Keri Ames Email & Phone Number

Phoenix, Az, Us

Phoenix, Az, Us

Anthem, Arizona

I enthusiastically seek the true, the good, and the beautiful with my wonderful students in seminars on great books of Western literature and philosophy and ancient Greek. I teach Humane Letters, a daily two hour Socratic seminar, on authors ranging from Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and the Bible to Dante, Dostoyevsky, Vergil, and Hegel.I love being the Senior Thesis Project Director, designing and executing my structure and method for the cultivation of original comparative scholarship relying upon close textual analysis to identify and resolve urgent human problems. Currently I enjoy developing great books curriculum. I am expanding a lecture I gave in January 2019, entitled "I'm Back: On Being Back in O'Connor's 'Parker's Back'".

Austin, Tx

Mentor is an ancient Greek word for one name of Athena in disguise. In Homer's Odyssey, Athena arrives as a man named Mentor to guide heroes to success. A mentor opens your mind to your own wisdom. I inspire you to new ideas to empower yourself on your odyssey. Mentors create the path to inspire others to better choose their own. I create a path of empowering inquiry by sharing spontaneous, collaborative learning of ideas from great books, including my original translations of ancient Greek poetry. As a literature scholar, former college professor and novelist, my life is a daily practice of cultivating my creativity. As your mentor, I inspire you to access yours. Open your mind and heart to new possibilities to fulfill your potential on every level.

In his own literary experiment, Professor David Grene trained me to be the only James Joyce scholar in the world to "read Homer's Odyssey first" before reading Ulysses, following the only method Joyce ever offers for studying his novel in a 1921 letter to his Aunt Josephine. But David Grene taught me to read Homer not only in translation like Aunt Josephine, but also "in the original" in Greek, exactly the method prescribed by Joyce's character Buck Mulligan. Joyce's advice for reading Ulysses, which was David's advice to me, inspires my private seminars in comparative literature of all kinds, especiallly of Homer and Joyce. Contact me to arrange wonderful fun learning books you always wanted to read and compare but found too intimidating to read alone.

Santa Fe

In the ultimate great books experience, I taught the wonderful Western canon from Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Descartes to Cervantes, Hegel, Flaubert, Eliot, Joyce and Virginia Woolf, including over 100 authors in literature and philosophy. I loved teaching Homeric and Attic Greek language, grammar, poetry and the art of translation, as well as French literature and translation, ancient to modern philosophy, math and laboratory science, including cat dissection, embryology and atomic theory.St. John's College describes their interdisciplinary program of study in great books thusly:"At St. John’s, students study the original works of some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers...Through close engagement with primary sources, students cultivate intellectual strength and imaginative vigor. They learn to ask penetrating questions, hone their ability to tackle complex problems and develop leadership skills that last a lifetime…They master critical thinking and collaboration—skills that...prepare them to embrace life’s diverse challenges and opportunities."http://www.sjc.edu/about/why-sjc/I gave numerous public lectures from New Mexico to Yale on my research.I was Faculty Chair, Respondent or Advisor for 10-15 students a year for Senior and Graduate Institute Oral Examinations on great books.St. John's College never collects annual written teaching evaluations. Every recommendation in my profile is the original I received upon my simple request to testify to the value of learning with me.

New Haven Ct

Supervised by Professors Jane Levin and Norma Thompson, it was my joy and my honor to teach the World Literature Sequence in Directed Studies, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and the Bible.Yale University describes the great books program in Directed Studies thusly:"Directed Studies offers a select group of first-year students an intense interdisciplinary introduction to some of the seminal texts of Western civilization. Working in discussion seminars with top Yale faculty, DS students learn to analyze complex texts and to put them into conversation with one another across time and genre. DS helps students develop their abilities to engage in thoughtful discussions of fundamental human questions, and through frequent feedback from faculty and dedicated DS writing tutors, to write clear and persuasive analytic essays."http://directedstudies.yale.edu/At the invitation of Professor Jane Levin, I lectured on “Perplexities of Penelope’s Laugh in Homer’s Odyssey" and “In Search of Forgiveness in Dante’s Commedia” in the Whitney Humanities Center.“Joyce’s Aesthetic of the Double Negative and His Encounters with Homer’s Odyssey," my seminal, definitive article establishing Joyce's virtual incompetence in Greek, his knowledge of Homeric translations and his call for intertextual reading of Ulysses, was published In European Joyce Studies.My funeral eulogy for David Grene was published in David's Of Farming & Classics: A Memoir.

New Haven, Ct

One of the most fertile, fruitful intellectual environments on the planet!My research explored the value of Joyce's advice to "read the Odyssey first in prose translation" in order to understand Ulysses. Designing curricula to compare Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses, I studied the impact of reading Homer first "in the original" the way Buck Mulligan urges in Ulysses.Yale University describes the mission of the Whitney Humanities Center thusly:"The Whitney Humanities Center is an interdisciplinary institution that reflects Yale University’s longstanding commitment to the humanities. The Whitney promotes research and scholarly exchange across fields and is especially committed to supporting the activities of faculty and students whose work transcends departmental boundaries. The Whitney is also the home to a broad-based intellectual community defined by a distinguished fellowship that meets weekly, as well as housing the Humanities Program, an interdisciplinary council of scholars from eleven departments responsible for two of Yale’s most prestigious interdepartmental undergraduate programs: Directed Studies and the Humanities major. The Whitney hosts a wide array of events, from international symposia and lectures that bring prominent visitors to the university to small 'working groups' that meet regularly for a free and informal exchange of ideas among faculty and students on topics of more than disciplinary interest."http://whc.yale.edu/about-usMy definitive article "The Rebirth of Heroism from Homer to Joyce" was published In Twenty-First Joyce (UP Florida).I published book reviews on: William A. Johnsen's Violence and Modernism: Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf.Judith Kitchen’s The House on Eccles Street Jennifer Margaret Fraser’s Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce

New Haven, Ct

I taught the World Literature Sequence in Directed Studies and participated in the Poetics of Translation Workshop.At the invitation of Professor Jane Levin, I lectured on ““The Wisdom of Ghosts in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey" and “Oedipal Goodness in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex” in the Whitney Humanities Center.My doctoral lecture, “The Oxymoron of Fidelity in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses,” was published in Joyce Studies Annual after delivering it at Harvard and the University of Chicago in memory of David Grene.I lectured on “The Epistemology of Infidelity in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses" at the 2003 North American James Joyce Conference at the University of Oklahoma.

ZüRich, Switzerland

I was a Visiting Scholar in Residence at the Zürich James Joyce Foundation at the Invitation of Fritz Senn for the spring and summer of 2003. I returned to Zürich for workshops “Naming in Joyce" and "Material Joyce" and consulted by email and phone with Joyce scholars worldwide from America.I participated in seminars at The Jung Institute in Küshnacht, Switzerland with Fritz Senn, John Hill, and Mark Hederman. I studied privately with analysts in training under the Jungian Analyst John Hill.I lectured on "The Ineffability of Water in Joyce's Ulysses," “Onomastic Mysticism in Joyce’s Ulysses" and “Joyce’s Reading in the Original and Joyce’s Lost Greek Lexicon.”

Dublin, Ireland

Invited by Professor Anne Fogarty, I was a visiting faculty lecturer for the Joyce Summer School, participating in lectures, reading groups, workshops and anthropological Ulysses field trips.Fritz Senn, Founder of the Zurich Joyce Foundation, and I gave a public dialogue exemplifying spontaneous, collaborative learning called “The Return of the Duologue: Complementary Reading of Homer and Joyce.”I participated in the Finnegans Wake Reading Group with Professor John Bishop and Irish Times journalist and Dublin Joyce Center scholar Terrence Killeen.I lectured and taught interactive seminars on “Faithful Wives and Their Foibles in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses.”

Chicago, Il

I taught in the Humanities Core Course "Human Being and Citizen," supervised by my former Professor Herman Sinaiko. Readings included Homer’s Iliad, The Book of Genesis, Plato’s Apology and Crito, Aristotle’s Ethics, Augustine’s Confessions and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.I published three reviews on Joyce scholarship and Joyce conferences.I participated in the weekly University of Chicago Faculty Workshop "On Teaching in the College: Visions of Pedagogy," led by Professor Herman Sinaiko.

Princess Anne, Md

I was the professor on a live afternoon tutoring program for homework help in math and language arts, broadcasting four programs weekly.I took calls from students with questions live on air and taught spontaneously during the hour.I published three reviews on James Joyce scholarship and conferences.

New London, Ct

I designed and taught a freshman English course, “Heroes and Homecomings.”Readings included Heaney’s The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce’s Dubliners, Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” Cummings’ “I Sing of Olaf,” Frazier’s Cold Mountain, Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and Stegner’s Crossing to Safety.I gave three lectures at academic conferences:“Do Heroes Take Prozac? Helen’s Magic Drug Nepenthes in Homer’s Odyssey and the Ethics of Psychotropic Drug Use” for the Popular Culture Association“The Enigma of Heroic Naming in James Joyce’s Ulysses” for the Modern Language Association“Justifying Joyce: Why His Molly and Homer’s Penelope Are Two of a Kind" for the American Comparative Literature Association at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Chicago, Il

I led reading groups in preparation for the Fall Weekend of the Basic Program in Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, where I gave my debut public lecture, “The Meaning of Heroism in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses," on a panel with fellow lecturers Professors David Grene and Stephanie Nelson.I also gave an introductory lecture and seminar on “James Joyce’s The Dead, On Film and In Text."

The Committee On Social Thought, Master'S Degree (M.A.), Doctorate Of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Activities and Societies: Master's Essay: "The Mutability of Divinity in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound"Doctoral Lecture: "The Oxymoron.

The College, Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Fundamentals: Issues And Texts

Activities and Societies: Co-editor of Chicago Literary Review; Staff Writer for Grey City Journal. Dean's List, GPA: 3.95The Chicago Core.

Laboratory Schools, Liberal Arts And Sciences, Grades 1-12

Activities and Societies: Gymnastics, Coaches Award; Renaissance Literary Magazine Editor; National Merit Semi-Finalist; Yearbook EditorI.