Good Conversation around the Books
that Shaped our World
GREAT WORKS SEMINARS
The Hildegard College Great Works Seminar gives students, educators, professionals, parents, and community members the opportunity to read and discuss the ideas that have shaped history.
No prior experience with these books is necessary.
Participants read a work of philosophy, literature, politics, theology, economics, or natural philosophy and then join one another at our FLDWRK campus for a meal, a Socratic-style conversation with Hildegard faculty, and a special lecture. The setting is casual, and the common goal is to encourage civil discourse around books and ideas that matter to us all.
Reserve your seat, and we’ll mail you the book!
See below for upcoming and recent seminars.
UPCOMING & RECENT SEMINARS
Plato Republic
SUMMER SERIES
Join us for a three-part summer Great Works Seminar series on Plato’s Republic — a book on the shortlist of books worth spending time with.
The question the Republic asks is about the nature of Justice, but as Socrates and his fellows discover, querying the. nature of Justice involves a journey through ambiguity, toil, myth, and enlightenment.
Come for all or part of the series. Discounted price for registrants to all three meetings.
Dates:
Saturday, June 15, 4:30pm - 8pm (Books 1-3)
Saturday, July 13, 4:30 - 8pm (Books 4-6)
Saturday, August 17, 4:30 - 8pm (Books 7-10)
Led by Prof. Carl Sohmer
The City and the Happy Life
Aristotle’s Politics
In the Ethics, Aristotle says that the science that deals with virtue and ethics is politics. And in the Politics, he explains how this works.
Aristotle argues for the importance of shared governance. He grounds political organization in a clearly defined understanding of human nature. And he links political science to the inherent human pursuit of happiness through virtue.
Join us to discuss Aristotle’s ever-relevant and beautiful work, The Politics.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
4:00pm - 7:45pm
Led by Dr. Matthew Smith
Christian Humanism
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy tells the story of the author finding his way to the Christian faith not through theology or evangelism but through reflection on what it means to be human. He was on a quest to find freedom, avoiding what he saw as the superstition's and irrationalities of religious thought, but what he discovered was Jesus Christ as the deliverer of freedom and vitality, of a life most lived. Chesterton is exceptional in his ability to weave together so many threads of human experience and history into a story that is as moving as it is thought-provoking.
Saturday, January 27, 4:00pm - 7:45pm
Led by Dr. Caleb Spencer
Euripides tragic play, The Trojan Women, tells the story of the widows and daughters of Troy immediately after it was taken by Agamemnon, Odysseus, and the other Greeks. The widowed queen, Hecuba, holds a commanding presence, as she searches desperately for meaning — questioning her piety, civic devotion, and role as a mother and wife. Unlike most ancient tragedies, this play does not rely on a significant turn of plot or character recognition to produce catharsis. Its focus is on pathos. Join us as we explore the complex and demanding emotional world of Euripides’s masterpiece.
Saturday, December 2, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Led by Dr. Verónica Gutiérrez
Tragedy & Pathos
Euripides, The Trojan Women
Calvin’s Little Book was excerpted from the Institutes in his life time and contains his mature thoughts on suffering, self denial, and the purpose of human existence. His argument is alien to many in our culture, Christian as well as secular, who find little value in suffering or self-denial. Calvin's Little Book gives us an opportunity to examine how our views of suffering and restraint reflect a greater worldview of purpose and life.
Join us in discussing a valuable book by an author who has had an immense influence on religious, economic, and ethical thought today.
Saturday, November 4, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Led by Dr. Caleb Spencer
Holiness & Suffering
Calvin’s Little Book on the Christian Life
What we Think we Know
Plato, Euthyphro
How can you be righteous or just before God without knowing what these very concepts mean? What does it mean to honor the gods? To be pious or holy? In this foundational text, Socrates questions a Greek priest (who should be an expert on the topic!) about holiness, righteousness, piety, proper devotion … only to discover that the answer is harder to find than he thought. Euthyphro's humility (and ours) will be tested!
Saturday, October 7, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Led by Dr. Keith Buhler
“Letters Mingle Souls”:
John Donne’s Sacred Poetry
Once upon a time, John Donne was the English Renaissance’s greatest satirical and erotic poet, only later to become one of his age’s best writers of sacred poetry. Donne was a metaphysical poet who believed that divine presence was intrinsic to language itself. We can experience God by creatively ordering, and sometimes purposely disjointing, words.
Come discuss a selection of Donne’s sacred poems. Together, we’ll explore and examine the extraordinary power of language to make the sacred present.
Saturday, September 2, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Led by Dr. Brian Ballard
One of Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays, As You Like It contains everything you expect in an Elizabethan comedy — disguise, buffoonery, lyrical beauty, sadness, and a happy ending. It pits city against country, low born against high born, man against woman, and beauty against ugliness.
Join us in discussing and reading together from As You Like It. We’ll approach the comic form as a genre. How do comedies clarify the world for us?
Saturday, July 29, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Led by. Fr. Hayden Butler and Dr. Matthew Smith
Love & Dishonesty
Shakespeare’s As You Like It
Beauty & Brokenness
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
As its critical reception in its first 20 years attests, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is the first great novel of the 21st century. It helps us to see the beauty of creation and the ways that this beauty calls forth our response of worship. Steeped in the promises and burdens of Protestant theology, Robinson suggests that seeing the beautiful in what is broken is the first step to giving and receiving grace.
In this seminar we will join Robinson in asking the fundamental question “What is grace?”
Saturday, July 1, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
What is the Good Life?
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
What is the good life, a life worth living? And what does the moral good have to do with happiness?
We’ll discuss Aristotle’s seminal work on ethics and the flourishing life, the Nicomachean Ethics. Perhaps no other book has had as great an influence on how western civilization has conceived of freedom, virtue, and happiness.
Nicomachean Ethics, Books 1 - 4
Saturday, June 3, 4:00pm - 8:00pm
On Knowing
Plato’s Meno
In modern and postmodern thought, the question of knowledge precedes all others. What we can know determines what is real. But for Plato and those he influenced, how we know things is tied to what those things really are. In other words, we can know a thing because it is real.
Join us in discussing Plato’s dialogue, Meno, where Socrates asks his companion, “What is virtue?” The two explore what it means to know as well as some fallacies of thought that bear a striking resemblance to our own time.
Saturday, May 13, 4:00pm - 8:00pm