Basic Program of Liberal Education

Past Courses

BASC70105

Ralph Ellison writes with a vital, incisive, discerning motile voice, and his protagonist, the young unnamed narrator, IS such qualities – in his person, his thoughts, his interactions, his utterances...

BASC50089

"Rightly heard all tales are one." We will read The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, along with selected criticism, and, in keeping with the narrator's injunction, we read for the "one story" and...

William Faulkner
BASC70218

This course will be a close reading and discussion of William Faulkner's novels Absalom, Absalom! and As I Lay Dying. Course Syllabus.

Fernando Pessosa
BASC70213

The stature of the national modernist writer of Portugal, Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), has been on the rise in the English-speaking world. At the time of his death, Pessoa left two trunks full of...

A book page featuring the text "The plays of Shakespeare" above a black-and-white portrait of William Shakespeare.
BASC50084

With (at least) 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and countless turns of phrase (such as “All the world’s a stage”) to his name, William Shakespeare changed the face of poetry as we know it—and his timeless...

A statue of Shakespeare
BASC50098

This course will be covering five of Shakespeare's plays selected from the comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances.

Course Syllabus.

A statue of Shakespeare.
BASC50104

This course continues the close reading of Shakespeare's plays. Four of the Bard's plays are presently being chosen by the members of this seminar. The plays will be posted here as soon as the...

James Baldwin and Toni Morrison
BASC70191

The relationship between African American philosophical literature and the western canon is complex. Whereas great works of European literature have had an undeniable influence on the work of many...

Photo of statue of Plato
BASC70130

Over roughly the last 50 years, philosophers writing in English have made groundbreaking contributions to conversations in ethics and the philosophy of action that stretch back to Plato and Aristotle...

French Literature course
BASC70198

This class takes up two of the greatest and most influential French novels, both set in the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon: Stendhal's The Red and The Black; and what is widely considered...