Emily Wilson’s Iliad
Should a poem both beautiful & barbaric be easy to read?
Weekly | Sundays, June-July 2024
Online Seminar
Man’s relation to the wilderness and the beauty that can be found in solitude are taken up in both Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek & Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. A central text of American Transcendentalism, Thoreau’s Walden, captures two years, two months, and two days through both scientific observation and philosophical inquiry. Dillard, inspired by Thoreau’s work, began writing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in 1973 based on her own personal journals. The work is divided into four sections that embody the four seasons Dillard herself experienced at Tinker Creek in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
In addition to discussing self-reliance, simplicity, and the beauty of nature, fellows will be asked to practice these themes by regularly taking time to attend to nature in silence and solitude.
Image: Mount Monadnock, probably 1911/1914
Mary Elizabeth Halper on Dillard & Thoreau
This course takes place weekly on Sundays, via Zoom, from 6 PM to 8 PM ET. It is open only to alumni of the Hertog Foundation's programs. All course materials will be provided.
Mary Elizabeth Halper is Dean of the Humanities at Hertog program and a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. Previously, she was Associate Director of the Hertog Foundation. She graduated with B.A.s in Philosophy and Classics from the University of Dallas and has since been devoted to liberal education in various forms.
Mary Elizabeth Halper is Dean of the Humanities at Hertog program and a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. Previously, she was Associate Director of the Hertog Foundation. She graduated with B.A.s in Philosophy and Classics from the University of Dallas and has since been devoted to liberal education in various forms. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, where she defended a dissertation on the political philosophy of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias.
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Mary Elizabeth Halper
Mary Elizabeth Halper is Dean of the Humanities at Hertog program and a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. Previously, she was Associate Director of the Hertog Foundation. She graduated with B.A.s in Philosophy and Classics from the University of Dallas and has since been devoted to liberal education in various forms.
Ryan P. Hanley
Ryan Patrick Hanley is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His research in the history of political philosophy focuses on the Enlightenment. He is the author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life and Love’s Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity.
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.
Cheryl Miller
Cheryl Miller is executive director at the Hertog Foundation. Previously, she served as deputy director of research in the Office of Presidential Speechwriting and as research assistant to David Brooks at The New York Times. Her reviews and commentary have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and The Weekly Standard. She graduated from the University of Dallas with Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Politics.
Amy A. Kass
Amy Apfel Kass (1940 – 2015) was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Senior Lecturer Emerita in the humanities at the University of Chicago, and coeditor of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. She was an award-winning teacher of classic texts.
Leon R. Kass
Leon R. Kass, M.D., is the Madden-Jewett Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Harding Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. From 2001 to 2005, he was chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Boris Fishman
Boris Fishman is the author of the novels A Replacement Life and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes.
Diana Schaub
Diana J. Schaub is Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a member of the Hoover Institution’s task force on The Virtues of a Free Society. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.