What Will I Read?
At the core of the Program of Liberal Studies are the six Great Books Seminars that begin in ancient Greece and end in mid-twentieth century America. Along the way, students and faculty read a range of texts from various disciplines and geographies that have been chosen for their depth of insight into human lives and societies, their moral and aesthetic value, and their historical influence. Such a collection of texts could never be exhaustive or finally closed. Rather, the Seminar lists provide a foundation for further reading and reflection, guided by the conviction that the wisdom of the past is an essential resource for confronting the present and building a better future.
-
The Oresteia
c. 458 BCE
-
Purgatorio
c. 1308-1320 CE
-
Paradiso
c. 1308-1320 CE
-
Inferno
c. 1308-1320 CE
-
Proslogion
1077-78
-
Treatise on Law (Summa Theologiae)
c. 1265-1273 CE
-
Lysistrata
411 BCE
-
Poetics
c. 335 BCE
-
Confessions
397-400 CE
-
The City of God
426 CE
-
Pride and Prejudice
1813
-
The New Organon
1620
-
Don Quixote (Parts I & II)
1612; 1620
-
The Canterbury Tales
1387-1400
-
On Duties
44 BCE
-
Analects
c. 476-221 BCE
-
The Descent of Man
1871
-
The Long Loneliness
1952
-
The Brothers Karamazov
1879-1880
-
Invisible Man
1952
-
The Handbook
c. 125 CE
-
The Praise of Folly
1511
-
The Bacchae
407 BCE
-
Medea
431 BCE
-
Madame Bovary
1856
-
Middlemarch
1871
-
Faust (Parts I & II)
1808; 1832
-
The Histories
c. 430 BCE
-
Leviathan
1651
-
The Iliad
c. 750 BCE
-
The Odyssey
c. 750 BCE
-
Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
c. 1169-1182 CE
-
Pragmatism
1907
-
Showings
c. 1393 CE
-
The Way of Lao Tzu
c. 600-200 BCE
-
Taoteching
[600-200 B.C]
-
The Way Things Are
c. 55 BCE
-
The Prince
1513
-
Death in Venice
1912
-
Capital (Selections)
1867
-
Moby Dick
1851
-
On Liberty
1859
-
Samson Agonistes
1671
-
Utopia
1516
-
Don Giovanni
1787
-
Beyond Good and Evil
1886
-
Metamorphoses
8 CE
-
Pensees
1670
-
Crito
c. 399 BCE
-
The Republic
c. 375 BCE
-
Apology
c. 399 BCE
-
Phaedrus
c. 370 BCE
-
Symposium
c. 385 BCE
-
The Enneads
c. 270 CE
-
Bodhicaryavatara
c. 700 CE
-
Poems and Fragments
c. 600 BCE
-
The Tempest
1610-11
-
The Second Sex
1949
-
Three Theban Plays
441-401 BCE
-
Gulliver's Travels
1726
-
The Interior Castle
1588
-
Walden
1854
-
The History of the Peloponnesian War
c. 390 BCE
-
Democracy in America
1835
-
War & Peace
1865-69
-
The Aeneid
c. 29-19 BCE
-
Candide
1759
-
The Blue Book
1933-34
-
A Room of One's Own
1929
-
To the Lighthouse
1927