Università generativa
Con Andrea Prencipe e Guido Saracco.

Imparare a disimparare per lasciar posto alle conoscenze associate ai cambi di paradigma in arrivo, conservare le qualità «umane» del pensiero, sapientemente integrate con le opportunità offerte dalla tecnologia, mantenere accesa la fiamma della creatività rispettando le tradizioni e il sapere ricevuto, ma al contempo aprendosi alla diversità e al mondo intero. A tutto questo formeranno le università generative.

Le muse sapienti #2 - Andrea Prencipe e Guido Saracco

In this episode, we consider the first chapter of Cusk’s Outline alongside a paper by Daniela Dover entitled ‘The Conversational Self’. The paper examines the role of conversations in getting to know people, what an understanding of this entails for how we think about the self, and how open we should be to the influence of others. We analyse the conversations reported in Cusk’s novel in the light of Dover’s ideal.

Speaker names: 

•	Dr. Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor in the English Department at UCL.
•	Alice Harberd, PhD Student in the Philosophy Department at UCL.


1. The Conversational Self: Daniela Dover

On sale May 27th, 2025

From an award-winning historian and New York Times bestselling author, a gripping, fly-on-the-wall account of the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln's decision to go to war against the Confederacy.

1861: The Lost Peace is the story of President Lincoln’s difficult and courageous decision at a time when the country wrestled with deep moral questions of epic proportions.   

Through Jay Winik’s singular reporting and storytelling, readers will learn about the extraordinary Washington Peace Conference at the Willard Hotel to avert cataclysmic war. They will observe the irascible and farsighted Senator JJ Crittenden, the tireless moderate seeking a middle way to peace. Lincoln himself called Crittenden “a great man” even as Lincoln jousted with him. Readers will glimpse inside Lincoln’s cabinet—the finest in history—which rivaled the executive in its authority, a fact too often forgotten, and witness a parade of statesmen frenetically grasping for peace rather than the spectacle of a young nation slowly choking itself to death. A perfect read for history buffs, with timely overtones to our current political climate.

Listen Here

1861 By Jay Winik, Read By Arthur Morey (Audiobook Excerpt)

On sale May 27th, 2025

An author creates a narrative blend of history, cultural criticism, and memoir in celebration of everyday queer women, based on a lesbian helpline that existed in North London in the nineties.

With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness, this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.
 
Through these revelations of the complexities, difficulties and revelries of everyday life, Lovatt investigates the ethics of writing about queer 'sheros' and the role living-history plays in the way we live today. What do we owe to our lesbian forebears? What can we learn from them when facing racism, transphobia and ableism in the community today?

Steeped in pop culture references and feminist and queer theory, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century, and where it might lead us in the future.

Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line By Elizabeth Lovatt, Read By Roshaan Riyahi-Boni (Audiobook Excerpt)

On sale May 27th, 2025

A three-step program that puts headache sufferers back in control of their lives.

“A must read for all individuals with migraine!”—Ronald J. Tusa, M.D., PH.D., Professor of Neurology and Otolaryngology, Dizziness and Balance Center, Emory University

Based on the breakthrough understanding that virtually all headaches are forms of migraine—because migraine is not a specific type of headache, but the built-in mechanism that causes headaches of all kinds, along with neck stiffness, sinus congestion, dizziness, and other problems—Dr. Buchholz’s Heal Your Headache offers a simple, transforming program.

Step 1: Avoid the “Quick Fix.” Too often painkillers only make matters worse because of the crippling complication known as rebound.
Step 2: Reduce your triggers. The crux of the program: a migraine diet that eliminate the foods that push headache sufferers over the top.
Step 3: Raise your threshold. When diet and other lifestyle changes aren’t enough, preventive medication can help stay the course.

That’s it. In three steps, you can turn your headache problems around.

Includes answers to questions like:

What is a migraine anyway?

Why do I get more headaches than most people?

Of all the potential dietary triggers, what are the major culprits?

Will my headaches get better when I get older?

Why does the weather give me headaches?

How long will it take me to get over rebound when I stop taking my Excedrin?

Are my children doomed to suffer from headaches?

Why do I wake up every morning with a headache?

This title was updated in November 2021 to reflect the latest medical advice.

Heal Your Headache By David Buchholz M.D., Read By Mike Lenz (Audioob Excerpt)

PRE-ORDER NOW 

 You’re almost certain your daughter didn’t kill the neighbour. But what if she did?

Richard Wellington is one of the country’s most recognised doctors. A morning TV regular, surgeon to the elite, and scandal-proof despite a malpractice case that should have ruined him.

But when his body is found sprawled in a harborside park on a sweltering Sydney morning, the facade shatters. His murder dominates the headlines, and the normally quiet cul-de-sac he called home becomes a media circus, seething with speculation and unease.

For Liv Elliot, none of that matters – except for one detail: her daughter, Gracie, was at the park that morning. As the investigation heats up and dark secrets about Richard begin to surface, Liv takes steps to shield her daughter from the storm – steps that could destroy them both if the truth comes out.

How far would a mother go to protect her daughter?

The Neighbours, By Emma Babbington, Read by Nicolette Chin

On sale June 3rd, 2025

From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love.

It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams — a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.”

With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before — smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Following Gay Bar — called “a rich tapestry” by Vanity Fair and “an absolute tour de force” by Maggie Nelson — Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.

Deep House By Jeremy Atherton Lin (Audiobook Excerpt)

'One of the funniest books I've read in ages' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

 LA romcom writer Mia Valentina has it all

Always the Bridesmaid, By Portia MacIntosh, Read by Karen Cass

On sale June 3rd, 2025

From a New York Times journalist, a culinary tour of gay restaurants—their history, and how they evolved as a space of safety and celebration for the LGBTQ+ community—full of joy, sex, sorrow, activism, and nostalgia.

Dining Out explores how gay people came of age, came out, and fought for their rights not just in gay bars or the streets, but in restaurants. From cruisy urban cafeterias of the 1920s to mom-and-pop diners that fed the Stonewall generation to the intersectional hotspots of the early 21st century. Using archival material, original reporting and interviews, and first-person accounts, Erik Piepenburg explores how LGBTQ restaurants shaped and continue to shape generations of gay Americans.

Through the eyes of a reporter and the stomach of a hungry gay man, Dining Out examines the rise, impact and legacies of the nation's gay restaurants past, present, and future, connecting meals with memories. Hamburger Mary’s, Florent, a suburban Denny’s queered by kids: Piepenburg explores how these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners, and unconventional eateries have charted queer placemaking and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.  

Dining Out By Erik Piepenburg (Audiobook Excerpt)

Promuove e produce cultura, tutti i giorni, per tutti, nelle sue tre sedi – Torino, Novara e Rivoli – con rassegne e festival. Un progetto di Regione Piemonte

Le muse sapienti #2 - Andrea Prencipe e Guido Saracco

Fondazione Circolo dei lettori

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