Friends and Colleagues,
Here we begin our catalog of newly digitized recordings from the archives of the Dallas Institutes’ Cowan Center programs. Fortunately, for all of us, from the first Dallas Institute public program in the fall of 1981, the Founders were careful to record their proceedings. Over these next weeks, then, we will list a new lecture every day (or as close to it as we can come). Most will be talks by Dr. Louise and Dr. Donald Cowan, but we’ll also post lectures from other speakers who were luminaries in their own right. While we are all missing the joy of a literal human community, we hope that these Olympian voices out of the past will inspire us and keep our hearts ready until we meet again.
With gratitude and warm regard,
Dr. Claudia MacMillan
Director, The Louise and Donald Cowan Center for Education™
To conclude our daily doses of the great minds that people the Institute’s past, we present here our oldest extant series (I believe), Dr. Louise Cowan lecturing on “American Novels” in 1975. These talks were probably given to her ladies’ group at the University of Dallas. And I apologize beforehand for their quality. We did the best we could in the transmission to digital files, but forty-five-year-old cassette tapes don’t hold up as well as one would like. However, we are posting these talks regardless of their quality. As always, Dr. Cowan’s insights are stirring and provocative, so we thought you might be able to bear the distortion.
This series will conclude our online catalog for now. Hopefully, you have enjoyed and been enriched by their voices in this strange, timeless time.
June 2, 2020
June 1, 2020
Today we begin a series of lectures that Dr. Louise Cowan delivered to her women’s group in 1974 at the University of Dallas. This was a group of high society Dallas women that grew to more than 200 strong in the years that Dr. Louise taught them. A remarkable thing in itself. Dr. Cowan’s love of Dostoevsky is well-known to any who have heard her speak on his novels. Her insights into Russian literature are so profound that in the late 90s, Dr. Caryl Emerson from Princeton made a pilgrimage to Dallas to meet Dr. Cowan–having been introduced to her theory through Will Russ’ essays. At that time, Dr. Emerson encouraged Dr. Louise to write her “Russian theory,” explaining that it was distinct and was needed in Russian criticism. Unfortunately, Dr. Louise wasn’t able to do that, but she leave us with some of her wisdom here. We apologize beforehand for the quality of some of these recordings. Some recordings are also incomplete, but we felt that what Dr. Cowan says here is too important not to post what she has. Finally, Dr. Cowan apparently gave two lectures at each of her women’s group sessions, one before and one after lunch. That is why there are Part 1 and Part 2 written on some of the talks with the same date. I hope you enjoy these as much as we have.
May 29, 2020
May 28, 2020
May 27, 2020
May 26, 2020
May 22, 2020
May 21, 2020
May 20, 2020
May 19, 2020
May 18, 2020
May 15, 2020
May 14, 2020
May 13, 2020
May 12, 2020
May 11, 2020
May 8, 2020
Those who have studied Dr. Louise Cowan’s literary genre theory know how central the Divine Comedy was in her imagination as she conceived her “genre wheel.” As Dr. Louise claims at the beginning of this first lecture, “I think Dante can get us over a few of our dark spots . . . and get us out of some of the dark woods that we manage to get ourselves into.” In honor of the “dark spot” in which we currently find ourselves, here is Dr. Louise Cowan on “The Divine Comedy: the Soul’s Pilgrimage.”
May 7, 2020–class 6
May 6, 2020–class 5
May 5, 2020–class 4
May 4, 2020–class 3
May 1, 2020–class 2
April 30, 2020–class 1
The first major public program that the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture offered was in the fall of 1981. It was called “Recess Is Over: The Crisis in Public Education.” The Dallas Institute was a learning organization from the beginning, and nothing was more important to the founders than educators in our schools. Along with their colleagues, Dr. Jacques Barzun and Dr. Mortimer Adler, Dr. Gail Thomas and the Cowans led a stellar group at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. Beginning today, a few talks at a time, we will be presenting the recorded proceedings from that conference here. Enjoy!
April 29, 2020
April 28, 2020
April 27, 2020
April 24, 2020
April 23, 2020
April 22, 2020
April 21, 2020
According to Dr. Louise Cowan in her 2012 introductory essay to The Prospect of Lyric, the “lyric retains still a dim awareness of the way things were before time was, in the original pattern of being.” It is the origin of all the other kinds of poetry, then, she writes, and it is mysteriously the “fragile indicator of whether or not the air in a society is fit to breathe.” In these lectures given in 1997 and 1998, one can hear Dr. Louise Cowan developing her lyric theory. Lyric is “necessary to human culture,” she concludes, providing a “protection of the channel between word and thing, between heaven and earth, elevating the human to the workings of the spirit.”
April 7, 2020
April 8, 2020
April 9, 2020
April 10, 2020
April 13, 2020
April 14, 2020
April 15, 2020
April 16, 2020
April 17, 2020
April 20, 2020
March 30, 2020
In 1989, Dr. Louise Cowan taught one of her many classes on Moby-Dick:
March 31, 2020
April 1, 2020
April 2, 2020
April 3, 2020
April 6, 2020 with the final session of Melville’s Epic Voyage
Here’s our first offering for March 27, 2020:
