Santa Fe Senior Seminar Readings

Below is the schedule of senior seminar readings for the Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. Also see

Senior Seminar Readings Fall 2023

This list may be subject to change. Please always check with tutors or cross-reference with the paper reading list distributed by the dean’s office.

Senior Seminar Readings for Fall 2023
Date Reading
August 24 Tolstoy, War and Peace
August 28 Tolstoy, War and Peace
August 31 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller Translation Required): “Introduction” (pp. 46–57)
September 4 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller Translation Required): “Sense-Certainty and Perception” (pp. 58–79)
September 7 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller Translation Required): “Self Consciousness” (pp. 104–119)
September 11 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller Translation Required): “Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness” (pp. 119–138)
September 14 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller Translation Required): “Spirit: The ethical order: The ethical world & Ethical action” (pp. 263–289)
September 18 Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction (pp. 12–56 Rauch translation)
September 21 Marx (All Marx readings from The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker)
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts: Estranged Labor, Private Property and Communism, The Meaning of Human Requirements, The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society, pp. 70–105
Theses on Feuerbach
September 25 Marx (All Marx readings from The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker)
On the Jewish Question, Part I, pp. 26–46
The German Ideology, Part I, “Feuerbach”, pp. 146–202
September 28 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, from the Preface through the “First Problem” and the Epilogue
October 2 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, Preface. I - III, App. (The Paradox & the Offended Consciousness)
October 5 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, IV, Interlude, V, Moral.
October 9 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Preface, Parts I & II
October 12 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Parts III–V
October 16 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Parts VI & VII
October 19 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Parts VIII & IX, “Aftersong”
October 23 Preceptorials
October 26 Preceptorials
October 30 Preceptorials
November 2 Preceptorials
November 6 Preceptorials
November 9 Preceptorials
November 13 Preceptorials
November 16 Preceptorials
November 20 Preceptorials
November 27 Preceptorials
November 30 Preceptorials
December 4 Preceptorials
December 7 Preceptorials
December 11 Preceptorials
December 14 Preceptorials

 

Senior Seminar Readings Spring 2024

This list may be subject to change. Please always check with tutors or cross-reference with the paper reading list distributed by the dean’s office.

Senior Seminar Readings for Spring 2024
Date Reading
January 15 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
January 18 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
January 22 Essay Preparation
January 25 Essay Preparation
January 29 Essay Preparation
February 1 Essay Preparation
February 5 Essay Preparation
February 8 Essay Preparation
February 12 Tocqueville, Democracy in America
  • Vintage edition: I.intro. (pp. 3–16); I.1–5 to p. 68 (pp. 17–68); I.9–12 (pp. 173-198)
  • Chicago edition: I.i.intro. (pp. 3–15); I.i.1–5 to p. 65 (pp. 19–65); I.ii.1–4 (pp. 165–186)
February 15 Tocqueville, Democracy in America
  • Vintage edition: I.14–16 (pp. 237–287); II.i.1–2 (pp.3–12); II.i.5–8 (pp.20–34); II.i.10, 15, 17, 20 (pp. 41–47, 62-63, 71–76, 85–88)
  • Chicago edition: I.ii.6–8 (pp. 220–264); II.i.1–2 (pp.403–410); II.i.5–8 (pp. 417–428); II.i.10, 15, 17, 20 (pp. 433–439, 450–452, 458–463, 469–472)
February 19 Tocqueville, Democracy in America
  • Vintage edition: II.ii.1–4 (pp. 94–105); II.ii.8–13 (pp.121–139); II.iii.1 (pp. 162–167); II.iv (pp. 287–334); II.ii.20 (158–161)
  • Chicago edition: II.ii.1–4 (pp. 479–488); II.ii.8–13 (pp. 500–514); II.iii.1 (pp. 535–539); II.iv (pp. 639-676); II.ii.20 (530-532)
February 22 Melville, Benito Cereno
February 26 Lincoln, Dred Scott Decision
  • Dred Scott v. Sandford (photocopy)
  • Lincoln Speech on Dred Scott Decision, 1857 (photocopy)
  • Frederick Douglass, The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (photocopy)
Lincoln’s Address at Cooper Union, 1860
(Abraham Lincoln Great Speeches, Dover Thrift Edition)
February 29 Lincoln Speeches (all are in Abraham Lincoln Great Speeches, Dover Thrift Edition)
  • “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions.” Address before Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum, 1838
  • “A House Divided.” Speech delivered at Springfield, Illinois at the close of the Republican State Convention, 1858
  • First Inaugural Address, 1861
  • Final Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
  • Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, 1863
  • Second Inaugural Address, 1865
Constitutional Amendments
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
March 4 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapters 1–7
March 7 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapters 8–14
March 25 George Eliot, Middlemarch, Prelude, Books 1–6
March 28 George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 7
April 1 George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 8, Finale
April 4 Freud, General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), “Instincts and their Vicissitudes”, “Repression”, and “The Unconscious” (pp. 71-93, 95-107, 109-146)
April 8 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
April 11 Joyce, “The Dead”
April 15 Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
April 18 Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
April 22 Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics”, Basic Writings, Harper Collins, pp. 89-110
April 25 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”
April 29 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage Books, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier)
Volume I, Facts and Myths:
  • Introduction, pages 3–17
  • Part 1, Destiny, Chapters 1–3, pages 21–70
  • Part 2, History, Chapter 1, pages 71–75, and concluding section, pages 148–156
May 2 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage Books, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier)
Volume II, Lived Experience:
  • Part 2, Chapter 5, The Married Woman, pages 439–443 (to the first section break)
  • Part 2, Chapter 6, The Mother, pages 565 (top)–570 (the end of the chapter)
  • Part 2, Chapter 10, Woman’s Situation and Character, pages 638–664
  • Part 4: Chapter 14, The Independent Woman, pages 721–752
  • Part 4: Conclusion, pages 753–767
May 6 Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
Ch. 12.iii–“Total Domination;” Ch. 13–“Ideology and Terror”
May 9 O’Connor, “Good Country People”
May 13 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
May 16 Plato, Phaedrus