Reading Group Session Two:
“Reflections On the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”
Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky’s “At the School Door” (1897)
“Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” with Dr. Ryan Poll
Sessions will be 1.5 hours in length, 45 minutes for Dr. Poll to unpack his reading of the text and 45 minutes for general questions, answers, comments, and ideas. These sessions will be held on zoom and are open to all AWS members, so if you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please encourage them to join the AWS. Remember to update your membership for the 2026/7 year in order to attend. The sessions will be recorded, edited, and made available to the public via Youtube.
Dr. Poll will be referencing “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” from Waiting for God. Translated by Emma Craufurd. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009. If possible, please read this version for ease of reference.
Ryan Poll is an associate professor in the English Department at Northeastern Illinois University, where his research focuses on the intersection of aesthetics, economics, and ecology. His first book, Main Street and Empire: The Fictional Small Town in the Age of Globalization (Rutgers UP), examines how the fictional small town is used to frame and stage normative US narratives throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and into the twenty-first century. His second book, Aquaman and the War on Oceans: Comics Activism and Allegory in the Anthropocene (U Nebraska P), argues that Aquaman is an important figure of ecological justice whose long and storied history helps us chart how global capitalism is destroying the Global Ocean. Other publications include essays on Get Out, neoliberalism, and the theater of genocide.
Ryan’s current book project explores modern forms of what he calls the working-class sacred, tracing its development across poetry, philosophy, and popular culture. Simone Weil is a central interlocutor for this project.