[Editor’s note: We are thrilled to welcome Wendy O’Brien to Toronto Pursuits. Wendy is a philosopher and teacher whose wide-ranging interests have brought lively guided walks and museum visits to previous Toronto Pursuits programs. In 2019 she will lead a seminar on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It’s a […]
Toronto Pursuits
Is Music a Universal Language?
Among the recent events marking the centenary of the end of World War I, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a passionate speech at the base of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris warning against the current rise of nationalism in the world. Speaking in French, Macron likened this trend to […]
Why Middlemarch Can Change Your Life
[Editor’s note: Longtime Toronto Pursuits leader Nancy Carr returns in 2019 with a seminar on the unforgettable Middlemarch. The seminar is already half full; register today!] Middlemarch is the one book I’m willing to tell people they should read. I recommend many books, and advocate strongly for a few. But […]
The Quiet War: Virginia Woolf, Claudia Rankine, and the Fine Line between Resistance and Resignation
[Editor’s note: We at Classical Pursuits are excited to welcome back John Riley to Toronto in July 2018. In 2017, John led a seminar on the nature of knowledge. His upcoming seminar, Listening to the Voices of Resistance, has its roots in John’s experience of growing up in the American South […]
What Price Power? Why Trollope Matters Today
[Editor’s note: We give a warm welcome back to longtime Toronto Pursuits leader Nancy Carr. Nancy’s seminar Through the lens of the under-appreciated Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, participants in Nancy’s seminar will ask a timeless question: How far are we willing to go to obtain power?] As I ride the […]
Destiny, Realpolitik, and the Will to Power
[Editor’s note: Betty Ann Jordan is the founder of Art InSite cultural tours and a Toronto-based arts commentator. She operates whenever possible at the intersection between art, architecture and literature. We are thrilled to have her the leader of Memoirs of Hadrian: Power Embodied in July 2018.] In our politically […]
Learning to See: Invisible Man and the Power of Imagination
Each time I plunge back into this book, I feel the battering that Invisible Man endures when he is thrust into the “battle royal.” Our unnamed narrator, thinking he has arrived at a meeting of his town’s white business and civic leaders to receive a prestigious scholarship, is thrown into […]
Strange Eyes for Strange Landscapes
[Editor’s note: We are thrilled to welcome Mandy Burton as a Toronto Pursuits leader. Her imaginative, multi-genre seminar will take us into realms both ancient and futuristic, where a cast of non-human characters helps us consider with piercing clarity those questions we as humans yearn so deeply to answer: Who […]
Room for Greatness: A Week of Women and the Arts
[Editor’s note: Veteran Toronto Pursuits leader and arts writer Betty Ann Jordan is eager to take on the issue of women’s under-representation in the arts with participants, and keen to highlight the possibilities for change. We hope you will join her for this eye-opening week of women and the arts.] […]
What Price Certainty? Four Great Playwrights on Doubt
[Editor’s note: Only a few places remain in longtime Toronto Pursuits leader Gary Schoepfel’s seminar Benefit of the Doubt. If you’ve never taken part in a discussion led by Gary, you are in for a rare treat. His questions open up new ways for participants to examine their beliefs about […]