First Friday Lecture: “An American Myshkin: A Reading of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March”
Basic Program instructors offer free online public lectures each month discussing ideas from the four-year program or our wider range of course offerings.
About the Event
“I am an American.” To what degree do the first words of The Adventures of Augie March articulate a challenge, to what degree do they promise a program? In 1953 the American century was just getting up a head of steam; what would it look like? What ought it to look like? In this respect if no other, a determined conviction about the worth of what his (adopted) homeland had to offer the world, Saul Bellow resembles Fyodor Dostoevsky. Of all his characters, Prince Myshkin seems to be the one into which Dostoevsky poured the most of himself. This lecture will explore the ways in which the resemblances and differences of Myshkin and March and the two novels in which they figure, reflect Bellow’s worries and hopes about the realization of America’s potential to be a light to the nations.
Who's Speaking
Joseph Alulis
Basic Program Instructor
Joe Alulis has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He has published articles on Tocqueville, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the filmmaker Whit Stillman, and is co-editor of two collections of scholarly essays, Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Freedom (1993) and Shakespeare’s Political Pageant (1996). His most recent publication is “'To Make High Majesty Look Like Itself': Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Nature of the Good Regime” (2018). He has held appointments at three area colleges, Loyola University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and North Park University, where he is currently professor of politics and government and chair of the department. At North Park, his teaching responsibilities include American foreign policy, international politics, and the politics of the Middle East. Alulis first taught for the Basic Program in 1982. His scholarly interests include political philosophy, American political thought, and the thought of Shakespeare, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Dostoevsky, and Saul Bellow. He began teaching the Basic Program in 1968, and has taught many alumni courses on Plato, Aristotle, political philosophy, the sciences, literature, and much else. He is the 2009 recipient of the Graham School's Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program.
Related Events
