This alum group was started by Steve Zolno and Ken Knabb in 2003. For the next seventeen years a few of us (typically around eight or ten) met every three months or so at one or another of our homes in the Bay Area, spending the first hour or so chatting and enjoying potluck eats and drinks, then two hours discussing some short text. We shifted to Zoom in 2020. This meant that we had to do without the potlucks, but it had the advantage that people could take part who lived in other parts of the country. We discontinued the group in 2024.
Another similar Zoom group based in the Chicago area is still active. For further information, contact Margie Sejbl (msejbl@yahoo.com).
There are also several Shimer alum groups on Facebook. The college itself sends out a monthly Shimer Alumni Bulletin. If you are not already receiving the latter, contact shimeralumnigroup@gmail.com.
Below is a list of all the Bay Area meetings, with texts discussed.
September 22, 2003 — Initial gathering (we discussed possible formats of future gatherings)
November 16, 2003 — Discussion: “What relevance does Shimer have in today’s world?”
February 29, 2004 — Discussion of 2003 Shimer Reunion talk by alum Robert (“Rocky”) Keohane
May 9, 2004 — Selection of texts by and about economist Friedrich von Hayek
July 25, 2004 — Visit by new Shimer president Bill Rice (no texts discussed)
October 10, 2004 — Clarence Darrow’s Address to the Prisoners in the Chicago Jail
November 21, 2004 — Philip Hallie’s From Cruelty to Goodness
February 13, 2005 — Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (from The Republic, Book VII)
April 10, 2005 — Tao Te Ching (various translations of chapter 1)
July 3, 2005 — Bhagavad Gita (chapters 1-3)
November 13, 2005 — Bertolt Brecht’s If Sharks Were Men, followed by discussion with Shimer president Bill Rice re proposed Shimer relocation to Chicago
February 26, 2006 — Three poems by Sappho, Tu Fu, and Bashô
July 9, 2006 — Various works of art (each participant brought one)
September 17, 2006 — Visit by Shimer president Bill Rice, discussing the recent Shimer move to Chicago (no texts discussed)
November 12, 2006 — Emma Goldman’s Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty and Randolph Bourne’s War Is the Health of the State
February 25, 2007 — Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own
May 6, 2007 — Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (chapter 1)
July 22, 2007 — Guy Debord’s Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life
September 9, 2007 — John Taylor Gatto’s Why Schools Don’t Educate
November 4, 2007 — Cathryn Davis and Neeley House’s Fully Awake (film about Black Mountain College)
December 9, 2007 — Visit by interim Shimer president Ron Champagne (no texts discussed)
January 20, 2008 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (Book 1)
March 30, 2008 — Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (Vol. 2, Part II, chapters 2-4) and Robert Bellah’s Individualism and Commitment in American Life
October 26, 2008 — Shimer alum Steve Zolno’s book Taking Responsibility (Introduction)
November 23, 2008 — Visit by new Shimer president Thomas Lindsay (no texts discussed)
February 1, 2009 — Selected Sayings of Muhammad
April 19, 2009 — Jean Piaget’s The Construction of Reality in the Child (last chapter)
July 19, 2009 — Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (the famous “madelaine” passage, beginning with “Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray...” and ending with “sufficiently soft”)
October 18, 2009 — Passages from Tolstoy’s What Is Art?
January 24, 2010 — Montaigne’s essay On the Education of Children
April 11, 2010 — William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. We also discussed the current Shimer crisis (the hostile takeover attempt by Thomas Lindsay et al.).
June 19, 2010 — Visit by Don Moon (Shimer president 1978-2004) (no texts discussed). Don filled us in on developments since the ouster of Lindsay.
August 8, 2010 — Aphorisms, classic and modern (including La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Chamfort, Pascal, La Bruyère and Lipsey)
November 7, 2010 — Shimer alum Ken Knabb’s The Joy of Revolution (chapter 1)
February 6, 2011 — James Joyce’s Ulysses (opening and closing pages)
April 17, 2011 — Shimer alum Kate Van Horn’s songs (she performed and discussed some of them)
September 18, 2011 — Kenneth Rexroth’s “Classics Revisited” essays on Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey
November 20, 2011 — Ken Knabb’s articles on the Occupy movement
March 4, 2012 — Mortimer Adler’s Paideia project
July 29, 2012 — Kenneth Rexroth, five poems and one essay
December 2, 2012 — Visit by new Shimer president Susan Henking (no texts discussed)
April 14, 2013 — Shimer alum Robert Keohane’s Hobbes’s Dilemma and the Liberal Quest for World Order
July 14, 2013 — Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself
October 13, 2013 — William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (lectures 1 and 19)
December 8, 2013 — Visit by Shimer president Susan Henking (no texts discussed)
April 27, 2014 — Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (chapter 7)
September 7, 2014 — Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince
October 19, 2014 — Visit by Shimer president Susan Henking (no texts discussed)
March 1, 2015 — Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War: Pericles’s Funeral Oration and the Melian Dialogue
June 21, 2015 — Shimer professor Adam Kotsko’s Creepiness (Introduction)September 27, 2015 — Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Part I)
March 6, 2016 — Situationist International pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life
September 18, 2016 — Chapter from Steve Zolno’s book The Future of Democracy
October 29, 2016 — Visit by Shimer president Susan Henking (no texts discussed). Susan discussed the upcoming Shimer merger with North Central College.
March 19, 2017 — Two films by Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
September 17, 2017 — Montaigne’s essay On the Education of Children (repeated topic [see January 2010] kicking off the ongoing series of “Shimer Sundays”)
January 14, 2018 — Schopenhauer’s essay On Books and Reading
April 29, 2018 — Cervantes’s Don Quixote (first few chapters)
July 22, 2018 — Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy
November 11, 2018 — Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (selected chapters)
February 10, 2019 — Plato’s Phaedo
May 12, 2019 — Six poems from World Without Finishing by Shimer alum Peter Cooley
August 25, 2019 — W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folks (chapters 1, 2, 3, and 14)
November 17, 2019 — William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
February 16, 2020 — Founding Fathers: selected documents re impeachment (Federalist Papers, George Washington’s Farewell Address, etc.)
June 14, 2020 — Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture (chapters 1-3)
August 23, 2020 — Steve Zolno’s book Truth and Democracy (opening passages)
November 29, 2020 — Mallarmé’s poem Afternoon of a Faun + videos of Debussy’s and Nijinski’s musical and ballet adaptations
March 7, 2021 — James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (chapter 2)
May 2, 2021 — Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (chapter on “Wages of Labor”)
August 8, 2021 — Steve Zolno’s book Everyday Spirituality for Everyone (opening passages)
November 28, 2021 — Ngo Van’s In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
February 13, 2022 — Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
May 22, 2022 — 101 Zen Stories (from Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones)
August 28, 2022 — Chinese and Japanese poems: Tu Fu, Basho, Chinese women poets, Japanese women poets
November 20, 2022 — Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin (selected chapters)
February 26, 2023 — Michael Cacoyannis’s film of Euripides’s Electra
May 21, 2023 — Plato’s Symposium
August 28, 2023 — Introduction to Steve Zolno’s book The Pursuit of HappinessNovember 26, 2023 — Two Local Wars (1967 article by the Situationist International on the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israel “Six-Day War”)
February 18, 2024 — 20 poems by Rainer Maria Rilke