What could be more ordinary than a piano? Yet the piano, and the compositions created for it, brought forth a revolution in Western artistic culture. Rooted in Ancient and Medieval instruments, it sprang forth from technology of the late Renaissance and soon eclipsed the queen of keyboard instruments, the harpsichord. The piano gave a new voice to 18th-century Classicism, unleashed 19th-century Romanticism, and reinvented itself in the 20th century. It influenced art and literature of these eras and brought music abundantly into the home. This seminar will consider the piano technologically, aesthetically, and culturally, while exploring landmark compositions from its rich repertoire.
Instructor: Dr. Carol Reynolds
- Teacher: Carol Reynolds
Names such as Mannassas, Shiloh, and Gettysburg have long resonated with generations of Americans, and represent key touchstones of American identity. What happened at these places, and why? During this course we will consider these two questions with the aid of primary sources and maps, along with iconic works of art, literature, and poetry. We will explore the perspectives of leaders like Grant and Lee, of literary men such as Herman Melville and Ambrose Bierce, and -- last but hardly least -- that of the ordinary soldier in the ranks. By the conclusion, students will not only be able to reflect upon pivotal events and issues of the conflict, but will also be familiar with the respective strategies, arms, and commanders of the opposing sides.
Instructor: Jerry Salyer
- Teacher: Jerry Salyer
This course focuses upon a slow reading of St. Augustine’s theological and literary masterpiece, The Confessions. Along the way, we will see how he shapes his autobiography using the Book of Genesis, the Psalms, and Virgil’s Aeneid.
Instructor: Dr. Lesley-Anne Williams
- Teacher: Lesley-Anne Williams
As I said about a previous course I have taught on religious poetry, this course is a pure self-indulgence. I could do this study of these great religious poems of T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden--indeed have done so--in solitude in my favorite chair by the fireplace. But why not increase the pleasure by having a conversation about them with others.
The seven poems that make up Auden’s Horae Canonicae correspond to the church’s canonical hours, the divine offices for prayer. But of course, these poems are not merely a recitation of the divine offices, sometimes also called the Book of Hours. They are, rather, and in in a very real way, Auden’s consummate poetical reflection on the nature of Christian belief and, indeed, his own faith. Something much the same may be said of Eliot’s Four Quartets. They are, in effect, his final poetry; also a summation of his belief in poetical form.
Both works are, in my mind, liturgical in character, and appropriately so. Needless to say, also, they are not uncomplicated. Much meaning is packed into the poetry; and we will be after that meaning, while, nonetheless, conscientiously staying close to Auden’s and Eliot’s own speech. The Four Quartets are almost four times the length of Horae Canonicae. So it stands to reason we will spend much of the time in a study of the former. I propose to begin with Horae Canonicae to make certain we give it its due. I believe we can do this while still having enough time to cover all four of Eliot’s poems, though we might have to cheat a little bit.
- Teacher: Vigen Guroian
A five-week summer seminar course designed to assist students in addressing the question "What is classical education?" In answering this question, we will discuss what education itself consists of, how classical education differs from other, modern definitions of education, how classical education fits in to the history of education, and the relationship of classical education to religious belief. We will address questions that are often asked about classical education such as:
Is Dorothy Sayers' definition of education an adequate one?
Should Christians read the pagan classics?
How essential is the study of classical languages like Latin and Greek to a true classical education?
Is classical education relevant in the age of STEM?
Does classical education assume a particular world view, and, if so, what is it?
What are the arguments against classical education and how are they best answered?
Professor: Martin Cothran
In this seminar we will explore the origins of modernity, guided by Charles Taylor’s seminal insight that we live in a “Secular Age.” We will analyze the key elements of modern thought through the pivotal minds that shaped its trajectory, including Ockham, Luther, Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes. In particular, we will see how these figures influenced the emergence of radical subjectivism, deism, atheism, radical materialism, scientism, and the profound separation between man, the world, and the divine. Our analytical discussions will elucidate the complex interplay of ideas that have defined this pivotal period in human history. These insights should help the student understand modernity and the intellectual currents that continue to shape our contemporary world.
Instructor: Dr. Jan Bentz
- Teacher: Jan Bentz
This five-week summer seminar course will offer an overview of teaching through the reading of classic texts on how best to teach and learn. Participants will be guided through a selection of readings covering the three modes of teaching, their origins in Aristotle's rhetoric and their modern manifestation in Mortimer Adler's "Three Columns," which includes didactic teaching (lecture), coaching, and Socratic teaching. The student will also learn the best method of approach to the teaching of certain specific subjects such as the basic skills of reading, mathematics, and penmanship; classical languages; the trivium subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; as well as the proper teaching of the humanities and the natural sciences. Participants will gain a basic knowledge of important pedagogical debates such as the content/process debate, the phonics/whole language debate, the competing strategies of reading instruction, and issues in the debate between traditional education and progressivism. Certain popular contemporary pedagogies will be critically analyzed as well as certain approaches to subjects such as "whole word" reading strategies and versions of the "new math" in mathematics instruction.
Professor: Martin Cothran
- Teacher: Martin Cothran
What does it mean for a man to be free? How does a man use his freedom well? These questions address the heart of the classical distinction between the liberal arts (Latin liber = free) and the servile or mechanical arts. A “liberal” education refers to the steps that lead away (e-ducere = to lead out) from the default, easy, servile starting point of our unrefined nature (erudition = being shaped and refined, i.e. not being rudus or “unformed”) to the full life befitting a free man. In this course, we will explore the tradition of liberal learning from Plato to Karl Marx, examining these questions from all sides. We will ask what it means to be truly educated, what education is for, and what kind of freedom is desirable for man. Hopefully, this will lay a foundation for your other courses at Memoria College as you establish a basic understanding of what all these classes are about.
We will read: Plato, Apology, Crito, Republic I–II; Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Antigone; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics I, Politics I; Plutarch, Lives “Lycurgus and Numa Compared,” “Alexander,” “Caesar”; Job; Augustine Confessions I–VIII; Montaigne Essays (selections); Shakespeare, Hamlet; Locke, Second Essay on Government; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 15–16; Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers (selections); Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Part.
- Teacher: Dan Sheffler