Senior Seminars

Although many of their courses take place at the University, seniors view the Academy as their educational home. Seniors may stay connected to the Academy by electing to take a semester-long Senior Seminar. Taught by Academy faculty, the seminars vary from year to year and offer students an in-depth study in a variety of different disciplines.

Current seniors may choose from courses titled Classic Texts in Chinese Literature and Greek and Roman Literature: On Human Nature and Living the Best Life. Past seminars have included: European Literature: Existentialism, The Literature of Nature, Creative Writing, The History and Architecture of Boston, Truth or Faction, and Statistics & Probability.

EN90: Women in Literature

In this class students will read masterpieces of world literature that focus on female protagonists. The class will begin with a number of big, fat, wonderful Victorian novels (including Jane Eyre and Tess of the D’Urbervilles), then proceed to great works of 20th century literature.  Students will read a novel by Virginia Woolf, as well as some of her essays, and will also read Wide Sargasso Sea, a modern re-telling of Jane Eyre.  Students dip into some short stroies and poems as well, and conclude with a contemporary novel, likely The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. For 12s only.

EN90: The Twentieth Century and Its Discontents

As the twentiety century opened, Europe dominated the globe politically, economically, and culturally; yet, by 1991, Europe had witnessed major upheavals in all aspects of life.  Liberalism was seriously challenged by fascism and commnism; Europe lost its global hegemony with both the renunciation of its colonial possessions and its new place as merely one theatre in the Cold War between the Superpowers; the so-called Great War raised serious questions about the Enlightenment worldview and about the value and nature of rationality generally; then, the Second World War and the Holocaust called into question religious and ethical values that had been held for millennia.  Thus, throughout the twentieth century, Europe faced a crisis of meaning.  This course will explore this crisis by looking at some of the key political and intellectual movements in Europe from 1914 to 1991.  Students in the course will discuss the ideological war involving liberalism, communism, and fascism, upon looking at how Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot attempted to establish “utopian” societies in place of liberal capitalism.  Students will also investigate how the Twentieth Century challenged long-held moral, social, and philosophical presuppositions about God, the individual, progress, the media, and truth.  Some of the authors read may include Mill, Marx, Lenin, Freud, T.S. Eliot, Ortega y Gasset, Orwell, Weisel or Frankl, and Arendt.  Students interests will also play a role in what is read.  For 12s only.