Watch our conversation with Graham School instructor Clare Pearson to explore Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, which is often described as one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.
Les Misérables is a sophisticated novel that combines history, philosophy, and literature, crossing genres in a way that influenced Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The book interweaves the story of Jean Valjean with a meta-structure that involves us in French post-revolutionary history, including the Napoleonic wars, class relations, the place of the church, the criminal law code, education, the architecture of Paris, and the situation of women.
Our conversation relishes the pleasures of this extraordinary novel.
Instructor Bio:
Clare Pearson joined the Basic Program staff in 1997 after ten years of undergraduate teaching at the University of Chicago and the honors college at Valparaiso University. She did her undergraduate and graduate work with the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where she worked on the intersections of literature and philosophy with special attention to the interrelationship of literature and ethics. While in graduate school, she studied in Germany on a DAAD fellowship, then taught for three years in Germany in a study-abroad program for American undergraduates. She has given papers and published articles on Martin Heidegger and lectures regularly for the Basic Program. In addition to her work in higher education, she also spent a year as lead teacher and acting principal at a Chicago area alternative high school. From 2004 to 2008, she chaired the Basic Program and co-designed the Asian Classics program, which she also chaired from 2006 to early 2009. She is the 2008 recipient of the Graham School Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program, and also teaches in the Humanities and Philosophy Department at Oakton Community College.
