Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Timely
Instructor(s): Barbara Black, English
Time is deeply significant to us. As a concept, it shapes our lives—into days, nights, seasons, semesters, childhood, adulthood. Our daily existence buzzes with phone reminders and Google calendar alerts; many of us lovingly labor over meticulously color-coded day-timers. We are constantly experiencing time, but what is it? How can we understand it, and why do we need it? There is counted time and felt time. And there is much more: memory (remembered time), cataclysmic time (apocalypse or ecological disaster), historical time and heritage, clock time (work and productivity), not enough time, accelerated time, aging and the passing of time, nostalgia, haunting, deep geological time, trauma (forgotten time), the rhythms of music and poetry and dance, daily routine, found time, the “non-time” of Covid. A phenomenon of human consciousness, time is something we tend to divide into the past, present, and future—these enormously complex categories will provide our course with its overarching structure as we explore why writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers are drawn to time and its purposes.
Course Offered: