Hal Holladay speaks on Shakespeare's Hamlet
GREAT BARRINGTON – The Simon’s Rock Seminar Lecture Series resumes on Monday, February 4, when Faculty in Literature Hal Holladay gives a lecture titled “Pernicious Paternity: Fathers and Children in Hamlet.” The lecture will take place in the McConnell Theater at 7 p.m., and will be free and open to the public.Dr. Holladay is a Renaissance scholar with a particular interest in Shakespeare. His interests also include classical Greek literature, medieval studies, postcolonial fiction, modern British fiction and poetry, Southern fiction, and Buddhist thought. In addition to his work on Shakespeare, Dr. Holladay has published articles on the fiction of Ernest Hemingway, William Goyen, Peter Matthiessen, Margaret Atwood, William Gay, and others, as well as essays on such diverse figures as Thomas à Becket, Nelson Mandela, and Stephen Hawking. Dr. Holladay has served as the scholar in residence for Shakespeare & Company's Institute on Teaching Shakespeare and in a variety of positions at Simon's Rock, including coach of the men's and women's basketball teams, dean of students, and admissions counselor. In the spring of 2005 he was appointed as the first Emily H. Fisher Faculty Fellow.
The Seminar Lecture Series
The Seminar Lecture Series at Simon’s Rock supplements courses that first and second year students are required to take, “First Year Seminar: The Examined Life,” and the “Sophomore Seminar: Voices Against the Chorus.
“First Year Seminar: The Examined Life” is a two-semester course that focuses on themes of self-discovery, the relationship of the individual and society, and the nature of values and responsibility. Readings for the course include Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle, Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and a wide variety of supplementary works.
“Sophomore Seminar: Voices Against the Chorus” is a one-semester course that explores how 19th- and 20th-century thinkers confronted the accepted order of things, how they challenged accepted ideas, and how they constructed radically different conceptions of the world. Readings include Darwin’s The Descent of Man, Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Forster’s A Passage to India, DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Kafka’s The Trial.
