Great books, great discussion

Great books, great discussion

What better
time is there to engage in a discussion about democracy
than on the eve of the 2000 election?

Members of the
Rice and Houston communities are encouraged to participate
in such a discussion Oct. 10-11 when the Great Books Foundation
brings to Houston an event centered around Alexis de Tocqueville’s
“Democracy in America.”

Rice’s
Hamman Hall will play host to a discussion on an excerpt
from “Democracy in America” titled “Why Americans
Are So Often Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity.” The panel discussion, which is set for Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m.,
is free and open to the public.

Among the panel
participants will be Deborah Harter, associate professor
of French at Rice; Kathleen Cambor, professor in the Creative
Writing Program at the University of Houston; James Gibbons,
columnist at the Houston Chronicle; and Barbara Gubbin,
director of the Houston Public Library, said Mike Levine,
event coordinator. The discussion will be moderated by a
member of the Great Books Foundation staff. A portion of
the discussion will be open to interaction between the panelists
and the audience.

Preceding the
Rice panel discussion will be public discussions held at
several Houston locations Oct. 10. Led by the foundation’s
staff and experienced Great Books discussion leaders from
Houston, the talks will take place at 7 p.m. at the University
of Houston’s M.D. Anderson Library, Brown Room; the
University of Houston–Downtown, room A-405; the Children’s
Museum of Houston; and the Robinson-Westchase and Kendall
branches of the Houston Public Library.

The Great Books
Foundation has organized such events across the country
to help participants discover the benefits of discussing
important ideas with each other, to further individual thinking
about ideas, to learn more about the text being discussed
and about fellow participants and to create a stronger sense
of community.

Founded in 1947,
the Chicago-based Great Books Foundation is a nonprofit
educational organization whose mission is to provide people
of all ages with the opportunity to read, discuss and learn
from outstanding works of literature.

The text of
the excerpt to be discussed can be found on the Web at <www.greatbooks.org>.