“As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language…”
— Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”
The Symposia
The ICI symposia range from once per month for an intensive two-hours to 3-day weekend immersions to weeklong gatherings both in person and online. Topics vary from short poems to 1,000 page novels and from works of epic poetry to contemporary cinema. All ICI symposia are by invitation only.
The Method
Together we seek to cultivate the art of reading as a way of engaging with great works of art, literature, and philosophy—whether that means learning how to become better readers of poems or paintings, novels or sculpture, essays or movies.
The Goal
Through discussion and shared inquiry, the ICI makes great works of culture — from The Epic of Gilgamesh to the poetry of Ishmael Reed, from Plato’s Dialogues to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — available to all who wish to engage with these monuments to human creativity.
The Institute for Creative Inquiry 