Date: Wednesday, June 29
Time: 5:30 p.m. MDT / 7:30 p.m. EDT
Originating Campus: Annapolis | The Great Hall
Speaker: Steve Steinbach, (AGI13). Current teacher at Sidwell Friends, former partner at Williams and Connolly LLP, editor of With Liberty and Justice for All?: The Constitution in the Classroom (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Title: “Reading and Teaching the Constitution”

Is the Constitution of the United States a “great book” in the St. John’s tradition? How might the document be read, taught, and understood intelligently, whether in the nation’s classrooms or our wider civic discourse?  The lecture will explore the Constitution’s continuing relevance by focusing in part on two critical “constitutional moments” from the past: the Alien and Sedition Acts controversy and the Dred Scott case.

Watch the recording of “Reading and Teaching the Constitution”

Date: Wednesday, July 6
Time: 5:30 p.m. MDT / 7:30 p.m EDT
Originating Campus: Annapolis | The Great Hall
Speaker: Gabriela Quercia Kahrl (A02), Associate Director Chacon Center for Immigrant Justice, University of Maryland Carey School of Law.

Title: “It’s Just Talking: Legal Advocacy and the Vital Role of Listening”

As part of our partnership with the Carey School of Law, Gabriela Kahrl will speak about liberal education and the role of listening in legal advocacy, reflecting on the nature of conversations, oral advocacy as a kind of conversation, and why and how listening is a vital legal skill. It will draw from texts/authors, including Simone Weill, the Bible, Plato, and will include examples of law practice.

Watch the recording of “It’s Just Talking: Legal Advocacy and the Vital Role of Listening”

Date: Wednesday, July 13
Time: 4:15 p.m. MT / 6:15 p.m. ET
Originating Campus: Santa Fe | Junior Common Room
Speaker: Nick Starr, Santa Fe Tutor

Title: “Prospero’s Art: Moral and Political Education in The Tempest”

Shakespeare’s Tempest is bookended by two marriages both of which occur offstage: Claribel’s marriage to the King of Tunis before the action of the play begins and Ferdinand and Miranda’s marriage after the action of the play draws to a close. Between these two marriages and occupying the main action of the play is Prospero’s “project,” which seems aimed at teaching his enemies penitence and returning himself to the Dukedom of Milan. And yet, despite his explicit political aims, Prospero himself tells Miranda that “I have done nothing but in care of thee.” What, then, is the precise character of Prospero’s “project” and why does it include as a central feature the courtship and eventual marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda? The lecture will focus on the way that Prospero stimulates, manages, and educates the love of Miranda and Ferdinand with an eye to trying to understand his dual purposes for the happiness of Miranda and for the regeneration of Italian politics.

Watch the recording of “Prospero’s Art: Moral and Political Education in The Tempest”

Date: Wednesday, July 20
Time: 4:15 p.m. MT / 6:15 p.m. ET
Originating Campus: Santa Fe | Junior Common Room
Speaker: Sarah Stickney, Santa Fe Tutor, and John Okrent, Santa Fe alumnus

Title: “Disease & Desire”

A poetry reading by SJC alumni John Okrent and Sarah Stickney. Poet and Doctor John Okrent will read from his new book This Costly Season, sonnets written in the early part of the pandemic and marked by his work at a community health clinic. Sarah Stickney will read work from her manuscript Ready to Choke.

Watch the recording of “Disease & Desire”

Date: Wednesday, July 27
Time: 4:15 p.m. MT / 6:15 p.m. ET
Originating Campus: Santa Fe | Junior Common Room
Speaker: Shannon Chamberlain, Santa Fe Tutor

Title: “Wealth and Virtue? In Search of Reconcilable Values in Jane Austen”

Can the search for wealth and virtue ever co-exist peacefully? Our inheritance from both the classical and Christian moral traditions would tell us no: it’s impossible to pursue both at the same time, and naturally, we should choose virtue over wealth. Enter Jane Austen, whose fortune-seeking heroines of the early nineteenth century suggest that these supposedly incompatible values are anything but. In fact, the pursuit of wealth—particularly in women who have had little access to it, or the power that is derived from it—may inculcate certain socially productive values, and reinvigorate a moribund body politic. Perils await the fortune hunter who seeks happiness, but with a little help from moral philosophy, maybe you can have it all: integrity, love, and Pemberley.

Watch the recording of “Wealth and Virtue? In Search of Reconcilable Values in Jane Austen”