Dear Friends of Take Five,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the reading lineup for Take Five 2024. This year’s theme is “Higher” Education. The scare quotes are all too intentional. Higher education, in its traditional sense, has been in the news lately, as colleges and universities have come under fire for all sorts of missteps, whether real or imagined. Amid skyrocketing tuition costs and controversies surrounding diversity initiatives, campus speaker cancellations, and accusations of political indoctrination, higher education as an abstract concept and as a concrete post-high school experience is ripe for reflection and reconsideration.
The five books listed below ask what it means to be educated at a higher level, whether in a formal academic setting or in other venues far from quads and ivy-covered buildings. I hope you’ll join us Tuesday nights at 6 PM in the Chattanooga Room of the University Center on the following dates starting January 23:
January 23: Dr. Aaron Shaheen presents Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men*
February 13: Dr. Verbie Prevost presents Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
February 27: Dr. David Pleins presents Emma Smith’s Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers
March 19: Dr. Victoria Bryan presents R.F. Kuang’s Babel, or the Necessity of Violence
April 9: Dr. Bryan Hampton presents Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members
All the books are available through online retailers and at the UTC Bookstore in the University Center (423-425-4107)
Each session will offer a light dinner. No RSVP necessary. Parking in most UTC lots is free after 5 PM.
Direct questions to Aaron Shaheen at Aaron-Shaheen@utc.edu
Take Five is sponsored by the George C. Connor Professorship of American Literature and the UTC English department
* Two editions of All the King‘s Men are currently in print. I will be using the original 1946 version (with an introduction by Joseph Blotner), which is available through this ISBN: 978-0156004800.
Aaron Shaheen
George C. Connor Professor of American Literature, Department of English