The Clemente Program was initiated by Early Shorris in New York as a way of helping people who had fallen on bad luck to find a way back to their own spiritual and creative dignity through engaging with the arts and with ideas. His book Riches for the Poor documents his amazing success with this venture. In Sydney Australian Catholic University continued his work by setting up a program called the Clemente program. This enables people down on their luck to take courses in literature, fine arts, philosophy, aboriginal studies , history and sociology. With four of such units completed these units enable these students to enter ACU as bona fide undergraduate students on their way to completing an arts degree.
In this space this year, you will find all the lectures (slides and audio) for ENGL104 Introduction to Literature (2020). I am posting the content here as well as in LEO in order that your learning partners can follow along with the content as you learn and take part.
Greetings and farewell from A/Prof Michael Griffith (Literature: Strathfield)
I am retiring after 45 years at ACU. While it certainly sounds a long time, I remember vividly my first days on Castle Hill Campus in 1977 and then the flow of new literature students, through Castle Hill, then Mount Saint Mary and occasionally MacKillop. Every year a wonderful crop of new faces, new enthusiasms!…
Mission Australia/ Clemente/ Art Gallery Visit 8th October 2020: How does understanding the visual arts deepen my understanding of the way literature communicates its experiences, its stories…. ??
Audio Recording of our walk round the gallery: Here are the art works that we explored. Look at these along with the audio above:
ENGL104 Clemente Introduction to Literature August 2020
Here are the slides and the recording for this week’s lecture. The recording is a little frustrating to listen to because you will only be able to hear my side of the conversation. From next week I will be posting up the video version of our sessions (with student permission) and you will then be…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 