Great Conversations, One Living Room At A Time

Reinventing the Salon

Reinventing the Salon

Upcoming SmallTalks

Detective Fiction

Why is detective fiction such an enduring cultural form? What does our veneration of the detective-hero—typically an eccentric yet powerful “outsider”—say about us as a culture?  Beginning February 21, and continuing every other month on the second Thursday, SmallTalks will host a series of discussions about the genre that fuels the bestseller lists and Netflix.  Led by Erin Piotrowski, Ph.D. candidate (English) at the U of T.

  • February 21 –  The Origins of Detective Fiction
  • April 11 – The Golden Age and Beyond
  • June 13 – The Detective Hero

$60 pp. Location(s) in Leaside/Forest Hill. 7:30-9:30 pm. Request an invitation and the reading list here!

Does this sound like a great idea for your own book club?  Contact SmallTalks to book Erin or one of the other exciting speakers profiled here. If you have another book or series in mind, we will find you a passionate expert to make the most of your reading.

Recent SmallTalks

SmallTalks Private Concert with Michael Bridge December 9

SmallTalks Private Concert with Michael Bridge December 9

Michael Bridge is a PhD candidate in accordion at the U of T.  Named one of CBC’s “30 Hot Classical Musicians Under 30,” he is internationally renowned for his dynamic stage presence and musical versatility.  Michael will be performing in an intimate home setting on…

Simon Stern on The Picture of Dorian Gray May 3

Simon Stern on The Picture of Dorian Gray May 3

Wilde’s Obscenity Effect: Influence and Immorality in The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde’s three trials in 1895 served, in effect, as an obscenity prosecution of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1). Though the novel was not formally charged with obscenity, Dorian Gray’s first reviewers suggested…

Marco Polo on Canadian Architecture April 15

Marco Polo on Canadian Architecture April 15

Ugly Beauty: Brutalism and the Sublime in Canadian Architecture This presentation examines Brutalism, a dominant idiom in Canadian architecture in the 1960s and ’70s, through the lenses of the sublime and the notion of “ugly beauty,” or the “jolie laide.”  This work drew inspiration from…

Find a Speaker

Architecture

Art

Business and Economy

Culture and Society

Film

Human Rights

Law

Literature

Music

Science

Technology

Custom

BLOG

Detective Fiction

Why is detective fiction such an enduring cultural form? What does our veneration of the detective-hero—typically an eccentric yet powerful “outsider”—say about us as a culture?  Beginning February 21, and continuing every other month on the second Thursday, SmallTalks will host a series of discussions…

SmallTalks on Summer Vacation

SmallTalks on Summer Vacation

  I’ve always wanted to be a writer.  Not true – I’ve always wanted to be an author.  I can write well but I’ve never had the discipline to write every day and I didn’t know whether I had a “voice.”  Several times I enrolled…

Chris Kelleher on Don Juan January 21

Chris Kelleher on Don Juan January 21

“I want a hero.” On Sunday January 21st, 2018 we held our first SmallTalks event. Led by Chancellor Jackman Junior Fellow Chris Kelleher, the topic of conversation was entitled “The Cosmopolitics of Seduction: An Examination of Lord Byron’s Don Juan & Contemporary Politics.” The poem’s…

Copyright © 2018 SmallTalks