Context: Lecturing

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Peerhood

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Generative questions

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• Generative question. . . .

Key points

• On StudyPlace, a lecture is a text, to be read or heard, giving a clear, economical exposition of common knowledge about an explicit topic.
• An informed public, that is a public formed from within, needs more than pre-digested news and lots of entertainment.
• Cultivating through careful listening the will to sustain attention has much to do with what educates.

Scope and norms

• Donald A. Bligh. What's the Use of Lectures? (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). A good handbook on how and why to use lectures as an effective mode of instruction
• Carl Bode. The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, [1956] 1968). A good history of the lyceum movement in antebellum America, casting much light on how public lecturing affected the public sphere.
• Andrew C. Rieser. The Chautauqua Moment: Protestants, Progressives, and the Culture of Modern Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). A valuable book, especially at a time when religiosity seems implacably hostile to liberalism. "The Chautauqua ideal still holds undeniable appeal as an antidote to the coarsening of public culture in a consumer society. Its charming aesthetic continues to inspire visions of improved urban and suburban spaces. Its faith in religious tolerance, self-culture, informed citizenship, and the free exchange of ideas has not lost its salience. These are noble ideas, too important to take for granted. Indeed, while the original Chautauqua in New York enjoyed a renaissance at the end of the twentieth century, some wondered if prosperity had blinded the community to its original mission. . . . Was this a crisis to be solved by Chautauqua's democratic tradition? Or was this a sign that democracy itself had failed? What follows is a historical exploration of one genuine, but flawed, effort to embody the liberal tradition in the United States." (pp. 13-4)

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