For the tenth straight year, Los Altos Institute is proud to offer reading groups, open to all members at no additional fee. Our reading group chairs for 2024 are Stuart Parker, Amrita Parmar and two other individuals we are in the process of selecting.
Classics of Social Criticism
Vancouver Chair: TBA
Vancouver Meetings: Fortnightly, 7:00pm, Tuesdays at the Downtown White Spot (405 Dunsmuir)
Start date: TBA
Victoria Chair: Stuart Parker
Victoria Meetings: Fortnightly, day and location TBA
As the educational environment in the Global North has fundamentally changed due to the political realignment and new authoritarianism, Los Altos is adapting its reading programs. This year we will be focusing more on the great texts of the humanities and less on works of modern social science. So, we will be examining pre-twentieth century texts that speak across time to the challenges of our age, beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia. The reading list has not been finalized but these are some of the texts we will be examining.
Thinkers on Sex, Sexuality and Gender
Chair: Amrita Parmar
Meetings: Monthly (Wednesdays) online via Zoom
Start date: TBA
We will be continuing our readings on gender, sex and sexuality but informed more by our thematic shift towards important classical texts from the past. With the rise of the necromantic technology of “artificial intelligence,” we feel that there is no better classic with which to begin the program than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, showing that two hundred years before Jennifer Bilek, a nineteen-year-old woman warned us of the transhumanist hell to which the male dream of parthenogenesis inevitably takes us.
Gender Critical Discussion and Support
Chair: Amrita Parmar
Meetings: Monthly (Wednesdays) in Vancouver at Trocadero Restaurant (2411 Nanaimo Street)
Start date: TBA
We will also be continuing our in-person gender critical discussion group, which is not attached to a reading program.
