Indo-Iranians from Herodotus Indo-Iranians from Herodotus
Intended as a prologue to the Rigveda in Asian Classics: week 1 Persian religion and culture, week 2 Gathas, week 3 Scythian myth and culture; Thracians (also from Thucydides).
Introduction to Hume:
The Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morality
Introduction to Hume:
The Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morality
This class will take up the groundbreaking work of David Hume, specifically looking at the groundbreaking theories of understanding and morality that catalyzed Kant's career as an attempt to prove...
Introduction to the Basic Program: How to Discuss Classic Texts Introduction to the Basic Program: How to Discuss Classic Texts
This course introduces students to the Basic Program practice of close reading and discussion. The text we will read closely and discuss is the U.S. Constitution. We will practice abandoning all our...
Introduction to the Basic Program: How to Read Classic Texts Introduction to the Basic Program: How to Read Classic Texts
This course is intended to address some of the more persistent and daunting difficulties we face when beginning to read classic texts of the Western cultural tradition.
We will begin from...
James Baldwin James Baldwin
In this survey of American author James Baldwin, we will look critically at the relationship between Baldwin’s corpus and the various roles Baldwin adopted, was assigned, or was posthumously given. We...
James Joyce's Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce's Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce's collection of short stories, Dubliners, and his semi-autobiographical first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, will serve us as an introduction to a three-quarter treatment...
John Rawls: Theory of Justice John Rawls: Theory of Justice
We will read and discuss John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. This book is an influential and comprehensive attempt to provide a philosophical justification for a conception of justice that supports broad...
Love in Black and White: Baldwin, Hurston, and Lorde Love in Black and White: Baldwin, Hurston, and Lorde
In this follow-up to last summer’s critical examination of the Western canon “Freedom in Black and White: Baldwin, Morrison, and the ‘Western’ Canon,” students will address the question, “What place...
Plato: Gorgias and Phaedrus Plato: Gorgias and Phaedrus
The Gorgias and the Phaedrus are two of Plato’s greatest dialogues. They are most commonly grouped together because at the core of each of them is a philosophical discussion of rhetoric, and the two...
Poetry and Prose of Hart Crane Poetry and Prose of Hart Crane
The master of an impossible syntax and diction, the victim of a tormented and ecstatic passion, had he lived longer, according to Harold Bloom, Hart Crane might well have become our greatest poet, As...