Summer Symposium
Announcing the PLS/GP Summer Symposium
June 7-12, 2026
Join us for a week of study and lively conversation as we explore great texts that take nature, natural, and the unnatural as their central themes!
Claim Your Spot at the Table
We can’t wait to welcome you back! To finalize your attendance and select your breakout sessions, please head over to our registration and payment site. [Complete My Registration]
Overview
Professor Steve Fallon: Moby Dick (5 sessions) (Norton Critical Edition of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick)
Prof. Walt Nicgorski: “Democracy, Liberty, and Nature” (1 lecture and 2 sessions)
Prof. Henry Weinfield: “The Poetry of Wordsworth and Leopardi: Nature and the unnatural”
Prof. Phil Sloan: “Nature in science and philosophy”
Prof. Tom Stapleford: “Nature in Aristotle” (1 session)
Prof. Denis Robichaud: “Nature and cosmos in ancient Greece” (1 session)
Longer descriptions of the short courses will be added below.
Prof. Walt Nicgorski
Lecture: "Is Democracy Rooted in Nature?” A probing look into how democracy has been understood and how its merits and deficiencies have been weighed in Western thought.
Two seminar sessions on John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, the full original title being "An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government." This modern classic of social contract theory was Thomas Jefferson's primary source when he penned the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence. It is good to return to this text as we celebrate the Declaration's 250th anniversary; it is America's most democratic document of our founding period. We will approach this text with the classic Great Books method. It is good, of course, to read the whole before our week together. During the week, our first session will focus on Chapters 1-8, and our second on Chapters 9-19.
Prof. Henry Weinfield
This seminar will focus on the poetry of two great Romantic poets, one an Englishman and the other an Italian: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). Leopardi’s poetry will be studied in the translation of his selected poems I have recently completed. Wordsworth needs little introduction to English-speaking readers: one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, he is the legitimate heir to Shakespeare and Milton and a poet
who reacted not only against the Industrial Revolution but against the Neoclassical poetry of the eighteenth century. Leopardi, who is often considered as second only to Dante in the Italian poetic tradition, was one of the most erudite figures of his time; he was steeped in the classics, and had a more complex relationship than Wordsworth to both the Romantic movement and the Enlightenment. Both poets are deeply concerned with the themes of this year’s summer
symposium—that is, with nature and the unnatural; and for both, the concern with nature touches on religious issues as well as on how we should conceive of humanity as a species. The perspectives of Wordsworth and Leopardi sometimes converge, but just as often diverge rather sharply.
Texts: For Wordsworth, I recommend: Selected Poems and Prefaces by William Wordsworth. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Boston: Riverside Edition, 1965. This edition contains everything that you will need, including Wordsworth’s long poem The Prelude (in the 1850 text) and his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” of 1800, which I will ask you to read as background material.
For Leopardi, I will prepare a pdf that contains my (as yet) unpublished translation of the poems we will be examining, along with several prose pieces. For those of you who know Italian or are interested in looking at the Italian texts of Leopardi’s poems, the edition that I use is: Giacomo Leopardi, Poesie. Ed. Mario Andrea Rigoni. Milano: Mondadori, 1987. (This is not necessary, of course.)
Prof. Sloan
The topic of “Nature” reaches to the heart of much of the philosophical history of western and even eastern thought over a long history. Many different things have been meant by appeals to “Nature” in literature, philosophy, theology, and science. How one conceives of this issue bears on scientific thought, ethics, our views of the living world, and human relationships to the world.
These three seminars will explore selectively the scientific and philosophical dimensions of this concept with a particular focus on Darwinian evolution and how this bears on the relation of humans to nature. Sessions will focus on discussion of the primary sources, and additional resources are supplied to help us position our discussions.
Session One: “Nature” as an Object of Rational Domination Governed by Fixed Laws
Readings: Overview from Professor Sloan for Session One[PDF, 354k]
Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part 5 (any edition)
Buffon, “First View of Nature” (1765) PDF Supplied
Session Two: Is “Nature” the Domain of a Benevolent Gardener or the Locus of a War of “Each Against All?”
Readings:
Emerson, “On Nature” (short edition) online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#NATURE
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chp. 4, First Edition (1859), chp. 4 up to “Sexual Selection” and “Summary”. Available online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1228/1228-h/1228-h.htm
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chp. 4, Six Edition (1872) Same selection as above. Most reprint editions are of the 6th edition ( If text has 15 Chps, it is 6th edition). Available online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2009/2009-h/2009-h.htm#link2HCH0004. Compare these two editions on the issue of “Nature”
Session Three: Repositioning the Human in Nature: Toward a Phenomenology of the Human World
Readings:
Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection According to Sex (1871), Chp. 4 up to “More Enduring Social Instincts”. Online at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2300/pg2300-images.html#link2HCH0004.
Erwin Straus, “On the Upright Posture” (PDF Supplied) Download this reading here. [PDF, 4MB]
Sloan, “Questioning the Zoological Gaze” (PDF Supplied)
Prof. Stapleford
Aristotle’s ideas about nature, especially as sketched in the Physics, deeply shaped ancient and medieval thought, and they continue to shape our own conceptions. Yet not everything we associate with “nature” today can be found in Aristotle, and at times, his views might strikingly depart from our own. Our aim in this session, a close reading of Book II of the Physics, is to do our best to understand Aristotle on his own terms.
Text: I will share a pdf of Book II with registered participants later this spring