The New College Liberal Arts program is for those who wish to learn how to think, not what to think. The great ideas covered in this program have been the foundation of dynamic, independent thinking for millennia. Come join us in learning the wisdom of the ages.
2024-2025 Great Books Course Reading Lists
Enuma Elish, trans. Stephanie Dailey (Oxford World’s Classics) Genesis1-9 (students can pick their preferred translation if they have one, but I recommend the New King James Version) Hesiod, Works and Days, trans. Martin West (Oxford World’s Classics) Homer, Odyssey 9-11, 13-14; Iliad 1, 5, 9, 16-17, 22, 24, trans. Robert Fagles (Penguin) Aeschylus, Agamemnon, trans. Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago, Aeschylus II) Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, trans. Bernard Knox (Simon & Schuster enriched classics) Euripides, Bacchae, trans. William Arrowsmith (University of Chicago, Euripides V) Aristophanes, Clouds, trans. Aaron Poochigian (Liveright) Virgil, Aeneid, trans. Allen Mandelbaum 1-2, 4, 6-7, 12 (Bantam) Plutarch, Lives: Demosthenes and Cicero, Caesar and Alexander, trans. Arthur Hugh Clough (Modern Library) Livy, History of Rome Book 1, trans. T.J. Luce (Oxford World’s Classics) Tacitus, Annals Book 1, trans. Michael Grant (Penguin)
Plato, Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Phaedo, Republic (selections) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, selections from works on logic, Metaphysics Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe Epictetus, Discourses Seneca, Letters
Preferred editions:
Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Second edition. Translated by G.M.A. Grube, revised by John Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. ISBN 978-0872206335. Plato, Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube and Revised by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992. ISBN: 978-0872201361 Aristotle, Aristotle: Selections. Translated by Irwin, T. and Fine, G. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995. ISBN: 978-0915145676 Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe. Translated by Ronald Melville. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0199555147 Seneca, Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. Translated by Richard Gummere. New York: Dover, 2016. ISBN: 978-0486811246 Epictetus, Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Translated by Robin Hard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-0199595181
Euclid’s Elements Paperback Dana Densmore (Editor), Green Lion Press Maybe: Measurement by Paul Lockhart, Belknap Press (2012)
Augustine, Confessions Aquinas, Summa Theologica Anselm, Proslogion Abelard, Ethics Lampert of Hersfeld, Annals Dante, The Divine Comedy
Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought Crow, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution: Revised Edition
Selections from:
Ptolemy, Almagest Copernicus, On the Revolutions of of Heavenly Bodies Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Hobbes, Leviathan Locke, Second Treatise of Government Smith, The Wealth of Nations Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 Madison, et. al, Constitution of the United States of America Hamilton, Jay, Madison, The Federalist Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For Madison, The Bill of Rights Hamilton, Madison, The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794 Lincoln, Selected Speeches Civil Rights Act of 1866; Civil War Amendments
TBA
Machiavelli, The Prince Rousseau, The Social Contract Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto Mill, On Liberty Weber, “Science as a Vocation” and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Selections from:
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Faculty Bios:
Dr. David Allen Harvey received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his B.A. from Rice University and has taught at New College of Florida since 2000. His past administrative service includes stints as Chair of the Division of Social Sciences and Chair of the Faculty at New College of Florida, where he currently serves as Dean of the Center for the Study of Western Civilization. A specialist in French cultural history, he is the author of four books, including The French Enlightenment and Its Others: The Mandarin, the Savage, and the Invention of the Human Sciences (Palgrave, 2012) and Tropical Despotisms: Enlightened Reform in the French Caribbean (Cornell University Press, 2024).
Dr. Andrew G. Humphries received his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University, MEd in Education from Endicott College, and BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe. In addition to his undergraduate education in great books, he taught great books math and science courses at University Francisco Marroquin and was a Socratic practice teacher at a great books summer program for high school and university students in Chicago for many years.
Dr. Will Hustwit has been a member of the History faculty at New College of Florida since 2023 and has been teaching since 2011. He graduated from Kenyon College and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi. His specialties include 20th-century American history and civil rights. Hustwit is also the author of two books: James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013); and Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
Dr. Richard Alexander Izquierdo received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and his B.A. from Rutgers University (New Brunswick). He has taught at New College of Florida since 2023. He was the 2013-15 Constitution Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center where he lectured within the areas of constitutional law and contracts. Prior to academia he practiced law for four years in New York City. His main areas of research and publication focus on the American Presidency and its role in creating constitutional change within the original Constitution of 1787.
Dr. Spencer A. Klavan studied classics at Yale (BA) and Oxford (D.Phil.), where he specialized in ancient Greek music and dabbled in Stoic theories of language. He has taught Greek and Latin language literature, especially drama and epic, in a number of college-level settings. He is associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and host of the Young Heretics podcast, an introduction to the Western canon. His writing can be found at various publications, from the Atlantic to City Journal, and his latest book–coming out in August 2024–is Light of the Mind, Light of the World: How New Science is Illuminating Ancient Truths about God (Regnery).
Dr. T. J. H. McCarthy, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oriel College, Oxford, is an internationally recognized scholar of medieval intellectual, ecclesiastical and cultural history. His published work explores a rich array of musical and historical sources from eleventh- and twelfth-century Germany, focusing on topics such as the intellectual context of Gregorian chant, manuscript transmission and biblical studies. More recently he has worked on medieval historical writing and his 2018 book The Continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle had the distinction of being the first book published in English by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich. He is currently editing Abbot Ekkehard of Aura’s Chronicle for the Monumenta as part of the collaborative project Die Bamberger Weltchronistik des 11./12. Jahrhunderts. Professor McCarthy is a founding editor of Manchester University Press’s Artes liberales monograph series and a corresponding member of the Zentraldirektion of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Dr. Adam Rowe earned his Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, where he also served as a postdoctoral teaching fellow. His research and writing focus on the intellectual and political history of the United States, from the colonial era through the nineteenth century. His book manuscript, “The Rebirth of the Republic: Civil War Senators and the Transformation of American Democracy,” describes how Republican leaders established a new theory of their political system as they scrambled to save it during the Civil War. He has published reviews and essays in various national journals, including the Wall Street Journal, Claremont Review of Books and The American Conservative.
Dr. Jeff Scarborough studied philosophy at Stanford (BA) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.), focusing on the history of philosophy and the philosophy of mind and perception. In previous work, he led the development of a philosophy program and online teaching methodologies at the Stanford Online High School. A current research project develops generally applicable philosophical strategies for thinking and arguing through model texts in politics and political philosophy. Dr. Scarborough has broad teaching interests across the history of philosophy; recent courses include History of Ideas-Ancient Greece and Plato. He is the author of Bricks and Mortar: the making of a real education at the Stanford Online High School. CSLI Press: Stanford, CA (2014) and Perspectives from the Disciplines: Stanford Online High School. CSLI Press: Stanford, CA. (2016), both co-authored with Ray Ravaglia.
Dr. Milo Schield received his Ph.D. Space Physics Rice University (focus on aurora). He is a Fellow in the American Statistical Association. Dr. Schield has over 100 publications with over 1,000 citations, and is the author of a textbook: statistical literacy: critical thinking about everyday statistics. His non-Algebra math course focuses on how context (what is — and is not — taken into account) can influence everyday statistics, disparities and statistical significance.