Instructors

Joe Alulis has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He has published articles on Tocqueville, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the filmmaker Whit Stillman, and is co-editor of two collections of scholarly essays, Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Freedom (1993) and Shakespeare’s Political Pageant (1996). His most recent publication is “'To Make High Majesty Look Like Itself': Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Nature of the Good Regime” (2018). He has held appointments at three area colleges, Loyola University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and North Park University, where he is currently professor of politics and government and chair of the department. At North Park, his teaching responsibilities include American foreign policy, international politics, and the politics of the Middle East. Alulis first taught for the Basic Program in 1982. His scholarly interests include political philosophy, American political thought, and the thought of Shakespeare, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Dostoevsky, and Saul Bellow. He began teaching the Basic Program in 1968, and has taught many alumni courses on Plato, Aristotle, political philosophy, the sciences, literature, and much else. He is the 2009 recipient of the Graham School's Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program.

Lindsay Atnip is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Humanities and Social Change and an Instructor in the Basic Program. She received her PhD in 2019 from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, specializing in the philosophy of literature and twentieth-century American literature, especially “modern apocalyptic” fiction and poetry. She holds a BA in Economics and an MA in Political Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Her academic interests include Western literature, literary theory, and philosophy of literature, film, classic social theory, and philosophy. Ms. Atnip joined the Basic Program in 2015.

Paul Cato (He/Him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on Social Thought currently studying religion, literature, and intellectual history. His research focuses on discourses on love and intersubjectivity, particularly those developed by African American intellectual James Baldwin.  He joined the Basic Program instructional staff in March 2022.

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.

Joshua Daniel graduated from the University of Chicago in 2013 with a PhD in Theology. After teaching religious studies and philosophy courses at various Chicago-area colleges and universities--including North Central College, Saint Xavier University, Elmhurst College, and Saint Augustine College--he's now dedicated to the Basic Program's great books curriculum. His current areas of interest include the short story, and the relationship between art and ethics.

Zoe Eisenman started teaching in the Basic Program in 1992, and served as the Cyril O. Houle Chair from 2015–2020. She has a BA in Greek from Vassar College and an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago, where she has also done advanced graduate work. Her main academic focus is on Greek and Roman history and philosophy, classical cultural history, and gender studies. She taught in the College at the University of Chicago and in the philosophy department at St. Xavier University. She is the 2014 recipient of the Graham School's Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program and is currently Director of Academics at the Graham School.

Ms. Thomas Elder holds a BS in biology and advanced degrees in classics and the study of religion. Her research at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago dealt with allegory and textual interpretation in early Christianity. She has taught in a number of different contexts, including a museum, a Girl Scout camp, middle school, high school, college, and seminary. For many years, she taught in and directed the Odyssey Project, a college-level humanities program for adults living on low incomes, as part of the Bard College Clemente Course. She has been a Basic Program instructor since 1999.

Charles Elder joined the Basic Program staff in 2000 after almost ten years of undergraduate teaching at the University of Chicago and Valparaiso University. Though trained as a scholar of religion and psychology—and the author of a critical re-examination of Freud and psychoanalytic thought, The Grammar of the Unconscious: The Conceptual Foundations of Psychoanalysis—his interests have shifted in recent years toward philosophy, social and cultural theory, and issues of modernity, especially the relationship between philosophical, literary, and scientific modes of discourse as integral moments in the abiding search for human wisdom. Prior to his return to graduate school in the mid-eighties, he spent a number of years working odd jobs in Alaska and trying (with mixed success) to comprehend directly what philosophers and poets have historically understood by “nature.” In addition to the Basic Program, he continues to teach in the Social Science Core at the University of Chicago and in the Chicago Odyssey Project, a program that provides college-level humanities education to lower-income adults.

Eva Fernandez holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in English literature. She has been an instructor in the Basic Program since 1999 and has also taught at Kalamazoo College, Denver Free University, and the University of Chicago. The major focus of her graduate work at the University of Chicago was late medieval literature, especially Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in the context of classical and medieval philosophy. Other enthusiasms include classical literature, Old English poetry, seventeenth century English literature, nineteenth century American literature, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and modern and contemporary poetry. She also loves the movies, especially horror and science fiction.  She is the 2011 recipient of the Graham School’s Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program, and the 2023 recipient of the Graham School Innovation in Teaching Award.

Simon Friedland joined the Basic Program instructional staff in 2023. He received his Ph.D. in 2021 from the University of Chicago in German Studies, with a dissertation entitled, “The Pulse of Prosody: Versification and Antiquity in the Age of Weimar Classicism.” From 2021-23, Simon was a Humanities Teaching Fellow at UChicago.  Simon is a graduate of Reed College. While a student, Simon spent one year in Berlin at the Freie Universität.

Stephen Hall has been teaching in the Basic Program since 1992 and is currently ABD for the PhD in Hebrew Bible at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. His dissertation is entitled "Writhing Like a Woman in Travail: Transformations of a Biblical Motif Judaism and the New Testament." Steve began his career in higher education by taking a BA in philosophy of religion. He has also earned a MA in Hebrew language studies at the American Institute in Jerusalem and a ThM in Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Hall has held two academic positions, first at North Park University, then at Trinity College. Since joining the Basic Program, he has worked at learning the four-year curriculum, but has also offered alumni courses related to Biblical Studies: the Hebrew Epic (Joshua through Kinds); the Megilloth; the Poetic books of the Bible; the story of the Exodus; and John Milton's Paradise Lost. He has lectured on Abraham Lincoln, the apocalyptic language in Lincoln's second inaugural address, Abraham, the biblical character, and Jane Austen. Besides reading philosophy and literature, Steve enjoys a round of golf and a match of tennis.

Richard Hoskins holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and a JD from Northwestern University, where he teaches in the law school and has been awarded the law school’s highest teaching award. He is also a practicing lawyer with a Chicago law firm and former Assistant United States Attorney in the Department of Justice, Southern District of New York.  He has published articles in academic journals and taught at the University of Virginia Law School.  His doctoral dissertation explored the relationship between the political thought of Reinhold Niebuhr and the schools of international relations theory, which is also the subject of a chapter he has contributed to the Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr. His primary interests are in political philosophy and theology, US political and legal history, and European religious and social thought.

Michael Jones holds a BA from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico and a PhD from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He wrote his dissertation on the role of property rights in liberal theories of justice. He taught in the Department of Philosophy at Marquette University and was honored to work for twenty years as Associate Dean of the College at the University of Chicago, where he also taught in the Humanities Core. After training as a Clinical Social Worker, he began a psychotherapy practice and is currently an Advanced Candidate at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.

Elliott Krick did his undergraduate study in English and holds an advanced degree from the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and the Study of Methods at the University of Chicago. He has been teaching with the Basic Program since 1965 and specializes in literature and film. He also teaches at the Bernard Weinger Jewish Community Center in Northbrook.

Katia Mitova, who has been teaching in the Basic Program since 1998, holds an MA in Comparative Slavic Studies from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In her native city of Sofia, she worked as an assistant professor of Slavic literatures; editor of Panorama, the national quarterly magazine for literature and political philosophy; and daily correspondent for Radio Free Europe. She has published two books of poetry, The Human Shell, in Bulgarian, and Dream Diary (2013), in English. She has translated (into Bulgarian) and edited about a dozen books of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. She taught philosophy and literature in the College at the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include storytelling as well as the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. Katia Mitova is the 2008 recipient of the Graham School’s Excellence in Teaching Award for the Basic Program.

Julia Laurel Mueller is an essayist and scholar of poetry and poetics, natural history, film, observation and attention. She earned a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 2021 with a dissertation entitled, "The Intelligence of Attention." She also holds a BA in English and French from the Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, and an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago. Her scholarship focuses on the poetics of observation and attention—how perception of the natural world is translated into literary form. Scholarship, criticism and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Bright Wall/Dark Room, ELH, The Hopkins Review, Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, Little White Lies and Menagerie. She joined the Basic Program in Fall 2023.

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.

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.

Kendall Sharp is an Instructor in the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He holds a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and a BA from the College at the University of Chicago. Formerly, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, and he has taught also at DePaul University (history), the University of Illinois-Chicago (classics), and in the College (humanities). He rejoined the Basic Program in 2019, having last served on the staff from 1999–2000. His research and publishing focus on Plato's dialogues as literary expressions of the philosophical life. His teaching has included Greek and Latin languages, classics in translation (literature, philosophy, history), and both classical mythology and ancient Greek science. He is currently preoccupied with the chilly reception Western Civilization gave to the ancient Greek values of political freedom and equality. You can contact Kendall at krsharp@uchicago.edu.

Which Graham course would you most like to take and why?

There are no courses at Graham Kendall would prefer to any others, for he loves them all equally.

David Shiner is Professor Emeritus at Shimer College (now the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College), where he taught for forty years and served several terms as Dean of the College. At Shimer, Professor Shiner taught all sixteen required courses on subjects as distinct as literature, chemistry, psychology, and politics. He has also taught at other colleges as well as at Great Discourses, an online provider of high-quality noncredit courses. He has written on the dialogues of Plato, the philosophy of the French Enlightenment, game theory, economics, and paradox. His non-academic activities include chess, acting, musical performance, and sports. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Pacific Miramar University. He has a special interest in classics, especially classical philosophy.

Aaron Tugendhaft is a scholar of the ancient Middle East and a dedicated humanities teacher focusing on religion, political philosophy, and the arts. He received his PhD from the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University in 2012 and also holds degrees in Art History and Social Thought from the University of Chicago. Before coming to Bard College Berlin, Aaron was a Harper Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. He has also held postdoctoral fellowships at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. In 2013, he received the Jonas Greenfield Prize for Younger Semitists from the American Oriental Society. He is the editor, with Josh Ellenbogen, ofIdol Anxiety (Stanford 2011) and the author of Baal and the Politics of Poetry (Routledge 2018). His most recent book, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020) explores the political power of images and the significance of their destruction.

Jacqueline Victor joined the Instructional Staff in 2023. She received her Ph.D. in 2020 at the University from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and taught as a UChicago Humanities Teaching Fellow from 2020-2022. Her research focuses on medieval French literature.

Michail Vlasopoulos holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and an Mdes from Harvard University. His interests revolve around Late Renaissance and Early Modern science, with an eye to the reciprocal development of the idea of mind and the idea of matter. He wrote a dissertation on the vanishing of matter from Early Modern discourse and the dawn of Subjective Idealism (1547-1713); while, his master's thesis on "Spinoza, Goethe, and the Philosophy of Form" was meant to capture the latent Spinozism behind Goethe's grand vision for an all-encompassing science of living form. He enjoys discussing a wide range of topics in the history of ideas—ancient, medieval and modern—especially as they bear witness to the constant struggle of our habits of thinking to make sense of the ever-elusive complexity of the natural world.

Austin Walker is preparing a dissertation at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought on John Henry Newman's Political Philosophy. He holds a BA in Greek and Latin and Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina and an MA from the University of Mississippi. Before coming to Chicago, he taught English, Latin, and Drama for four years in Hollandale, Mississippi. He and his wife have a young daughter.

Stephen C. Walker holds a PhD in Philosophy of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He studies philosophy and the history of philosophy across multiple traditions; his research focuses on classical Chinese thought and especially on Daoism. Walker has also worked extensively with Sanskrit materials, particularly those reflecting the classical heritage of exacting interreligious debate. Interests that inform his writing and teaching include the personal and social contexts for philosophical work, the ambiguity and malleability of concepts, and the role that humanistic studies can play in cultivating appreciation for diverse points of view.