2013 USP Fall Retreat Recap
General Retreat Summary (special thanks to Meg Shea for the summary!):
The USP kicked off it’s year with an excellent retreat at Camp Chestnut Ridge in Efland, NC. After a slightly long bus ride out, we grabbed our Friday night dinner and settled in. The new grad mentors, Tina Davidson, James Johndrow, Alex Oprea, and Meg Shea were introduced to the group and our leader, Tori Lodewick gave a brief welcome and introduction to the evening. Dinner also served as a way for Unis to get to know the new members of the program and reconnect after the summer apart. After dinner, we headed to the lodges where Alex and James entertained us with pub-style trivia, much to everyone’s enjoyment, before heading down to the campfire for s’mores.
Saturday saw us begin the meat of our work at the retreat. We used the morning to welcome the new grads and undergrads to the program and answer questions about life at Duke/in Durham in breakout sessions. We then introduced people to their mentors/mentees and allowed the mentor pairs to spend some time getting to know each other. After lunch, we turned our attention to the academic program of the USP for this coming year. The Grad Mentors introduced the theme for this year’s USP Symposium, “Reason(s).” The Symposium will be held Saturday March 2nd, 2014 and will showcase Unis’ work as it relates to the theme.
After the symposium introduction, we broke into small groups to briefly discuss the theme for this year. Our discussions were framed around four readings chosen to address different aspects of the theme. These included the following (click on the links to read selections in full):
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An excerpt from Isaac Asimov’s short story, Reason, pp. 331-334
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Pascal’s Wager
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An article from Scientific American on “Within Any Possible Universe, No Intellect Can Ever Know It All,” a reference to Laplace’s demon.
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An excerpt from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex – the scene between Oedipus and Tiresias.
We then opened into a large, group discussion of ideas. Out of this discussion, several group sub-themes emerged, including “(T)reason(s),” “Reasoning the Unreasonable,” “Relative Reason: Language, Culture & Environment,” “Gaps and Overlaps of Reason,” “Limits and Depths of Reason,” among others. More on the discussion of symposium ideas can be found in a separate blog post “University Scholars Discuss Symposium “Reason(s)” at 2013 Fall Retreat.” We wrapped up our day by opening the floor to suggestions for USP seminars for this coming year. That list of ideas can be found in the blog post titled “USP Seminars 2013-2014: Suggestions for Speakers and/or Topics.”
