The Marino Family International Writers' Academic Workshop
A First-Year Student Academic Workshop
Featuring Sebastian Barry
Saturday, September 12, 2009
2:00pm - 5:00pm
About the Workshop
Fifteen years ago, Georgetown University conceived the idea of engaging new students in the thoughtful reading of a text by a major international author. During the summer prior to their matriculation into the academic life of Georgetown, the university asks first-year students to read the selected text and write a one-page analysis of it. On the second Saturday afternoon, at the beginning of the Fall semester, the University invites the author of the selected text to campus to discuss the novel and the life of writing with all the first-year students. Immediately following the author's conversation with the new Hoyas, more than seventy Faculty members, Deans, and Alumni meet with these Hoyas in small discussion groups and together embark on a thematic and stylistic analysis of the novel. These small group seminars encourage students to comment on and debate the author's premises, challenge each other's interpretation, and sustain the arguments they presented in the required one-page analysis.
The Workshop, funded by Frederick Marino (SLL '68) and his Family, functions as the introduction to the challenges and rewards of the University's intellectual life of the mind. It helps to affirm Georgetown's commitment to the highest academic standards. When Georgetown invites an "international writer" as its featured author, the University means to add a significant non-American cultural dimension to the academic formation of Georgetown students.
Students, Faculty, and Alumni, in addition to their discussion of the author's English writing style, delve into a wide range of philosophical, historical, cultural, religious, and political issues which the novel raises. From the very start of their lives as Hoyas, students learn to transcend the particularities of their own culture, to develop respect for and understanding of differences of opinion, and to celebrate common human similarities. Georgetown University hopes that this foundation in careful reading, critical thinking, and precise articulation of thought will develop, grow, and flourish in these students' four-year undergraduate academic careers.
The Workshop is sponsored by Frederick Marino (SLL '68) and his Family in honor of his father, Joseph Marino.