This episode continues my sporadic series on the various fields students may choose to study while in college. My guest is Dr. Hannah Eagleson studied the great books at St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD) during her Masters degree, then went on to earn a PhD in Renaissance literature at the University of Delaware.

She has written study guides to The Lord of the Rings and to works by C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. Dr. Eagleson also develops programming to support Christian scholars as they follow Christ and love their neighbors, including work with Global Scholars, Chesterton House (a Christian study center at Cornell University), and the American Scientific Affiliation (a scholarly and professional society for Christians in the sciences).

In this podcast we discuss:

What the “Great Books” are
What “Great Books” university programs are and why they were formed
Difference between Great Books programs at pluralistic and Christian universities
Defining the important literary term “canon”
How Hannah got interested in the Great Books and these university programs
The value of understanding the classical modes of education: grammar, logic, and rhetoric and Classical Christian Education
How the classical model of education contributed to interest in Great Book programs
Hannah’s perspective on the medieval period of intellectual history, as a corrective to our current negative perspectives
Details of specific Great Books programs
How Hannah benefitted from being in a Great Books program
The “seminar” approach to coursework in a Great Books program
Why “new” is not necessarily “better,” especially concerning books
How a Great Books program does and does not help you get a job and make a living, and strategies to better your chances
What a “liberal arts” education is and is not
Strengths and weaknesses of Great Books programs
Suggestions if you want to use a Great Books program to prepare you for graduate studies
How Hannah’s Great Books program continues to shape her today, and will into the future
The positives and negatives of how social media encourages us to engage texts
Defining “literary criticism”

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World series, compiled by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago
Baylor Great Texts Program, an honors program within a Christian university setting with many different majors
Biola Torrey Honors College an honors program within a Christian university setting with many different majors
Columbia University Core Curriculum (a program within a secular Ivy League university that engages with great books)
Notre Dame Program of Liberal Studies Great Books Seminars, a program within a Catholic university setting with many different majors
St. John’s College, Annapolis and Santa Fe (the whole program is Great Books)
Thomas Aquinas College, Catholic (the whole program is Great Books)
Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”
C. S. Lewis, “On The Reading of Old Books”
George Herbert’s poetry
John Donne’s poetry
Chesterton House, the Christian Study Center at Cornell University
“Why You Need to Join the Great Conversation About the Great Books,” The Art of Manliness Podcast #430
The New Yorker article “What’s So Great About Great-Books Courses?”

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