Graham School at the Movies: Exploring The Odyssey

Noah Chafets is currently the Cyril O. Houle Chair of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He holds a BA in philosophy from Vassar College and a PhD from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. His dissertation is about desire and motivation in Plato’s Gorgias and Republic. He has taught high school students in Boston and Shanghai, and taught undergraduates at the University, primarily in core sequences in the Humanities and Social Sciences, for a decade before joining the Basic Program. His interests are well represented by the texts in the Basic Program’s curriculum, but also extend to contemporary ethics and practical philosophy, aesthetics and film.

Cynthia Rutz received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013. Her dissertation topic is Shakespeare’s King Lear and its folktale analogues, a subject on which she has delivered several lectures. For several years, she worked with Mortimer Adler on his Paideia Project, an education reform project which encourages high school and elementary school teachers to help students think critically through Great Books seminars and coaching. Her academic interests include mythology, folktales, Milton, Willa Cather, and ancient Greek philosophy and literature. She joined the Basic Program in 1991, served as Staff Chair from 1999 to 2004, and is currently Director of Faculty Development at Valparaiso University.

With a PhD in religion from the University of Chicago, Dr. Gutmann focuses on Islamic and East Asian thought. His forthcoming book examines how 19th-century reformists in Egypt and China made the case for universal schooling that called for everyone in society to take on the authority and discipline of their own scholarly vocations. His research and teaching also focus on diverse traditions of educational theory and practice, the politics of belonging and the minority question, and liberalism in contemporary society.