December 2, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Culture: The Story of Us from Cave-Art to K Pop by Martin Puchner (2023) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox Harvard literary historian Martin Puchner demonstrates that culture is never, as we too often assume, a possession, differentiated and marked by geographic boundaries, rooted in clearly delineated histories of inheritance […]
January 6, 2024, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis (2015) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox André Alexis offers “an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness “in this amusing but serious novel that was shortlisted for Canada Reads 2017 and won the 2015 Giller Prize. […]
February 3 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep by Kenneth Miller (2023) Discussion Leader: Daphne Maurer The history and findings of research on sleep, told through the work of four central characters. Hard to put down, and of course relevant to everyone. […]
March 3 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows Homelands: A Personal History of Europe by Timothy Garton Ash (2023) Discussion Leader: David Milne Winner of the 2024 Gelner Prize, Homelands was chosen as the best book in international affairs by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Taking his subject from the […]
April 7, 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) Discussion Leader: Molly Wills Successful both as literature and as a thought experiment, this classic of speculative fiction illuminates different sides of human nature in two opposing political and economic worlds. On the planet of Urras an ancient […]
May 5, 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows The Odyssey by Homer, in the new poetic translation by Emily Wilson (2017) Discussion Leaders: Linda Hutcheon and Martin Revermann Homer's Odyssey is an epic poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and […]
June 2, 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows The Valley of the Birdtail by Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) (2022) Discussion leader: Janet Paterson This book offers an opportunity to review Canadian history after the late 1880’s. according to the perspective of two communities in western Canada – one Indigenous and […]
July 7, 2025, 2-4pm, - Fellows and External Fellows The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li (2023) Discussion Leader: Susan Pfeiffer The Worlds I See is part autobiography, part informative description of how our current approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) came to be. It is the […]
September 8, 2025, 2-4 pm - Fellows and External Fellows James by Percival Everett (2024) Discussion Leader: Meg Fox “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being,” writes James. The escaped slave who accompanied Huck downriver on a raft in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim is brilliantly reconceived as a highly intelligent and […]
October 6, 2025, 2-4 pm - Fellows and External Fellows Fire Weather by John Vaillant (2023) Discussion Leader: Susan Pfeiffer Rather than just an intellectual exploration, this is about pressing global issues that require action, written by a Canadian author of great skill. While the Fort McMurray, Alberta, wildfires in 2016 provide a basis for […]
November 3, 2025, 2-4 pm - Fellows and External Fellows Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum (2024) Discussion Leader: David Milne Pulitzer prize-winning author Anne Applebaum unpacks the modern world of autocracy in a short and straightforward way. Stripping away ideological pretensions, she shows that autocratic regimes are […]
December 1, 2025, 2-4 pm - Fellows and External Fellows - Zoom only event Orbital by Samantha Harvey (2023) Discussion Leader: Malcolm Woodland Winner of the 2024 Booker and Hawthornden Prizes, Orbital is called, by its creator, a "space pastoral.” In her rhapsodic imagining of 24 hours as the International Space Station orbits earth (with […]