tuannyriver

I am tenured to the Great Books Program and I’ve taught the four-course sequence several times. More recently, I’ve taught Great Books: Special Topics that is required for the Great Books minor. Initiated by Great Books students, the minor was first offered during 2020-2021 and the Special Topics course is offered annually.

 Reading lists for 2018-2023

GREAT BOOKS I
Homer, Odyssey
Same play as the Getty Villa’s fall theatrical production
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars
Virgil, Aeneid

GREAT BOOKS II
St. Perpetua, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
St. Augustine, Confessions
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Machiavelli, The Prince
Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

GREAT BOOKS III
Molière, Tartuffe
Milton, Paradise Lost
Descartes, Discourse on the Method
Pascal, Pensées
Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality
Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”
Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Austen, Persuasion

GREAT BOOKS IV
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Morrison, Sula or Song of Solomon
Gilkey, The Shantung Compound

GB V: SPECIAL TOPICS ON GLOBAL DIVERSITY

Readings depend on the topic and thematic emphasis. For Fall 2022, the emphasis is on colonialism, postcolonialism, and the multicultural society. Students will read Gandhi’s autobiography; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; and fictional works by Achebe, Naipaul, Lispector, E.M. Forster, and Zadie Smith. 

My first two years of teaching Great Books, 2013-2015
Some titles in the reading lists have changed since then.

Homer, Iliad
Aeschylus, Persians (plus viewing at the Getty Villa)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Plato, Republic
Virgil, Aeneid
Plutarch, Roman Lives

Augustine, Confessions
Benedict, The Rule of Benedict
Dante, The Divine Comedy
de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Machiavelli, The Prince
Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Molière, Tartuffe
Milton, Paradise Lost
Shelley, Frankenstein
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
Locke, Second Treatise on Government
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Franklin, Autobiography

Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Percy, The Moviegoer
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Weil, Waiting for God
Proust, Swann’s Way
Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Last but not least, let’s dance and let’s rap to Great Books!