Reading Seminar 2018-19
Overview
My (Daniel's) experience has been that reading seminars have diminishing returns: they run out of steam after about 8 lectures on a certain book, as everyone starts falling behind, etc. I was thinking aim broader (rather than deeper), covering 3 books, but with fewer lectures. My idea is to partly cover: Beauville's "Complex Algebraic Surfaces"; Atiyah's "K-theory"; and Harris and Morrison's "Moduli of Curves". We would do about 6-8 lectures on each. This allows us to reboot every two months, which I hope will be mentally refreshing and will allow people who have lost the thread of the book to rejoin. Anyways, it's an experiment!
Some notes:
- Each book will have a co-organizer: Wanlin Li for Beauville's book; Michael Brown for Atiyah's book; and Rachel Davis for Harris and Mumford's book. Thanks!
- I left some "Makeup" dates in the schedule with the idea that we would most likely take a week off on those dates. But if we need to miss another date (because of a conflict with a special colloquium or some other event), then we can use those as makeup slots.
Time and Location
Talks will be on Fridays from 11:00-11:50. This semester, Daniel is planning to keep a VERY HARD watch on the clock.
Talk Schedule
| date | speaker | sections |
|---|---|---|
| September 4 | Wanlin Li | Beauville I |
| September 11 | ?? | Beauville II |
| September 18 | ?? | Beauville II and III |
| September 25 | ?? | Beauville III |
| October 2 | ?? | Beauville IV |
| October 9 | ?? | Beauville V |
| October 16 | ?? | Beauville V and VI |
| October 23 | ?? | Beauville VII and VIII |
| October 30 | ?? | Makeup Beauville |
| November 6 | ?? | Atiyah 1 |
| November 13 | ?? | Atiyah 2 |
| November 20 | ?? | Atiyah 3 |
| November 27 | ?? | Makeup |
| SEMESETER BREAK | No meetings | |
| January 29 | ?? | Atiyah 4 |
| February 5 | ?? | Atiyah 5 |
| February 12 | ?? | Atiyah 6 |
| February 19 | ?? | Makeup |
| February 26 | ?? | Moduli 1 |
| February 26 | ?? | Moduli 1 |
| March 5 | ?? | Moduli 2 |
| March 12 | ?? | Moduli 3 |
| March 19 | ?? | Moduli 4 |
| March 26 | ?? | Moduli 5 |
| March 26 | ?? | Moduli 6 |
| April 2 | ?? | Moduli 7 |
| April 9 | ?? | Moduli 8 |
| April 16 | ?? | Makeup |
Feedback on talks
One of the goals for this semester is to help students learn to give better talks. We will add more concrete plans about how to do this later.