Stolen School
March 2025 - Present
Reading Group
Online
Ever since I discovered the form, I’ve had an obsession for collecting syllabi. A folder on my computer titled, “_Study” would be bursting from its seams if it existed as a collection of paper. The idea was this: contained within this folder was years and years of guidance from people who had dedicated their lives to the process of producing and disseminating knowledge. I’d build this archive and, as my life unfolded, return to this guidance as a structure for some form of schooling beyond the walls of the institution. Perhaps it was moving to remote-learning during COVID, or a relic of transferring universities twice, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would continue to yearn for the counsel of these maps long after I’d ceased being extorted for access to them.
So, I kept collecting them, thinking of each as a guided stroll that I might wander on, someday. Perhaps these strolls would cross paths, perhaps they would diverge so totally that they would appear to be on different planes of existence. Either way, they went in the folder, tucked away for the inevitable moment in which I would need to be reminded of another way of doing things, or another way of thinking. Over the years, I’ve visited my archive of potential walks and stepped on their trails in solitude. Frankly, I barely remember these moments and their seclusion produced more of a plodding than a promenade. These maps are not meant to be trod solo, their power being derived from the conversation produced between the texts, not by their mere apprehension. So, this is the Stolen School, a series of seminars from stolen syllabi — in a way, a school stolen from other schools. Isn’t that how ideas flow through history, anyway?
It is, of course, a unique and invaluable experience to sit in a circle alongside academic professionals adept at steering a group of students through the complex sludge of thought. However, the socratic seminar is a powerful tool as a result of its inherent simplicity — all that it requires is a text and a group of people who have read it. From this simple structure emerges the radicality of the classroom, a form that we must, especially now, cultivate.