Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
Explore the fundamental human question of the nature and existence of God with Melville's great American novel.
Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in June of 1876 in the centennial year of America’s founding, celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. Like the American revolution, the novel launched a revolution of its own – a cultural and literary one with its new “Model Boy” and democratic hero, Tom Sawyer. Twain’s literary revolution continued with his later publication of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), which has been hailed as the great American novel and a template for all subsequent ones by no less than Ernest Hemingway.
This seminar will explore Twain’s two heroes – Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, with a focus on what their characters reveal about America and its ideals, citizenship, leadership, and the ends of democratic life. Both Tom and Huck are heroes, similar in many ways but profoundly different in others. What does the tension between Huck and Tom reveal about the larger tensions between nature and society that lie at the heart of America’s natural rights republic?
Dr. Wolfson on Tocqueville's Democracy In America
This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It takes place weekly on Sundays, via Zoom, from 4 PM to 6 PM ET. Fellows will receive a $150 Amazon Bookshelf voucher contingent upon participation in the course and completion of a brief response paper. All course materials will be provided.
Faculty
Dorothea Wolfson
Dorothea Israel Wolfson is Managing Director of the Hertog Foundation. Previously, she was Director of the Master of Arts in Government Program at Johns Hopkins University. Her research and teaching interests center on democracy and civic engagement, American political thought, American politics, and family policy. She has published articles on Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and on John Locke and children’s literature.
Dorothea Wolfson
Dorothea Israel Wolfson is Managing Director of the Hertog Foundation. Previously, she was Director of the Master of Arts in Government Program at Johns Hopkins University. Her research and teaching interests center on democracy and civic engagement, American political thought, American politics, and family policy. She has published articles on Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, and on John Locke and children’s literature. She has collaborated on a book, Our Sacred Honor, with William J. Bennett, and her essays and reviews have appeared in The Claremont Review of Books, The American Interest, and Perspectives on Political Science. Before joining the Johns Hopkins program, she was a Policy Analyst at Empower America. She holds an A.B. from the University of Chicago in “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts” and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. She lives in Kensington, Maryland, with her husband, Adam, and four children. In her free time, she likes to play tennis and do crossword puzzles.
