Our mission is to provide a free-standing,
public forum for the support of area Independent Scholars
and interested co-learners.
A free-standing Public Forum is provided
for area and regional independent scholars to present their
ongoing work in the presence of interested co-learners. The
presenting of independent work as well as the possible dialogue
following the presentation is designed to assist independent
scholars and participants in furthering their work.
We hope to attract members from varying
and different factions of the community in the sharing of
their work.
In these days of solitary internet,
it is a luxury to be able to have an active, free standing,
Public Forum, where we, as
independent scholars, have no commitments except to share
our ongoing work with interested co-learners.
To that end the Public Forum is reserved
for the convenience of both academicians as well as lay independent
scholars.
Finished art, articles, books, essays,
music and other pieces of work by participants will be circulated
among the supporters, other independent scholars and sponsors.
Their work may be sent to affiliated educational institutions
and attached files be circulated through The Institute web
pages.
There is no charge for the Forum nor
is there a charge for the circulation of their material.
The fifteenth-century portrait of St.
Jerome famously embodies a familiar image: the scholar with
his lion in a study poring over his books. The theme continues,
perhaps unconsciously: " A work in progress quickly becomes
feral.... it is a lion you cage in your study. As the work
grows it gets harder to control... You must visit it every
day and reassert your mastery over it.
If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly,
afraid to open the door to its room. You enter with bravura,
holding a chair at the thing and shouting, 'Simba!'
( Annie Dillard, The Writing Life [ New Your, 1989 ] 52).
To a certain taste, the appeal of this
scene depicted in the painting is an irresistible model of
the scholarly life: well-chosen books, seemly surroundings,
dignity and tranquility.
Our domestic architecture, habitual
apparel, choice of companions may differ from St. Jerome,
but our powers of imagination and self-improvement let us
indulge in the fantasy.
The historic Jerome may have has a
different devotion directing his study, yet when we indulge
the fantasy of identification with Jerome, we engage in an
old exercise: authorizing the present out of the past. The
unveiling of the painting in the fifteenth-century was designed
to encourage the collapsing of the present and the past. As
we go into the future, the lion in the study needs to be well
tamed and well nurtured. Its boundaries clearly specified,
its perimeters deliberate, either in implication or in definition.
Here is a venue for Independent Scholarship.
The one which is provided by The Institute is one with a particular
perimeter, specific to its own , in that the venue provides
a consistent free-standing forum, in a building reserved for
the purpose. This is unusual in the 21st. century. In downtown
Moline, on 5th. Ave. is such an establishment. The co-learners
may number in few or many. That is a minor factor. The major
factor of note is that such a facility would exist at all
for our productive work. Obviously, in the world of today,
the forum is not restricted to Moline.
It is for us to make full use of the
facility. And the forum. Regardless of our age.
Every Thursday evening, at 7.00 p.m.
on the 2nd floor of The Moline Club, 513 16th. Street Moline
the venue is open to the public, for a collection of co-learners
in support of The Independent Scholar who is presenting their
work for that specific evening, supporting and encouraging
the presenter in his or her effort to keep mastery over his
or her lion. Keeping, as Jerome did, the lion in the cage.
Sponsors
* Illinois Humanities Council.
* Iowa Humanities Council.
* Augustana College.
* The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions, Ltd.
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