national contexts, including the history of violence against Native Americans and the legacy of American police brutality. The class included a discussion of tyranny in classical Athens, and concluded by reﬂecting on changing views on the Bolshevik Revolution.

In summer 2022, the humanities course addressed questions of “Knowing and Believing.” Humanities faculty members discussed linguistic perspectives of lying,
the story of the Garden of Eden as knowledge distinguishing humans from animals, a philosophical approach to the distinction between science and pseudoscience, a survey of the ways everyday uses of data and algorithms can both help and harm, a literary studies perspective on 19th-century cholera epidemics, and an account of how Enlightenment thinkers grappled with the challenge of philosophical skepticism.

“War and the Humanities” guided the presentations in summer 2023, situating war in relation to photography, children’s literature, museum, monuments, ﬁlm, and women. Over the years, faculty members from Anthropology, Classics, History, English, Religion, Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Political Science, and Women’s Studies have shared their scholarship with the participants in the Institute for Learning in Retirement.

“In the summer of 2022, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere organized for the Institute for Learning in Retirement an interdisciplinary course entitled ‘Knowing and Believing.’ Six professors addressed issues such as lying, good and evil in the Genesis, pseudoscience, data and algorithms, knowledge of pandemics, and skepticism in the Enlightenment. ILR participants, some of whom were experts in speciﬁc academic ﬁelds, appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the course and were inspired to look at the world in new ways. ‘Knowing and Believing’ was one of ILR’s most popular courses, based on the large number of participants and the high attendance at each session.”

—Rick Gold, Chair, ILR Curriculum Committee