St. John's College Annapolis, MD
Created | Updated Jun 3, 2002
St. John's College is a small liberal arts college with twin campuses in Annaplis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Annapolis campus, founded as King Williams School in 1696, is the third oldest college in the United States. Located on 36 acres in the heart of historic Annapolis, the college has a unique cirriculum.
Called the "Great Books Curriculum'" St. John's features an "integrated arts and sciences program based on a chronological study of seminal works of Western civilization." Students read great books, such as those found on the reading list below, and discuss them in seminar style classes.
Each student partakes in four years of seminar, which encompasses philosophy, theology, political science, literature, history, economics, and psychology. Also, four years of Math include geometry, astronomy, algebra, calculus, and relativity. Students study Ancient Greek, French, English composition, and English poetry for four years in their Language tutorial. Science only covers three years and touches on biology, chemistry, atomic theory, and physics. During sophomore year, students study Music theory and composition.
The readings for all four years are as follows1:
FRESHMAN YEAR
HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
HERODOTUS: Histories
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
EUCLID: Elements
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
PLUTARCH: "Lycurgus", "Solon"
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust
SOPHOMORE YEAR
THE BIBLE
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar", "Cato the Younger"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
DES PREZ: Mass
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
SCHUBERT: Songs
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms
JUNIOR YEAR
CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
HOBBES: Leviathan
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: Essay on the Theory of Numbers
ESSAYS by: Young, Maxwell, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli
SENIOR YEAR
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
SUPREME COURT OPINIONS
HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
WAGNER: Tristan and Isolde
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
WILLIAM JAMES: Psychology, Briefer Course
NIETZSCHE: Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil
FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
VALERY: Poems
WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
EINSTEIN: Selected Papers
MILLIKAN: The Electron
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
FAULKNER: The Bear
POEMS by: Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Baudelaire, Rimbaud
ESSAYS by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle and Tatum, Sussman, Watson and Crick, Jacob and Monod, Hardy
