Martha Nussbaum on Liberal Arts

Since publishing her book Cultivating Humanity in 1997, Martha Nussbaum has been a major voice in arguing for the importance of the liberal arts. Her follow-up book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, was published in 2010. In it Nussbaum sees education in an even more dire predicament, since it is increasingly defined in terms

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Claudia Baracchi on Book X of the Republic

On December 5, ECLA was happy to welcome Claudia Baracchi, professor at the University of Milano–Bicocca and Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research. Claudia’s main areas of expertise include Ancient philosophy, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental philosophy, philosophy of history, feminist thought, philosophy of art, political philosophy, and ethics.  Claudia was invited to

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Marx vs. Socrates: Considering Time on Questions of Woman and the Family

What connection can be made between Socrates and Marx, men separated by over two thousand years, but both hugely influential on the history of Western civilization? Are they both intellectuals? Certainly. Both philosophers? Possibly. Both revolutionaries? Not necessarily. The question that ECLA gathered on November 18 to discuss was their relevance for contemporary controversies over

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Tobias Joho on the Peloponnesian War

This past November, the ECLA community was glad to welcome Tobias Joho from the University of Chicago for two guest lectures on Thucydides’ text, The Peloponnesian War.  Currently a PhD candidate with a BA in Literae Humaniores from Oxford and an MA in Classical Languages and Literatures, one of his main research interests includes Thucydides,

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Professor Theodore Ziolkowski on Education in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”

On November 16th, the 4th year BA/Project Year Core class was fortunate to host a guest lecture by Professor Theodore Ziolkowski. Professor Ziolkowski, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Yale Graduate School, is a distinguished scholar in the fields of Comparative Literature and German Studies, as well as a prolific author who has published

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