Convocation Ceremony Marks Formal Opening of 223rd Academic Year

Convocation Address: Two Places at Once: On Magic and the Ordinary
Professor Thompson said her talk was inspired by a course she taught last semester called New Modes of Magic, which looked at magical realism.

"I thought I'd share with you the way my teaching has made me change my mind about how magic works," began Thompson. "And I want to show you by discussing two examples, examples that will involve two of my favorite topics: words and dreams."

The first example was about a recent dental appointment Thompson had, during which she cracked a joke-a verbal pun on the word "bridgework"-to dispel some of tension that often goes along with the sight of a dentist's chair. This caused her to reflect on the power of language and how a word, through the use of a pun, for example, can "be in two places at once."

From here, Thompson considered the world of dreams and how dreaming can mean that we are "often are in two places at once-wherever it is we fall asleep-hopefully not in a meeting or class-and wherever the dreamscape takes us…

This means that a standard feature of fantasy worlds and mystical visions, the power of double location, actually has everyday or every-night forms," she said. The fantastical and the mystical, Thompson continued, are much more a part of our daily lives than we may have thought. "Why do we rob the ordinary of its magic?" she asked. "Why do we insist on fantasy and the mystical being a world apart? And what do we lose when we do so?"

The second example cited by Thompson was from the literary world, from a book called Bad Cree by Canadian author Jessica Johns. Often described as gripping and horror-laced, the story concerns a young First Nations woman called Mackenzie and her journey of self-discovery amid the backdrop of the cultural genocide carried out against Indigenous peoples in Canada.

The book draws heavily on the use of dreams, particularly the haunting dreams that Mackenzie and many of the book's characters experience. "Whether they have what are typically called visitation dreams, precognitive dreams, or mutual dreams, they all receive and learn to share valuable information from their nighttime visions. And this helps them build a renewed sense of community and helps Mackenzie overcome her haunted isolation," said Thompson.

"If sharing dreams supposedly risks losing listeners or being too revealing, so does speaking, so does writing. From wherever you are, you're casting off a bit of yourself, hoping it lands well. And what you have to say may not always conform to dominant dictums or others' advice. It may not always be comfortable."

Johns's fiction, said Thompson, plays an important role in underscoring how important dreams, and by extension magic, can be to a writer and how they should not be looked down as a function of storytelling: "Something as basic to us as dreaming doesn't have to be set to one side," she stressed.

"If sharing dreams supposedly risks losing listeners or being too revealing, so does speaking, so does writing. From wherever you are, you're casting off a bit of yourself, hoping it lands well. And what you have to say may not always conform to dominant dictums or others' advice. It may not always be comfortable," she continued.

The writing of Johns, said Thompson, demonstrates two principles she finds magical and that go "beyond ideas that dreams are all in the mind, and minds are fundamentally solitary." The first principle, she explained, is that "far from being confined to the unconscious, dreams can be experienced and shared with direction and intention."

The second, she added, is that that works of literature can serve as experiments in dreaming. "And if dreams are just one example of magic, then this means there's power there waiting for you in any work that honors your own ways of making connections."

Thompson concluded her address by urging the listening students, particularly those who take a literature course or write creatively themselves, to "consider taking the risks of sharing your speech, articulating your visions, and maybe experimenting with words"-even if it's just a pun, she said. Such "creative play of words… can open up worlds of alternative senses, worlds of possibilities-just as dreams do." These forms of "pretty ordinary magic," she added, "are valid and cool." Read Thompson's full remarks.

Music
For the academic processional, concert pianist and Beckwith Artist-in-Residence George Lopez played Water Music by George Frederic Handel. For the academic recessional, Lopez was joined by fellow pianist Gulimina Mahamuti to play Gloria, from Two-Piano Suites, op. 11 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

For the interlude music, Lopez was accompanied on flute by Anya Workman '25, for a performance of Siciliano, from Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major by Johann Sebastian Bach.

During the ceremony, student singers led the crowd in a rendition of "America the Beautiful" and "Raise Songs to Bowdoin," accompanied by Lopez on piano.

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