THE TEACHERS ACADEMY

 

Since 1983, the Teachers Academy has educated and reinvigorated teachers for their classroom work, giving teachers the respect that their profession deserves while it challenges their intellect and deepens their skills.  Teachers Academy classes and events, especially the Summer Institutes for Teachers, have influenced hundreds of teachers, and by extension, thousands of young people.
 

 

 

 

Call for papers

 

 

the Teachers Academy of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture

Second Annual Summer Institute Alumni Symposium:

 

 

The Daughter Figure

in tragedy and comedy

 

 

February 8-9, 2008: Friday, 6:00-9:00;  Saturday, 9:00-4:00

$45 fee includes dinner, breakfast, lunch, and published monograph of presentations

Register to attend by January 28, 2008; call 214-871-2440.

 

 

The First Annual Summer Institute Alumni Symposium in February 2007 was a tremendous success!  All of our expectations for the quality and rigor of thought in the presentations and discussion were met and exceeded, and we were left not only with spirits renewed but also with a handsome monograph of the essays delivered at the event. Presenters said that the Symposium called them to their “nobler selves” in a fashion that reminded them of their Summer Institute days. One attendee remarked, “These opportunities invigorate our souls!”  Another noted, "Yearly attendance at a conference like this is a sort of prescription against burnout." And echoing the spirit that all of us in attendance felt, a presenter claimed, "In a place like this, we can come together and revitalize that spark that inspired us once long ago.  This Symposium must continue."

 

So, we invite Summer Institute Alumni to participate in our Second Annual Summer Institute Alumni Symposium, a university-style academic conference where we will engage literary texts in the rigorous and thoughtful manner modeled in the Summer Institutes and present academic essays to a community of our Summer Institute peers.  (Guests of Summer Institute Alumni may attend the Friday evening dinner and lecture, as space allows. The cost of dinner is $10.)

 

The topic of this year’s conference is “The Daughter Figure in Tragedy and Comedy.”  At least one-half of the essay must be a close analysis of a passage from a literary text that represents this topic.  Essays should also include references to a few critical sources, not as the means to legitimize the thought but as a vehicle for widening the reflection.  Panels for the conference will be determined according to the thematic similarities revealed in the précis.

 

Summer Institute Alumni are invited to submit a one-page précis for consideration no later than August 31, 2007.  Submissions will be juried by the Teachers Academy Advisory Board with presenters being notified by November 30, 2007.  The final presentation at the conference will be a five-page, double-spaced essay, which must be submitted in its entirety in an unformatted MS Word document no later than January 11, 2008.

 

 

Submit précis electronically in an unformatted MS Word document

by August 31, 2007, to callums@dallasinstitute.org. 

 

Submit final essays electronically in an MS Word document
 by January 11, 2008., to callums@dallasinstitute.org.

 

Here's what the participants had to say about the 2007 Symposium

"Every time I come to the Dallas Institute, I am reminded just how much I love to learn and teach.  No matter how exhausting the day or the week, time at the Institute challenges and reinvigorates the soul and the mind."

"This event holds more importance than I can adequately express on paper."

"I would have left the classroom long ago had it not been for the powerful spirit of the Summer Institute and other Teachers Academy events!!"

"Although I came as a spectator, I was encouraged to see so many people engaged in the great 'conversation' of life."

"Thank you so much for the opportunity to expand and stretch my imagination in such an accepting and welcoming atmosphere."

"I am reminded of the noble work that I do as a teacher.  I learn so much every time I come here, and I am renewed and inspired."

"There is not a day that goes by (as I stand in front of my students) that I do not go back to the ideas, the works, the practices learned at the Teachers Academy."

"I am very excited about the energy and the welcome in this atmosphere and I will be back soon."

"The Dallas Institute kept me in the profession of teaching when I saw no hope for the Dallas schools back in 1985 and what I learned has given me strength to teach still."

"These opportunities invigorate our souls."

"In a place like this, we can come together and revitalize that spark that inspired us once long ago.  This must continue."

"This was such an inviting, enlightening atmosphere for both the novice and expert.  It feels good to learn!"

"The Teachers Academy provides a breath of fresh air that nurtures me directly and indirectly benefits my students."

"Yearly attendance at a conference like this is a sort of prescription against burnout.  Thank you for your both unique and important work."

"The Institute fills a void for teachers."

"It's truly nourishing for the soul, and it's great to bring this revitalized enthusiasm into the classroom for our students."
 

The 2007 Summer Institute for Teachers

A Brief History of the Summer Institutes
 The Teachers Academy of the Dallas Institute was conceived in 1983 with the "Summer Institute"--a literature class for high school English teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and that called the class a "model for the nation."

The Teachers Academy program at the Dallas Institute offers classes and conferences for school teachers throughout the year but its cornerstone event is the yearly Summer Institute for Teachers--a two-summer sequence of three-week, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary literature courses held at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.  In even-numbered years, the course is "The Epic Tradition: Literature as a Mode of Knowledge" and in odd-numbered years, the course is "Tragedy and Comedy: Literature as a Mode of Knowledge."  Teachers are encouraged to attend both summers but they may take one or both classes.

Summer Institute convenes each July for fifteen weekday classes, from 8:45 am - 4:00 pm.  Mornings are given over to a lecture on the reading material for the day and a two-hour seminar exploring the work in detail, trying out ideas and approaches.  Afternoon schedules vary to include guest lectures, films and discussions, panels, and writing.  Journal writings and a weekly in-class essay are expected of every participant; for those seeking graduate credit, a longer, carefully written essay submitted one week after the course concludes is required.

The Dallas Institute's scholarship to each participant is approximately $3,700.00 per summer; this includes books and materials as well as breakfast, lunch and break snacks each day of the program.  (The Dallas Institute requests a $250 fee from each participant's school or district.)

The University of Dallas also provides a full-tuition scholarship to qualified applicants who apply to earn the 6 hours of graduate credit available for each of the two summer classes.  This makes the total scholarship package available to school teachers approximately $6,730.00 per summer.

Purposes and Aims of the Summer Institutes:

 

The 24th Annual Summer Institute for Teachers Presents:
Tragedy and Comedy: Literature as a Mode of Knowledge

At the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture
July 2 - 20, 2007
Weekdays, 8:45 am - 4:00 pm

The dramatic forms associated with the terms tragedy and comedy originated with the ancient Greeks, but tragic and comic human actions are universal.  When a crisis reveals an irreconcilable conflict in a city or culture, tragedy proves to be inseparable from the hero or heroine who both confronts and embodies the city's division.  Not an outer problem but an inner self-contradiction, the tragic impasse gradually opens onto the unsparing landscape of mystery, the stony place of sacrifice and death.

In tragedy, the community achieves wisdom only through the most painful suffering.  In comedy, by contrast, fate is transformed into happy chance, and the community, spared the utmost test, finds a way to restore itself without the ultimate violence.  By exposing its follies and uniting its opposites through the mercies of a comic action, the community heals its inner contradictions at least with justice, but in its more generous reaches with laughter, gratitude, and joy.  Its most profound governing image is not sacrifice but the marriage feast.

Because comedy and tragedy exist as fundamental possibilities of human action rather than simply as literary models, tragedies and comedies occur in many different cultures, in many different media.  Although this course focuses on tragedy and comedy primarily as they appear in the medium of drama, it also examines films and novels.  Authors to be studied in the 2007 Tragedy and Comedy class include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, Wole Soyinka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Toni Morrison.