A History of Our Offerings
Below you will find a a list of all of the texts/subjects studied through the Project since it began. For a more condensed list in document form, follow this link.
If you would like to request that a text or subject be studied by the Project, please do so here.
If you would like to be informed when new reading groups and tutorials are organized, please join our mailing list.
2024
Spring
Reading Groups
Aquinas, Summa Theologica (selections)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books 6-9
Aristotle On the Soul and Plato Phaedo
Augustine, City of God
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice & Junichirō Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
Beowulf
Wendell Berry, Port William novels and stories from the Civil War to World War II
Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares (I & II)
Classic Fairy Tales
Democracy, history, and political theory: readings in Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Tocqueville, and Du Bois
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
Epic of Gilgamesh
Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia
Hermann Hesse, Demian and Siddhartha
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
David Jones, In Parenthesis & Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel
Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Laozi, Daodeching
Lazarillo de Tormes
Gospel of Luke
Plato, Apology of Socrates and Meno & Xenophon, Symposium
Puccini, La Boheme
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Henry David Thoreau, Walking
Giambattista Vico, The New Science
Richard Wagner, The Ring of the Nibelung
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Subject Tutorials
The Art of Writing
Introductory Latin
Introductory Latin
Introductory ancient Greek
Intermediate ancient Greek: Hippocrates’ On Airs, Waters, and Places and the Hippocratic Oath
Intermediate ancient Greek: Plato’s Meno
Intermediate ancient Greek: Book 6 of Plato’s Republic
Tutorials
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, On the Soul and Physics
Descartes, Discourse on the Method & Plato, Meno
Euripides, Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba, The Suppliant Women, Electra, Heracles, The Trojan Women, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, Helen, Orestes, The Bacchae, and The Cyclops
Three Works on Knowing and Unknowing: The Cloud of Unknowing, Farid ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, and Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
Plato, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo, Meno, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Theaetetus
Plato, Phaedrus
Plato, Republic
Plato, Republic
Virgil, Aeneid
Community Seminar
Plato, The Symposium
2023
Fall
Reading groups
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future and Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, Poetics and Rhetoric
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (selections)
Adolfo Bioy Casares, La invención de Morel; El sueño de los héroes; and Diario de la guerra del cerdo
J.M. Barrie, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, E.B. White, Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Margery Williams
Classics of children’s literature: Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, The Little Prince, Peter Pan, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Wind in the Willows
Du Fu, The poetry of Du Fu
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (4 groups)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers
James Joyce, Ulysses
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
Ibn al-Muqaffa, Kalīlah and Dimnah
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death and “Look at the Birds of the Air; Look at the Lily in the Field”
Minsoo Kang, Kim Man-Jung, JaHyun Kim Haboush, Classics of Korean literature: The Story of Hong Gildong, The Nine Cloud Dream, and The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong
The Iroquois Great Law of Peace, Magna Carta, and U.S. Constitution
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Meister Eckhart, Selections from his sermons and writings
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak and Human, All Too Human,
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life”
Derek Walcott, Omeros
Pascal, Pensées
Plato, Apology of Socrates
Plato, Symposium, Phaedrus
Plato, Republic
Plato, Symposium, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Meno, Phaedrus, and Phaedo
Plato, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman
The Book of Psalms
Rig Veda
R. James, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Sensation and supernatural fiction: Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan le Fanu and ghost stories by M. R. James
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Advanced: Dickey, An Introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Plato’s Republic, “Book V”
Ancient Greek: Introductory, Carbonell’s Lingua Graeca per se Illustrata; Dialogos (also by Carbonell); readings from selected texts
Tutorials
Aeschylus, Virgil, Oresteia and Aeneid
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Augustine, Confessions (2 groups)
Dante, Purgatorio, Paradiso
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (3 groups)
Homer, Xenophon, Odyssey, Anabasis
Homer, Odyssey
Plato, Meno
Plato, Republic
Sophocles, The Theban trilogy, Philoctetes, and Electra
Community Seminar
Shakespeare, The Tempest (14 groups)
Summer
Reading groups
One Thousand and One Nights
Thomas Aquinas, Political writings, selections
Aristotle, Organon (Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations) (2 groups)
Augustine, On the Trinity (2 groups)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Old English poetry, Beowulf, The Seafarer, and The Wanderer
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (2 groups)
Confucius and Sophocles, Analects and The Theban Plays
Dante, La Vita Nuova
Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina
John Dewey, Art as Experience
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
E. M. Forster, Howard’s End
Michel Foucault, Selected essays
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Leviathan and Two Treatises of Government
Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (2 groups)
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob
Luo Guanzhong, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy and The Prince
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (2 groups)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (2 groups)
Mwindo epic
Nagarjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance
Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form
Plato, Republic (4 groups)
Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus
Sunjata epic
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Advanced, Homer, Iliad, “Books I & XXIV”
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Lysias, For the Disabled Man
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Plato, Republic, “Book IV”
Ancient Greek: Introductory (2 groups)
Latin: Introductory, Wheelock’s Latin
Classical Syriac: Introductory, George Kiraz’ New Syriac Primer; Robinson & Coakley’s Exercises in Syriac Grammar; A.M Qarabashi’s Herge dQeryono readers; the Syriac text of the Psalms
Spring
Reading groups
Henry Adams and Johan Huizinga, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and The Autumn of the Middle Ages
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Al-Hariri, Maqāmāt (or Impostures)
American short stories: Flannery O’Connor, J.D. Salinger, Mark Twain, and others
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Aristotle, Politics
Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy
Dante, The Divine Comedy
E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Ferdowsi, Shahnameh
Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Clarise Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Thomas More, Utopia
Mozi, Mozi
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Plato, Republic
Plato, Symposium
Plato and Greek tragedy, Various
Quaker writings, Quaker Writings: An Anthology, 1650-1920
William Shakespeare, Sonnets
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and A Room of One’s Own
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Intermediate
Latin: Intermediate, Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Euripides’ Alcestis
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Republic, “Book III”
Latin: Intermediate, Wheelock’s Latin
Latin: Intermediate, Vulgate (Latin Bible)
Latin: Introductory, Wheelock’s Latin
Tutorials
Thomas Aquinas, Selected writings
Aristophanes and Shakespeare, Comedies
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Augustine, Confessions
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Lucretius and Cicero, On the Nature of Things and Tusculan Disputations
Dante, Inferno
Greek Tragedy, Various
Homer and Herodotus, Iliad and Histories
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (2 groups)
Shakespeare, King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar
Vergil and Augustine, Aeneid and Confessions
Community seminar
Joyce, The Dead (13 groups)
2022
Fall
Reading groups
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, Physics
Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (3 groups)
Augustine, Confessions
Bresson, Bernanos, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Selected films and stories
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Euripides/Sophocles, Electra/Electra
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Kenko/Sei Shonagon, Essays in Idleness/The Pillow Book
Giuseppe di Lampedusa/Luchino Visconti, The Leopard (book and film)
Martin Luther, Selected early theological writings/Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Unknown, The Story of Burnt Njáll
Flannery O’Connor, Selected short stories
Erwin Panofsky, History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (2 groups)
Plato, Laws
Plato, Republic (2 groups)
Plutarch, Parallel Lives
Proclus, The Elements of Theology
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare, Roman histories: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra
Various, Short stories from: The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
Sophocles, Theban plays (2 groups)
Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: the Inner Chapters
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Plato, Republic, “Book II”
Ancient Greek: Introductory, Keller and Russell, Learn to Read Greek
Latin: Introductory, Wheelock’s Latin
Tutorials
Aristotle, Selections from Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Physics, Metaphysics, and On the Soul
Augustine, Confessions
Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibniz, Meditations, Ethics, An Essay…, Monadology
Homer, Iliad/Odyssey (3 groups)
Hume/Smith, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals/Theory of Moral Sentiments
Plato, Alcibiades I and II/Symposium
Plato, Meno, Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Hippias Minor, and Gorgias
Rousseau, Emile
Virgil, Aeneid
Community seminar
Montaigne, Essays, “Of Pedantry” (13 groups)
Summer
Reading groups
Leon Battista Alberti and Giorgio Vasari, On Painting and The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, Architects
Aristotle & Plato, Rhetoric & Gorgias
Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Einstein, Relativity: the Special and the General Theory
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Mencius, Mencius
Nietzsche, The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life; Berkeley, CA
Nietzsche, The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life; Bloomington, IN
Plato, Gorgias & Protagoras
Plato, Phaedrus; Berkeley, CA
Plato, Republic
Plato, Theaetetus; Berkeley, CA
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter
Vergil, Aeneid
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Plato, Republic, “Book I”
Ancient Greek: Introductory (3 groups)
Tutorials
Ancient Greek tragedy
Spring
Reading groups
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Cicero, On the Republic and Laws
Cicero, De Natura Deorum
Confucius, Analects
Dante, The Divine Comedy
I/II Samuel
Kierkegaard, Repetition
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Milton, Paradise Lost (Bks. 1-12)
Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro
Plato, Euthyphro, Laches, Lysis, Meno
Plato, Meno
Plato, Philebus
Plato, Republic
Presocratics, Various Works of the Presocratics
Shelley, Frankenstein / The Last Man
Sophocles, Oedipus cycle
Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Subject tutorials
Ancient Greek: Intermediate, Euripides, Hecuba
Ancient Greek: Introductory
Tutorials
Ancient Greek tragedy
Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, Analects, Mencius, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (3 groups)
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Montaigne, Essays
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death
Community Seminar
Plato, Apology (12 groups)
2021
Fall
Reading groups
Augustine, Confessions
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Plato, Apology, Timeaus, and Parmenides
Plato, Philebus
Plotinus, Enneads
Rilke, Duino Elegies
Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Subject tutorials
Biblical Hebrew: Intermediate
Latin: Introductory
Tutorials
Augustine, Confessions (2 groups)
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
Montaigne, Essays
Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides, Meno and Gorgias; Physics, On the Soul, and Poetics; Theban plays; Bacchae and Hippolytus
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Community seminar
Genesis 1-5 (7 groups)
Summer
Reading groups
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Euclid, Elements
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Plato, Republic (2 groups)
Subject tutorials
Biblical Hebrew: Introductory
Spring
Reading groups
Aeschylus and Plato, Oresteia, Crito, and Apology
Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Goethe, Faust
Pascal, Pensées
Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus
Rousseau, The Discourses and On the Social Contract
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
William James, Jerome Bruner, Alain de Botton, and Goethe, The Principles of Psychology; Actual Minds, Possible Worlds; Acts of Meaning; Making Stories: Law, Literature, and Life; The Consolations of Philosophy; and From My Life: Poetry and Truth
Tutorials
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (2 groups)
Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides, Meno and Gorgias; Physics, On the Soul, and Poetics; Theban plays; Bacchae and Hippolytus (3 groups)
Virgil and Ovid, Aeneid and Metamorphoses
2020
Fall
Reading groups
Aristophanes, Frogs, Clouds, Pluton, and Lysistrata
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (3 groups)
Subject Tutorials
Ancient Greek: Introductory
Tutorials
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (2 groups)
Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato, Iliad and Odyssey; Oresteia; Apology, Crito, and Phaedo (3 groups)
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