Meem Library at St. John’s College. Courtesy photo
Sarah Davis, College Dean
SJC News:
SANTA FE — St. John’s College has announced its Spring formal lecture series on the Santa Fe campus. On Friday evenings, members of the St. John’s College community – alumni, friends, faculty, staff, students and neighbors — gather to hear a lecture or concert from visiting scholars, artists, poets, or faculty. These events are offered free to the community.
Lecturers include members of the St. John’s College faculty — known as tutors — and professors from notable universities across the country. Each lecture is followed by a question period and an engaging discussion between the lecturer and attendees.
The full list of concerts and lectures is here.
Events are held at 7 p.m., Fridays in the Meem Library at St. John’s College, 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505.
“The lecture series supplements our discussion-based program. It gives members of the community the opportunity to consider sustained arguments from scholars of diverse backgrounds across a wide variety of disciplines,” Dean of the College Sarah Davis said. “Attendees are invited to engage directly with the lecturer in the question period that follows, which is an integral and dynamic part of the event.”
The Spring 2025 lectures and performances are:
- Jan. 24: St. John’s College Associate Dean David Carl will deliver his lecture “Gertrude Stein and the End(s) of Literature.”
- Jan. 31: New York Polyphony – NOTE this concert is now sold out.
- Feb. 7: Rory Hanlon (University of North Carolina) will deliver his lecture “The Politician as Ophthalmologist of the Soul: Aristotle’s Conceptions of the Soul and the Aims of Inquiry.”
- Feb. 21: Amir Alexander (UCLA) will deliver his lecture on mathematics.
- Feb. 28: Larry George (Cal State) will deliver his lecture on Thucydides.
- March 7: Steven Berg (Bellarmine) will deliver his lecture on Nietzsche.
- April 4: Jackie Stone (Princeton) will deliver the 11th Annual Rohrbach Lecture, “Buddhist deathbed practices.”
- April 11: Gregson Davis (Duke) will deliver his lecture, ““The paradoxical fate of Tithonos: Time and Immortality in the lyric poetry of Sappho and Horace”
- April 18: David Hayes (Bard) and Jeremy Schwartz (Texas Tech) will deliver a joint lecture on philosophy.
- April 25: St. John’s College tutor Kit Slover will deliver his lecture on Hamlet.
- May 2: Philip Ordning (Pratt) will deliver his lecture “The Pleasure of the Mathematical Text.”
- May 9: Leslie Kay (U. Chicago) will deliver her lecture on neuroscience.
About St. John’s College
St. John’s College is the most distinctive liberal arts college in the country due to our interdisciplinary program, in which 200 of the most revolutionary great books from across 3,000 years of human thought are explored in student-driven, discussion-based classes for undergraduates, graduates and life-long adult learners. By probing world-changing ideas in literature, philosophy, mathematics, science, music, history, and more, students leave St. John’s with a foundation for success in such fields as law, government, research, STEM, media, and education. Located on two campuses in two historic state capitals—Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico—St. John’s is the third-oldest college in the United States and has been hailed as the “most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America” by Quartz and as a “high-achieving angel hovering over the landscape of American higher education” by the Los Angeles Times. Learn more at sjc.edu.
