Pre-Conference Activities

Students will study Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and discuss what they feel the artist's message is.
 

BRUEGEL, Peter the Elder:  Landscape with the Fall of Icarus c. 1558 - Musee royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

Students will read and study W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" (and if time allows William Carlos William's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"), connecting the ideas of the poem with the ideas in the painting.  Discussion should fall to the apathy with which people view the suffering of others.

Both poems can be found at :  http://www.mit.edu/~tprester/bruegel.html

Background information about Landscape of the Fall of Icarus and Auden's poem can be found at http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee
/museebeauxarts.htm

For a study guide to Auden's poem, click here.

Students will connect this discussion with Wiesel's Night trying to determine how the world let the Jew's (and other's) plight happen.

Students will read and discuss the article on memory, focusing here on beginning theories of how the mind works.
( http://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/messingwith yourmind/index.html )

For additional information on human memory, click here.