Alumni Offerings

Since the invention of the term medieval to name the interval between Classical Antiquity and the “rebirth” of the Renaissance, the Middle Ages have often been associated with benightedness: violence and repression, backwardness and ignorance. But this interval—of over ten centuries—is a vast and complex historical period that includes the transmission and transformation of classical thought as well as discontinuity with it; rationalism, skepticism, and mysticism as well as religious dogma; cultural contact and exchange as well as aggression and intolerance; and intense interest in subjectivity and personal experience even in the context of powerful institutions.

In this two-year Alumni Sequence, we will read some of the greatest works of the Middle Ages from a variety of cultures in conversation with texts produced before and after them in an effort to develop a sense of the richness and relevance of “the medieval.”

Corrupt politicians, scandalous celebrities, aggressive foreign policy, upheavals in cultural ideas about sexuality and marriage, income inequality, immigration problems, concerns about the justice system. Roman texts area a crucial part of Western civilization, but they are particularly important for Americans to read. From the influence on the Founding Fathers to the comparisons between the Roman Empire and modern America, the Roman Alumni Sequence will explore these issues by pairing the literature, philosophy, and history of Ancient Rome with other classic texts to continue the conversation begun in the four-year curriculum.

From its founding—and even before—America was as much a contested ground of ideals as it was a geographic region or state. Democracy, religious freedom, the pursuit of individual happiness, self-reliance, and perhaps above all liberty: America’s history is the history of struggles over the meaning and implications of these ideals and their collision with American realities like the destruction of native populations, slavery, the exclusion of minorities, the excesses of capitalism, and a culture of consumption. In this sequence, we will explore all of these issues as we try to understand what America really is and what it aspires to be.

Modernity is characterized by the emergence of an entirely new, unprecedented form of consciousness, one that is critical, uprooted, autonomous, and intensely self-reflexive. This two-year sequence is an exploration of the “modern tradition” through classic texts of the modern period (1750 through the middle of the twentieth century) in conversations with earlier classical and premodern sources.

In the first quarter, we explore the meaning and complexities of individualism in the modern period, beginning with “the discovery of the individual” around the early fifteenth century as both a social and political fact and a new, historically unprecedented reality. But what kind of discovery is this? What does it mean to be individual? This course will discuss several major philosophers and social theorists and what is perhaps the supreme literary exploration of the role of memory in the construction of the self: Proust's Swann’s Way.

This sequence introduces Basic Program students to the literary cultures of Asia, using carefully selected English translations of texts from the Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese traditions. “Asian” is a term of convenience: this roster of traditions is far from exhaustive, and their historical impact reaches deep into Africa and Europe. We approach these non-Western literary classics in the same spirit and with the same methods as in the four-year core curriculum— emphasizing close reading, Socratic conversation, and the fascinating threads connecting all these texts together.

As a sequence intended for alumni of the four-year Basic Program, Asian Classical Traditions will further develop students’ skills at approaching, thinking through, and making use of challenging and sophisticated works. The introduction of several new classical traditions into the mix means that instructors will spend more time on historical and contextual background, but the focus will remain on lively engagement with the texts. Beyond classical works of narrative and poetry, the sequence also features a range of religious, philosophical, and historical materials—Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Confucian, and Daoist—which we will approach not just in their own terms but also as products of their respective literary cultures.

For more information, watch our information session.