2011 Scholar's Choice Series
A Series of Lectures and Discussions Exploring Literary Classics and Popular Works
January - February 2011

Location
Clearwater Main Library

Scholar's Choice is a series of lectures and discussions exploring literary classics and popular works. This special program brings scholars to the community of Clearwater to share an understanding and appreciation of literature. The Clearwater Public Library System is pleased to sponsor this program.

A series of three lectures and follow-up discussions will be led by scholars from the University of South Florida. Each scholar will first offer a lecture designed to inform and prepare an understanding of the text. After the lecture a follow-up discussion will be held. Limited books and materials are available. Participants may choose to attend any individual lecture or all of the lectures.

For further information, please call (727) 562-4970, extension 5284 and speak with Jan Nickols.

All libraries are wheelchair accessible. If you require special assistance at any of the library’s programs or events, please call 562-4970 ext. 5284 one week in advance so reasonable accommodations can be made to assist you.

Click here for a printable flier (pdf).

Discussion Times and Subjects

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 2 p.m.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are mearly varied intensities of cold and dampness. Survivors roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain in the woods.

Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern cast along carefully chosen back roads. Through encounters with other survivors, desperate or pathetic, the father and son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their survivalist savvy, and most of all by their love for each other.

They seek the most rudimentary sort of salvation. However, in The Road, such redemption as might be permitted by their circumstances depends on the boy's ability to sustain his own instincts for compassion and empathy in opposition to his father's insistence upon their mutual self-interest and survival at all physical and moral costs.

The Road was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

Lecturer
Dr. Phillip Sipiora, Professor of English at the University of South Florida.  His areas of specialization include Literary Theory, Twentieth Century literature, and Film Studies.  He is a recipient, twice, of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.  He is also a founding member of the Norman Mailer Society and is editor of The Mailer Review. Last year, Dr. Sipiora received the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher award from the University of South Florida.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - 2 p.m.
Lord Byron: The Major Works

For this lecture please read "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan."

Dr. Harmon analyzes the perspective toward war revelaed in the poetry of one of Britain's most renowed romantic poets and rebels, Georgel Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, an extraordinarly complex man of many contradictions, demonstrating in his writings a pattern of both inconsistencies and firm convictions over a wide range of topics, but none more dramatic than his attitude toward war - that systematic despoiler of whole societies and nations - and toward those involved in its devistation. Harmon posits that throughout his life, Byron made a sharp distinction between battles for freedom, in which people were fighting against tyranny and for the preservation of their own rights, and wars of conquest, in which soldiers and innocent citizens alike were pawns sacrificed for the whims and ambitions of their rulers and the glory of privileged leaders, a dichotomous attitude that Harmon finds pervading all of Byron's poetry, particularly in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan."

Lecturer
Dr. Maryhelen Harmon retired as Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida, where she had been teaching since 1964.  She was named “USF Distinguished Teacher of the Year,” and received four other awards as an Outstanding Professor.  A past president of the Popular Culture Association, she was also past president of the Florida College English Association.  Her degrees are from the University of Alabama, the University of Florida, and her Ph.D. is from Florida State University.  She has also studied at Wesleyan College, Oxford University, and the University of Edinborough.  She has been a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) and also at the University Center in Florence, Italy.  This is Dr. Harmon 22nd presentation in our series.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - 2 p.m.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), was first published in 1860. The novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the River Floss near the village of St. Ogg's in England, probably in the 1820s. Both the river and the village are fictional. The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years, from Tom's and Maggie's childhood up until their deaths. The book is fictional autobiography.

Maggie Tulliver holds the central role in the book, as both her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem, an intellectual friend, and with Stephen Guest, an assumed fiancé of Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane. They constitute the most significant narrative threads.

Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Their relationship is colored by Maggie's desire to recapture the unconditional love her father provides before his death. Tom's pragmatic and reserved nature clashes with Maggie's idealism and fervor for intellectual gains and exeperience. Various family crises, including bankruptcy, Mr. Tulliver's rancorous relationship with Philip Wakem's father, which results in the loss of the mill, and Mr. Tulliver's untimely death, serve both the intensify Tom's and Maggie's difference and to highlight their love for each other.

Lecturer
Dr. Nancy Jane Tyson, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida.  Her specializations include Romantic and Victorian Literature, and Research Methods for English Studies.  Dr. Tyson has published articles on Charles Dickens, William Morris and Oscar Wilde.  She received the Teaching Incentive Award in 1994-95, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1996.  She is a United Faculty of Florida state Senator and NEA national Delegate, and served as USF Faculty Senate President in 2000-2001.  She was a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the first revision of the revered standard DNB since its publication in 1885-1900. Dr. Tyson retired from the University of South Florida in 2010, and we are delighted she continues to lecture with our Scholar's Choice series.