Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults: YEAR 2

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Founded in 1946, the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults is a structured, four-year, non-credit curriculum in which students read and discuss the classics of the Western traditions under the guidance of experienced staff instructors. Readings span ancient Greece and ancient Israel to modern Europe and America and include works of philosophy, drama, fiction, poetry, politics, and history. These works present a variety of perspectives on enduring human questions, such as: What is justice and how can we best achieve it? What does it mean to live a good human life? What is truth, does it exist, and how do we find it?

Texts*

AUTUMN SEMINAR

  • Sophocles,  Oedipus the King
  • Aristotle, Poetics
  • Euripides, The Bacchae
  • Shakespeare, Antony & Cleopatra

AUTUMN TUTORIAL

  • Homer, The Iliad

WINTER SEMINAR

  • Homer, The Odyssey
  • Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

WINTER TUTORIAL

  • Plato, The Republic

SPRING SEMINAR

  • Aquinas, Treatise on Law
  • Locke, Second Treatise on Government
  • Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin & Foundations of Inequality Among Men
  • Shakespeare, The Tempest

SPRING TUTORIAL

  • Lyric Poetry

*  THE READING LIST HAS VARIED SLIGHTLY OVER THE YEARS.

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    TAUGHT: 1993-PRESENT