A large square room of dark, exotic wood bookcases and bright natural light create a welcoming environment for reflection and research. Several low inviting chairs encircle a squat table brimming with coffee, tea, croissants, baguettes, Nutella and confiture to feed your stomach as you satiate your hunger for words. Toward the windows at the end of the room are several long tables with open books strewn about: someone clearly is in the middle of researching his passions. To the right of these are several computer stations with windows into Cyberspace (there are no PCs here: only Macs--this is typically not a place that attracts business geeks). And of course, hundreds of thousands of books line every square centimeter of shelf space in the room. You notice one bookcase with a small brass sign indicating its cache If words are indeed deeds, then there are a few seminal acts with which you should be acquainted. THEORY, CRITICISM AND PHILOSOPHY: *Culture/Power/History--A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory,* Dirks, Eley and Ortner, editors; *Social Theory-The Multicultural and Classic Readings*, Edited by Charles Lemert; *Race, Class and Gender--An Anthology, Second Edition*, Edited by Margaret Anderson and Patricia Collins; *Literary Theory* and *The Ideology of theAesthetic,* by Terry Eagleton; *Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings,* *The Condition of Postmodernity,* by David Harvey; *The Poetics of Reverie* and *The Poetics Of Space* by Gaston Bachelard; *Postmodernism: or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,* by Frederic Jameson; *The Empire Writes Back--Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures,* Edited by Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin; *All That Is Solid Melts Into Air,* by Marshall Berman; *The Production Of Desire,* by Richard Lichtman, and of course Plato's *Republic*. LITERATURE Anything by Milan Kundera; *White Noise* and *Mao II* by Don DeLillo; *The Sportswriter* and *Independence Day* by Richard Ford; *Tropic of Cancer* and *Tropic of Capricorn* by Henry Miller; *One Hundred Years of Solitude,. *Autumn of the Patriarch* and *Love In The Time Of Cholera* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; *Hopscotch* by Julio Cortazar; *Maru* by Bessie Head; *The Bride Price* by Buchi Emecheta, POETRY: any and all work by Robert Hass; *The Selected Works of Rainier Maria Rilke,* translated by Stephen Mitchell; *The Wasteland* by T.S. Elliot. PLAYS: *Waiting For Godot* by Samuel Beckett and *Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead* by Tom Stoppard. This is of course a VERY SMALL and INCOMPLETE list, but offers a wide variety of styles and perspectives in the world of words and ideas. Find a book, have a seat and remove your shoes--open your mind...
New Humanistic Traditions is here.
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