St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 31, 2008, by Walter Nicgorski as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Nicgorski describes his lecture: "The tradition of criticism of Cicero as a thinker consists in charges that his rhetorical interests and oratorical excellence intrude on his philosophical work, that he is more the patriot than the philosopher, that a busy life of political acti...

Recording of a lecture delivered on January 16, 2009, by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Tuck describes his lecture: "Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, is one of the great masterpieces of European literature. It was published serially, beginning in the 1530's. It is a wild, brawling, bewildering, crazily funny book, notorious in its own time for its a...

Recording of a lecture delivered by Louis Petrich on April 12, 2019, as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The beginning of the recording includes music. A PowerPoint presentation was given at the beginning of the lecture. A typescript of Mr. Petrich's lecture is also available on the St. John's College Digital Archives . Mr. Petrich describes his lecture: "My lecture Friday, on Henry...

Recording of a lecture delivered by Sarah Ruden, author, poet, and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, on January 17, 2020, as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Ruden describes her lecture topic as: “talking about the great book as a means for both readers and writers to regain some sense of the individual self in a modern society--that is, one in which power has become distan...

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 22, 2023, by Khafiz Kerimov as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Kerimov describes his lecture: "The  Almagest  provides very little insight into how Ptolemy arrived at his concepts and models. Ptolemy’s “secrecy” is especially regrettable when it comes to the so-called “equant” ( punctum aequans ), the powerful (yet potentially heretical) ma...

Recording of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2023, by Kevin Kambo as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Professor Kambo describes his lecture: "In Plato's  Republic , Socrates suggests that the best regime is doomed to fail.  This failure is often attributed to inevitable errors in the rulers' eugenic calculations.  I propose that the city's constitution must decline not becaus...

Recording of a lecture delivered on November 16, 2001, by Lael Gold as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2000, by Murray Dry as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 8, 2000, by Anthony Grafton as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on April 9, 1999, by Richard L. Velkley as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 27, 2023, by Ron Haflidson as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Haflidson describes his lecture: "In this lecture, I explore the largely neglected and perhaps totally wrong possibility that when Jesus spoke about 'hell,' he wasn’t talking about the afterlife. The inquiry proceeds by focusing on Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew (the...

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 13, 2000, by Keith Whitaker as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 22, 2000, by Samuel S. Kutler as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on February 23, 1973, by Jacob Klein as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on May 5, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 15, 2023, by Daniel Carranze as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture conducts a close reading of Goethe's poem on the "Metamorphosis of Plants" by situating it within Goethe's larger scientific endeavor to understand what it means for a being to be a specifically living being, in particular what the kind of wholeness exhibit...

Recording of a lecture delivered on January 30, 2004, by Ralph Lerner as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 22, 1999, by Brad Marston as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 24, 1999, by Charles E. Butterworth as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on November 19, 1999 by Josiah Ober as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on March 24, 2000, by Peter Kalkavage as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 1, 2023, by Paul Vasile as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Vasile describes his lecture: "We'll explore practices of musicking rooted in the oral tradition and the ways they enrich and complexify how we interpret music from the page."  Paul Vasile is a church musician, teacher, and composer who finds his greatest joy in collaborati...

Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 4, 2003, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on August 25, 2023, by Suzy Paalman as part of the Formal Lecture Series. William Harvey and René Descartes famously disagreed in their accounts of what the heart is doing as it gives its characteristic beat. Both authors recognize that the heart alternates between squeezing and opening up. Harvey posits that the beat occurs as the heart squeezes closed while Desca...

Recording of a lecture delivered on August 24, 2018, by Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Macfarland's lecture is the first formal lecture of the academic year. Previously referred to as the Dean's Lecture, this lecture is now called the Christopher B. Nelson Lecture.