CLS 118 — Where Mind Meets Matter: The Spirit of Planet Earth
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Robert Harrison, Alexa (Ali) Hazel
Date(s): Jan 21—Mar 11
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Tuesdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $465
Refund Deadline: Jan 23
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Winter
Day: Tuesdays
Duration: 8 weeks
Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jan 21—Mar 11
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $465
Refund Deadline: Jan 23
Instructor(s): Robert Harrison, Alexa (Ali) Hazel
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
If we understand spirit as a highly rarefied form of matter that acts as the animating force of living things, we could say that the surface of our planet is inspirited.
In this course, we will discuss the spirit of wind, sky, and rivers and the afterlife of the dead. We will revisit the first photos of Earth taken by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope’s more recent images of deep space. With physicist Erwin Schrödinger, we will probe the enigma of appearance. With poets like Giacomo Leopardi, Arthur Rimbaud, Wallace Stevens, and others, we will enter the mysterium of mind’s contact with matter, where things become visible, audible, and tactile. With the help of Virginia Woolf and the Pre-Raphaelites, we will interrogate the nature of spirit and sense perception. We will also examine various “tellurian symbols”—terrestrial phenomena with a distinctive symbolic charge.
In this course, we will discuss the spirit of wind, sky, and rivers and the afterlife of the dead. We will revisit the first photos of Earth taken by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope’s more recent images of deep space. With physicist Erwin Schrödinger, we will probe the enigma of appearance. With poets like Giacomo Leopardi, Arthur Rimbaud, Wallace Stevens, and others, we will enter the mysterium of mind’s contact with matter, where things become visible, audible, and tactile. With the help of Virginia Woolf and the Pre-Raphaelites, we will interrogate the nature of spirit and sense perception. We will also examine various “tellurian symbols”—terrestrial phenomena with a distinctive symbolic charge.
ROBERT HARRISON
Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature, Emeritus, Stanford
Robert Harrison is the host of Entitled Opinions (KZSU Radio) and director of Another Look book club at Stanford. He is the author of six scholarly books: Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age, The Body of Beatrice, which deals with Dante’s La Vita Nuova; Forests: The Shadow of Civilization; Rome, la pluie (in French); The Dominion of the Dead; and Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. Harrison is also the former chair of the Stanford Department of French and Italian. ALEXA (ALI) HAZEL
Writer and Graduate Student in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford
Alexa (Ali) Hazel is a writer and PhD student in philosophy at Stanford. She studied at the University of Virginia and Exeter College, the University of Oxford, and has published essays on the future of humanity, Simone Weil, James Turrell, virtual reality, and plantation landscapes of the American South. Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, Public Books, Wasafiri, and The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literature Inquiry. She's taught or assisted with courses on practical utopias; philosophy and literature; mind, matter, and meaning; ancient Greek philosophy; and phenomenology. Textbooks for this course:
There are no required textbooks; however, some fee-based online readings may be assigned.