Freshman Studies lectures are delivered by professors who have some expertise in the work being discussed. Most of the lecturers are from the Lawrence faculty; some are occasionally invited from the outside. The lectures are open to the public and are mandatory for students enrolled in the course. They are given in Stansbury Theatre during regular course hours.
The lecturers have been asked to cover several different kinds of matters in their talks. First, they are expected to provide context for the work, including pertinent information about the historical era from which it comes and the life of the writer or artist who produced it. Second, since many of them teach or have taught in the Freshman Program, they will probably seek to relate the ideas and themes to be found in the work to some of the other works in the course. Third, they will offer their own interpretations and analyses of the work itself.
Just as you are expected to read a work critically, so you are expected to listen to a lecture critically. Ask yourself, as you listen, what thesis is being pursued, what mode of argument is being used, and what relates the detail to the whole.
Insofar as the lecturers are offering background information, you may reasonably trust their expertise; but the lecturers also will offer opinions and interpretations of the work or of the larger ideas to which the work relates, and here you are free to disagree with them. The lecture may or may not focus on those aspects of the work which you believe to be most important, may or may not offer a reading of the work that accords with your own. As you take notes, you should jot down, along with the speaker's main points and significant background detail, those things you wish to question when your section next meets. But don't get so caught up in noting down every little detail of the lecture that you lose track of the larger argument that is being pursued.
Class discussions following a lecture will often begin with responses to the lecture, and it is not sufficient to offer merely the vague impression that the lecturer was amusing, impressive, or dull. You will gain most from the lectures if you regard them, as the faculty does, as both sources of information and opportunities for debate. In other words, the lectures, too, should be seen as part of the on-going argument Freshman Studies is about.
