Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain
Enter a miniature Europe on the brink of the catastrophe of the First World War.
Spring 2027
Online
The autobiography as a genre has had numerous notable entries, among them The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, and its sequels, and Churchill’s My Early Life. But these and sundry others stand in the shadow of the first autobiography, written at the end of the fifth century by the African bishop Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine’s Confessions, however, is more than an autobiography. It is a work with long-standing status in the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and psychology. All these strands together make a single and singularly moving work by and about a soul first fleeing, and then seeking, its proper home.
This seminar will journey with Augustine as he confronts the highest questions as well as the basest human desires; as he explores speculative theories of time and memory as well as intimately personal struggles with family, honor, and loss; and as he strives to overcome his restless self by coming to know his very self as a creature of God.
Image: Fra Angelico, Conversion of Saint Augustine, 1430
Dr. Rosenthal on humanism and the Western tradition
This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It will take place weekly via Zoom; the meeting day and time will be announced. 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.
Alexander Rosenthal is a lecturer in political thought at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Advanced Government and cofounder and director of the Petrarch Institute. His work spans political philosophy, classical humanism, European intellectual history, religion and politics, and liberal democracy.
Alexander Rosenthal is a lecturer in political thought at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Advanced Government and cofounder and director of the Petrarch Institute. His research and teaching span political philosophy, classical humanism, European intellectual history, nationalism, federalism, religion and politics, and the intellectual foundations and critics of liberal democracy. He is the author of Crown Under Law and The Theoretic Life: A Classical Ideal and Its Modern Fate, a study of the liberal arts’ origins in Greek philosophy and the weakening of classical humanist ideals in modernity. Rosenthal has taught at Loyola University Maryland, the Catholic University of America, the University of Glasgow, and Johns Hopkins, where he formerly served as assistant director of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies. He earned an A.B. from Princeton University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from KU Leuven.
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Russell A. Berman
Russell A. Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His scholarship spans German and comparative literature, cultural theory, religion and culture, the Middle East, and international relations.
Sam Postell
Samuel Postell is Assistant Director of the Lyceum Scholars Program at Clemson University’s Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Dallas, with a dissertation on Henry Clay, union, and legislative statesmanship. His teaching and research span American political thought, capitalism, politics and literature, and antebellum political life. He has a forthcoming book on Melville’s Moby-Dick entitled American Epic: Philosophy, Power, and Impiety in Melville’s Moby-Dick.
Angel Adams Parham
Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC) at the University of Virginia. She is active in public-facing teaching and scholarship where she provides resources and training for K-12 educators who are looking to better integrate Black writers and Black history into their teaching.
Laurence Cooper
Laurence Cooper is Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. Most of his research has addressed the question of human flourishing—what it is, how we can know what it is, what it requires from education and politics, and the risks that arise from misunderstanding it.
Daniel Burns
Daniel Burns is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. His research in political philosophy focuses on the relation between religion and citizenship. He has recently served as a staffer for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee and as a full-time contractor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Jacob Howland
Jacob Howland has published five books and roughly 60 scholarly articles and review essays on the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Kierkegaard, the Talmud, the Holocaust, ideological tyranny, and other subjects. His most recent book is Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s Republic.
Bryan Garsten
Bryan Garsten is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He writes on questions about political rhetoric and deliberation, the meaning of representative government, the relationship of politics and religion, and the place of emotions in political life.