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READING LIST
INDV 150-01 Oz, the Great and Powerful. Wicked by Gregory
Maguire and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Jack Holcomb. Mondays: February 11 – April 14 5 – 7 pm. Ryle
Hall Private Dining Room. Schedule Number: 2909
We often shrug off fairy stories as trivia suitable only for the very young, but L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz exerts a powerful and persistent influence in American culture. Over the past century, this first widely successful American fairy story has spawned a multitude of incarnations, reincarnations, revisions and rethinkings, including Gregory Maguire’s recent hit Wicked. In this section of Dinner and a Book we read and discuss these two books and explore the enormous range of pop cultural phenomena that have grown up around them (including books, films, musicals, television series, comics, Gonzo the Great as the tin woodsman, and the whole Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Rainbow thing). Finally, we all get into the act by producing and sharing our own short (3-5 page) Oz-inspired creative/critical projects.
INDV
150-02 Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera.
Wynona Murphy. Tuesdays: February 12 – April 15, 5 – 7 pm. Missouri Hall Multipurpose Room. Schedule Number: 2910
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera is a memorable book about Mexican surrealist artist, Frida Kahlo, who was one of the most significant artistic personalities of the 20th century. With stark honesty, Frida expressed her internal feelings and thoughts through her paintings. We explore Frida’s turbulent life, the horrific teenage accident that was the catalyst for her becoming a painter, her stormy and passionate marriage to Diego Rivera (the Mexican muralist), her politics, her battle with health, her affairs with both men and women, and her ultimate triumph over
INDV 150-03 Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe
by Steven H. Strogatz.
Philip Ryan. Wednesdays: February 13 – April 9, 5:30 – 7:30 pm.
Centennial Hall Private Dining Room. Schedule Number: 2911
This book is an introduction to the science of synchrony, which brings mathematics, physics and biology to bear on the mystery of how spontaneous order occurs at every level of the cosmos, from the nucleus on up. Examples include the mysterious synchrony achieved by fireflies that flash in unison by the thousands, and the question of what makes our own body clocks synchronize with night and day and even with one another. It also explores synchrony in small-world networks as exemplified by the parlor game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" and in human behavior involving fads, mobs and the herd mentality of stock traders. There is ample illustration of how the laws of mathematics underlie the universe's uncanny capacity for spontaneous order.
INDV
150-04 Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson.
Marty Eisenberg. Thursdays: February 14 – April 17, 5:30 – 7:30 pm. Centennial Hall Private Dining Room. Schedule Number: 2912
Tyson’s memoir starts, “’Daddy and Roger and ‘em shot ‘em a nigger.’ That’s what Gerald Teel said to me in my family’s driveway in Oxford, North Carolina, on May 12, 1970. We were both ten years old.” Interweaving memoir with nuanced historical analysis, Tyson explores the struggle for civil rights in one North Carolina community in the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 had presumably ended racial segregation. Tyson specifically asks us to consider the role of violence in the struggle and how we view the struggle from the perspective of the twenty-first century.