The official kick-off to the Big Read season is just around the corner! Join us Monday, October 28 from 7:00-8:30pm! It will be held in Maas Auditorium at Hope College on 264 Columbia Ave Holland, MI. There will be two keynote speakers, Drs. Jeanne Petit and Kristin VanEyk, along with a Gatsby-themed performance by the Hope College dance group StrikeTime.
Read below to hear from the speakers and get a sneak peak of what they will be talking about!
A Historical Background to The Great Gatsby:
Dr. Jeanne Petit will be presenting on some of the major historical events that happened around the 1920s and the creation of The Great Gatsby:
The 1920s was a decade that saw women gain new social freedoms even as their influence in the realm of politics waned. Members of the Ku Klux Klan boldly marched in Washington DC while Black artists instigated the Harlem Renaissance. Conspicuous consumption led the stock market to soar, only to have it crash by the end of the decade. The talk will explore how 1920s Americans navigated these contradictory cultural forces and how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a reflection of those times.
An English Teacher’s Perspective on The Great Gatsby:
Dr. Kristin VanEyk will discuss reading The Great Gatsby as a teacher of English and dive into some of the moral implications of the text:
I’ll be talking about Gatsby’s enormous striving, but his striving toward the wrong goals. Gatsby’s goal, to be with a married woman, is corrupt from its inception, and leads to further corruption and decay. Along the way, Gatsby is willing to sacrifice his integrity, to compromise the integrity of those around him, and to sacrifice his well-being (indeed, his very life) for material gain. The willingness to sacrifice one’s life and integrity for goals that are corrupt from their inception is an ancient problem, but it’s also a modern problem. What solutions might we pursue? Sabbath: the ultimate revolt, the radical owning of who we truly are.
If either of these talks or the performance of StrikeTime sound intriguing to you, we invite you out for a night of conversations, dance, and community-building!