Booth lecture kicks off Basic Program's 50th anniversary year

Continuing Studies will inaugurate the 50th anniversary of its Basic Program with a lecture by Wayne Booth, the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, at 2:45 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, in Mandel Hall. Booth will assess the current and future status of liberal education in his lecture "The Aims of Education, Come the Millennium."

Booth's lecture is part of the Basic Program's Works of the Mind monthly lecture series, which provides a forum to discuss classic literature. The next two Works of the Mind speakers will be Karl Weintraub, the Thomas E. Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in History, who will present "On Rousseau's Confessions" at 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 17, and Raymond Ciacci, Basic Program Staff Instructor, who will present "Lucretius in On the Nature of Things: Prophet or Madman?" at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4. The lectures will be held in Judd Hall Auditorium.

Other Basic Program events include the First Friday lecture series, offered on the first Friday of every month at the Chicago Cultural Center. Lectures begin at 12:15 p.m. and include such topics as "Aristotle Contemplating Homer: The Poetics as a Guide for Understanding the Iliad and the Odyssey." The Basic Program will host a fall weekend program on Plato's Symposium in November and Open House events in December.

The Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults is a comprehensive, four-year sequence on the classic texts of Western thought. For more information, call 702-1722.