Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Welcome to The Athenaeum

Unique in American higher education, the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum (the “Ath”) is a signature program of Claremont McKenna College. Four nights a week during the school year, the Ath brings scholars, public figures, thought leaders, artists, and innovators to engage with the CMC and Claremont College community. In addition, the Ath also hosts lunch speakers, roundtables, and smaller presentations in its two auxiliary dining rooms.

For decades, the Ath has hosted a spectrum of luminaries with expertise and insight on a wide range of topics, both historical and contemporary. In the Ath’s intimate yet stimulating setting, students, faculty, staff, and other community members gather to hear the speaker, pose questions, and to build community and exchange ideas over a shared meal.

At the core of the Ath is a longstanding commitment to student growth and learning. Central to the Ath are its student fellows, selected annually to host, introduce, and moderate discussion with the featured speaker. Priority is given to students in attendance during the question-and-answer session following every presentation. Moreover, speakers often take extra time to visit a class, meet with student interest groups, or give an interview to the student press and podcast team.

Wed, October 16, 2024
Dinner Program
Michelle Dowd

Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain, preparing for the Apocalypse. Raised on a 16-acre plot in the Angeles National Forest, very close to Claremont, Dowd learned to forage daily for edible plants. Knowledge of the outside world came to her only through a few small, chance encounters with the outside world--things like a hospital stay in Los Angeles, or a hidden Sears catalog. By the time she was 17, she made her escape, enrolling at Pitzer College (from which she graduated in 1990). Dowd's memoir, which has been covered in outlets as diverse as The Washington Post, Shondaland, and The Joe Rogan Experience, recounts her upbringing and the lessons she has learned about surviving in the wilderness, in more ways than one. Join Dowd, now a journalism professor, for an intimate evening as she explores the skill of "foraging," or finding what you need, wherever you are, and how you can learn adaptability, intuition, creativity, joy, and abundance from the earth. When you know how to look, there is more than enough.

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Michelle Dowd is a contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine, Alpinist, The LA Review of Books, LA Parent Mag, and other national publications. She was raised on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest where she learned to navigate by the stars and forage for edible plants. Her memoir, Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult, showcases her life growing up on an isolated mountain in California as part of an apocalyptic cult, and how she found her way out of poverty and illness by drawing on the gifts of the wilderness.
 

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This event is closed.

Thu, October 17, 2024
Dinner Program
Masha Gessen

Autocrats rise in times of high anxiety. They promise to assuage the anxieties in exchange for people handing over their political agency. Contemporary autocrats specifically promise to return people to an imaginary past when life was predictable and felt safe. The only way effectively to counteract a politics of the past is by conjuring an inspiring politics of the future. Kamala Harris's campaign has hinted at such a politics by adopting the slogan "We are not going back," but seemed to stop there. But what could a politics of the future actually look like? Join M. Gessen, one of the most trenchant observers of modern democracy, for a wide-ranging discussion of the past and future of global politics.

(Photo credit: Damon Winter)

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M. Gessen is a journalist and bestselling author who has covered political subjects from Russia, autocracy, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. Gessen's latest book is Surviving Autocracy, a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. As The New York Times Book Review noted in their review, “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” Their understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. Winner of the National Book Award, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy, against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all. Gessen’s other books include the New York Times bestseller, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot. An opinion writer at The New York Times, Gessen is the first Distinguished Professor at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and is a founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive, a digital archive focused on preserving the last two decades of independent Russian journalism. They live in New York City. 

Gessen's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, and the Women and Leadership Alliance at CMC.

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Mon, October 21, 2024
Dinner Program
Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman

Join renowned poets Robert Hass (United States Poet Laureate, 1995-1997) and Brenda Hillman (Winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other awards) as they read their works and share their personal reflections.

Photo credits: Hass photo—Shoey Sindel; Hillman photo: University of Arizona Poetry Center

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Robert Hass is a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and force, whose work is rooted in the landscapes of his native Northern California. In his tenure as United States Poet Laureate, Robert Hass spent two years battling American illiteracy, armed with the mantra, “imagination makes communities.” He crisscrossed the country speaking at Rotary Club meetings, raising money to organize conferences such as “Watershed,” which brought together noted novelists, poets, and storytellers to talk about writing, nature, and community. When he is talking about poetry itself, Hass is both spontaneous and original, offering poetic insights that cannot be found in any textbook.

A prolific poet, Hass’s books of poetry include The Apple Trees at Olema, and Time and Materials, as well as his most recent best selling collection of poetry, Summer Snow: New Poems. Awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, twice the National Book Critics’ Circle Award (in 1984 and 1997), the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1973, and the 2014 Wallace Stevens Award, Robert Hass is a professor of English at UC Berkeley.

(Adapted from The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center’s website.)

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One of contemporary American poetry’s most eclectic and formally innovative writers, Brenda Hillman is known for poems that draw on elements of found texts and document, personal meditation, observation, and literary theory. Often described as “sensuous” and “luminescent,” Hillman’s poetry investigates and pushes at the possibilities of form and voice, while remaining grounded in topics such as geology, the environment, politics, family, and spirituality. In an interview with Sarah Rosenthal, Hillman described her own understanding of form: “It is the artist’s job to make form. Not even to make it, but to allow it. Allow form. And all artists have a different relationship to it, and a different philosophy of it … I think that when you are trying to open up a territory—in this case I was working with a desire to open the lyric—you have to be greedy, in that you want more than you can do. And you’re always bound to fail.” Praising Hillman’s deft handling of form and subject, Marjorie Welish wrote, “Each poem … creates its own experimental configuration, within which the phrase swerves and discombobulates sense, as several registers of subject complicate the sampling of experiences and also as the experimental format throws the lyric into symbolic disarray one moment and naturalist scrutiny the next. And even more: she writes as if the lyric poem had a political calling.”

Born in 1951 in Tucson, Arizona, Hillman earned degrees at Pomona College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The author of over 10 books of poetry, she has received numerous awards for her work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, as well as a Pushcart Prize and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her collection Bright Existence (1993) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Loose Sugar (1997) a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Her most recent poetry collection, In a Few Minutes Before Later, was published in 2022, and her first prose collection, Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality, was just published in September 2024. She co-translated Ashur Etwebi’s Poems from Above the Hill (2011), Jeongrye Choi’s Instances (2011), and Ana Cristina Cesar’s At Your Feet (2018); and edited or coedited several volumes, including The Pocket Emily Dickinson (2009). She is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary's College of California. 

(Adapted from the Poetry Foundation website.)

Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman's reading at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the Literature Department, the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, all at CMC.

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Tue, October 22, 2024
Lunch Program
James Kreines

James Kreines is the Edward S. Gould Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. His research focuses on the history of European philosophy, especially metaphysics. He is the author of Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal (Oxford University Press, 2015) and has published numerous articles on Kant, Hegel, and post-Kantian European philosophy. In 2014, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Philosophie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and in 2019, he served as a Dahlem Guest Fellow at the Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently finishing a short book on Hegel and Spinoza. Kreines also serves on the editorial boards of Hegel Bulletin and Hegel-Studien. He teaches courses in the history of philosophy and is developing new courses exploring the history of Buddhist philosophy and Islamic philosophy.

Professor Kreines' Athenaeum presentation celebrates his installation ceremony as the Edward S. Gould Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College.

TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT, PLEASE GO TO https://events.cmc.edu/e/faculty-installation-of-jim-kreines/ - REGISTRATIONS ARE NOT ACCEPTED ON THE ATHENAEUM WEBSITE 

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To register for this event, please go to https://events.cmc.edu/e/faculty-installation-of-jim-kreines/

Tue, October 22, 2024
Dinner Program
Memo Akten

Memo Akten–a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher, and Assistant Professor of Computational Art at the University of California San Diego–will discuss the conceptual motivations behind some of his recent works and research involving computational technologies, with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning, embodied interaction, and mixed reality. From a practical perspective, this includes explorations in real-time, interactive computational systems for artistic, creative expression; and 'intelligent' systems for human-machine collaborative creativity. From a more conceptual perspective, this involves investigations into how we make sense of the world and project meaning onto noise; and more broadly speaking, the collisions between nature, science, technology, ethics, ritual, tradition and religion; particularly in the context of the current social and political polarizations, moral crises and technological submission.

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Memo Akten is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and researcher creating Speculative Simulations and Data Dramatizations investigating the intricacies of human-machine entanglements. His work explores perception and states of consciousness; the tensions between ecology, technology, science and spirituality; and for more than a decade he’s been working with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and our Collective Consciousness as scraped by the Internet, to reflect on the human condition. He writes code and uses algorithmic / data-driven design and aesthetics to create moving images, sounds, large-scale responsive installations and performances. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London, specializing in artistic and creative applications of Artificial Intelligence, and he is currently Assistant Professor of Computational Art at University of California San Diego (UCSD). Akten has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, his work has been widely exhibited and performed internationally and featured in major publications.

Dr. Akten's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

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Thu, October 24, 2024
Dinner Program
Rajiv Vinnakota, Hiram Chodosh, and Vernon Grigg

Join Institute for Citizens & Scholars President Rajiv Vinnakota, President Hiram Chodosh, and Kravis Lab Executive Director Vernon Grigg in a discussion about current U.S. levels of civic preparedness and leadership and the role that higher education must play in elevating them.

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Rajiv Vinnakota is the seventh president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation). Prior to joining C&S in July 2019, Vinnakota served as the EVP of the Youth & Engagement division at the Aspen Institute. For 18 years, Vinnakota was the co-founder and CEO of The SEED Foundation, the nation’s first network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for underserved children. In addition to being a former trustee and executive committee member for Princeton University, Vinnakota is the former national chair of its annual giving committee. He majored in molecular biology and also earned a certificate of studies from the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs & Public Policy.

A renowned scholar and innovator in higher education and global justice reform and graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law, Hiram Chodosh is president of Claremont McKenna College, a recognized leader in freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue through CMC’s nationally recognized Open Academy. Chodosh has also worked closely with Vinnakota and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars on a large national collaboration of college and university presidents to raise levels of civic preparedness and leadership.

A lawyer by training, Vernon C. Grigg III, Executive Director of the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership, holds degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.SC.), and the University of Michigan (BA). Grigg comes to the Kravis Lab from his role as CEO & President of Up with People, a fifty-five-year-old international nonprofit education and arts organization where he managed a global team of 50 employees across three continents and led the nonprofit to sustainability and health despite the challenges of the worldwide pandemic.

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Fri, October 25, 2024
Lunch Program
Governor Jared Polis and David Dreier '75

In today’s world, civil discourse is the exception rather than the rule. That's precisely why the Dreier Roundtable recognizes public servants who engage in a vigorous clash of ideas while recognizing that their political adversary is not their enemy. Through the National Governors Association, Governor Jared Polis (D-CO), partnered with Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) to create the Disagree Better Initiative. In recognition of this, join former U.S. Representative and CMC Trustee David Dreier '75 for a presentation of the Dreier Roundtable Civility Award to Governor Polis, followed by a conversation about the future of American politics. Plans are underway to have Governor Cox receive his Civility Award on November 25th. 

Note: This special luncheon begins at 11:00 AM. Lunch registration is limited to members of the CMC Community. The program begins at 11:30 AM.

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Jared Polis, the 43rd Governor of Colorado, is an entrepreneur, education leader, and public servant. After launching several successful companies, including one out of his college dorm room, Polis committed himself to making sure other Coloradans had the opportunity to pursue their dreams. Polis founded schools for at-risk students and new immigrants and started nonprofits to help veterans and entrepreneurs.

Prior to serving as Governor, Polis served on the State Board of Education where he worked to raise pay for teachers and reduce class size for students, and represented Colorado's 2nd Congressional district, where he was rated the most effective member of the Colorado delegation.

As Governor, Polis has focused on saving Coloradans money, keeping our economy strong, and preserving our Colorado way of life. Polis delivered universal free full-day kindergarten, signed a number of bills to save families money on health care, and made significant progress towards the goal of 100% renewable energy by 2040, all while cutting taxes for small businesses and investing in affordable housing and transportation. His efforts to expand health care access to medically underserved communities and to ensure that equity and justice remain central to building a Colorado for All have produced impactful legislation and made progress toward his administration’s bold vision. 

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David Dreier '75 was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he became the youngest — and the first Californian — chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in shaping all legislation for House debate. Dreier, a former chair of Tribune Publishing and a passionate advocate for press freedom, founded the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation to build the first public memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., celebrating press freedom and honoring slain journalists. Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year. He serves as a trustee at CMC.

This Civility Award and subsequent discussion is sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable at CMC.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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Phone: (909) 621-8244 
Fax: (909) 621-8579 
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