It is in such environments that great ideas are born…and where people find the energy to have a positive influence on the world. The salon gathering not only satisfies our need for collective effervescence, but also our need to live our individual lives with the certainty that we are visible to others and supported by them…Conversation salons are perhaps the new venues for a new cultural revolution: the revolution of rebuilding and revitalizing communities and their creative energies. If the numbers of recently-formed salons, local discussion groups, and internet virtual salons are any indication, we may be witnessing a seminal event in contemporary history: the revival of the ability to talk with others and relate with them for the simple pleasure of doing so. And also for the pleasure of contributing to human progress. –Benet Davetian, Professor of Sociology, Prince Edward Island

The Libertia Society hosts a monthly online reading group discussion. Currently we are working our way through Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s), edited by Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact us.

If you’d like to start your own group, below are links to some ideas and suggestions on using this text based on our experiences.

1: Aspasia: “Pericles’ Funeral Oration” from Plato’s Menexenus (c. 387–367 b.c.e.)

2: Diotima: “On Love” from Plato’s Symposium (c. 360 b.c.e.)

3: Heloise, From “Letter I. Heloise to Abelard” (1132)

4: Hortensia, “Speech to the Triumvirs” (42 b.c.e.); Queen Elizabeth I, “To the Troops at Tilbury” (1588); Cherokee Women, “Cherokee Women Address Their Nation” (1817)