William T. Braithwaite, Tutor (all professors are called Tutors) at St. Johns College in Annapolis, MD demonstrates how we can improve and train our “Literary Imagination” on June 8, 2013 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Scossa Restaurant and Lounge in Easton, MD.
Can we train, or develop the imagination? William Braithwaite proposes that we can and illustrates how it can be done in this, the Eastern Shore Writers Association’s end of year and not to be missed gathering at Scossa’s Restaurant.
Beginning by sharing the unconventional liberal-education program at St. John’s College, Annapolis with members and guests, he describes how the students are taught to write regularly in all classes about what they are learning, as well as penning a long annual essay each year of their college career. Weaving the strands of connection together, Mr. Braithwaite teaches attendees what he himself has learned about how to “train” the imagination to show its best face in our writing. He does this by drawing on his 18 years of experience teaching Legal Writing in law school and helping St. John’s students write their many essays. By the end of the session writers will understand why Mr. Braithwaite so strongly believes we can indeed improve our literary imaginations, and why the coherent practices of reading and talking, thinking and writing, seem to help us do it.
He speculates that “close reading of old or well-known stories can help us think about how the greatest writers, poets, and story-tellers use the imagination,” then eloquently describing it as “that place and power in the mind where abstract thinking meets sense-perception, providing a space-like “theater” for dreams, memories, and other visualized dramas of inner life.”
William Braithwaite is a Tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, where he currently teaches Literature, Philosophy, Mathematics, and Music. His special study at present is the obscene in comedy, focusing on Aristophanes. Before joining the St. John’s faculty in 1995, Mr. Braithwaite taught law for 15 years at Loyola University, Chicago as well as teaching seminars on Mosaic Law and Oral Argument, and leading seminars on Law and Literature for the Illinois Judicial Conference and the Chicago Bar Association. Mr. Braithwaite’s publications include “The Idea of Punishment in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and he is a co-editor of Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory (Ohio University Press). An ex-military man and odd job connoisseur, he lives in Annapolis with his wife Wendy, a middle-school librarian; his six sons live and work in a variety of interesting places and occupations.
All writers and guests are welcome to attend this free event. An RSVP is not required, but always appreciated, to: [email protected]. The Eastern Shore Writers’ Association (ESWA) holds monthly writing programs, sponsors the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference every February, and publishes The Delmarva Review, a literary journal for all writers. As a nonprofit organization, it supports writers and the literary arts across the Delmarva Peninsula. For more information, see the ESWA website www.easternshorewriters.org, or write Hal Wilson, President, ESWA, P.O. Box 1773, Easton, MD 21601.
“Working the Literary Imagination:
Reading & Talking,
Thinking and Writing”
June 8, 2013, at 11 a.m.
Scossa Restaurant
8 N. Washington Street
Easton, MD 21601
(410) 822-2202
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