The Course Catalog
Each quarter, we offer lifelong learners access to more than 40 courses at the University of Chicago.
Summer quarter course registration is now open. For questions, please contact grahamregistrar@uchicago.edu or call 773.702.7249.
Three Misanthropes Three Misanthropes
This course covers three plays focused on misanthropes: two by Shakespeare that are more tragic in tone (Timon of Athens and Coriolanus) and one comedy by Moliere (The Misanthrope). What makes these...
Three Rival Theories of Ethics Three Rival Theories of Ethics
What is the ultimate standard of morality? Is it the best possible outcome for the most people? Is it dutiful and self-sacrificial adherence to absolute rules? Or should ethics aim at cultivating...
Three Visions of International Politics Three Visions of International Politics
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, three eminent U.S. scholars offered competing views of how the post-Cold War world would work. In the early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel...
Truth, Disinformation, and the Media in this Year’s Election Truth, Disinformation, and the Media in this Year’s Election
How does anyone know what’s true any more? This year, voters are being asked to choose new leaders in the midst of a chaotic, polarized and radically disrupted news environment. Getting to the truth...
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves
In this course we’ll read three of Virginia Woolf’s great novels: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves, all published between 1925 and 1931. Woolf is an exquisite prose stylist, psychologist...
War and Freedom in the Mississippi Valley War and Freedom in the Mississippi Valley
This course is an introduction to emancipation in the Mississippi Valley, which will include the State of Illinois and the critical town of Cairo in the South. Students will be exposed to a variety of...
What are Islands for, in Novels? What are Islands for, in Novels?
This course covers classic and more recent ‘island novels’ with a view to asking what the island affords the novel. Not what the island means, but rather what kinds of stories the island enables the...
White Gold: Global Histories of Porcelain, Pleasure and Power White Gold: Global Histories of Porcelain, Pleasure and Power
This course explores the entangled histories of porcelain and the people who created, traded, admired, collected and died for it, its beginnings in China, its development as a coveted trade commodity...
Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White
The “woman in white” of the title is a mysterious young woman in distress whom art teacher Walter Hartright attempts to help. Much like The Moonstone, the story is an early detective novel told by...
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
Intensive Reading Course
A close, intensive reading of (topically) selected sections of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Topics include: the nature of philosophy, the problem of meaning...