Speakers, talks and events will be added periodically, as they are confirmed.
Check back for updates—or, to get email updates from ARI, sign up here.
Objectivist Conferences/Ayn Rand® Institute reserves the right to make necessary adjustments to the schedule.
The goal of these lectures is to help you fall in love—or more in love—both with poetry and with love itself. With a symphonic integration of all the resources of language, great love poets take the most elusive nuances, thrills, mysteries, and motifs of love and throw them into sharp relief. In this course, you see these facets illumined by such timeless poets as Tennyson, Donne, Shelley and Keats.
You will experience the power of poetry to sharpen our vision, intensify our feelings, deepen our souls, and expand our capacity to love.
A STRIVE Session in Collaboration with Philipp Dammer, everyone welcome
Howard Roark’s integrity is usually met by great skepticism. In this talk, Dammer shows that there are Howard Roarks in real life; that Roark’s unyielding integrity is the way to success; and that Keating’s method (“second-handedness”) is a guarantee for disaster. Using examples from the entertainment industry, Mr. Dammer shows that integrity can indeed lead to success and that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
Students are encouraged to follow-up on Sunday by attending a STRIVE workshop that will help them use Dammer’s ideas (and the principles of Ayn Rand’s philosophy) to evaluate career and life options and to form plans according to their values.
The growing use of atonality and serialism and other avant-garde procedures that were virtually required of “serious” composers after World War II often made it difficult for members of the audience to find and follow any sense of musical narrative and direction in many new works. During this same time, a number of talented composers found an ideal outlet for their desire to continue and build upon the musical practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries by composing for movies. In part 1, we examine the first generation of composers who followed this path, up through the early 1950s.
The growing use of atonality and serialism and other avant-garde procedures that were virtually required of “serious” composers after World War II often made it difficult for members of the audience to find and follow any sense of musical narrative and direction in many new works. During this same time a number of talented composers found an ideal outlet for their desire to continue and build upon the musical practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries by composing for movies. In part 2, we look at the movie composers of the last fifty years.
Architecture is in a class of its own among the arts, combining utilitarian function and expressive power. How, though, can a building, which is nonrepresentational, convey meaning? In this lecture, Dr. Wood draws on Ayn Rand’s writings on architecture, including The Fountainhead and The Romantic Manifesto, to deepen our understanding of how great buildings concretize abstract values. The talk includes analyses of several works of world architecture from an Objectivist perspective.