The English Department’s Dr. Larson gave a faculty talk this semester on the occasion of winning 2013’s campus teaching award. The Garaventa Center made a 22-minute podcast version of the talk, “Dialectical Teaching in a Righteous Age,” which examines our era’s habit of polarized thinking, and how we can be part of a change simply by cultivating a counter-habit of entertaining the opposite of what we believe.
He draws upon examples from his classes and life, the arts, the Pope, and Portland’s other Lars Larson, to build the case that Hegel had it right with the equation Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. Larson delivered a shorter, modified version for the Sigma Tau Delta induction.
The full talk can be found here: http://wordpress.up.edu/garaventa/dialectical-teaching-in-a-righteous-ag
Have a listen!