At St. John’s the study of language and literature are interwoven, as learning the peculiarities of a given language extends and refines one’s sensibility. Students quickly acquire enough French grammar and vocabulary to begin translating and discussing Les Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and Les Pensées of Pascal, as well as pages from Descartes and Rousseau. Students then delve into the dangerous passion of Racine’s Phèdre and the caustic humor of Molière’s Misanthrope. Seniors edge towards modernity closely examine the poems of Baudelaire and Valéry, often tackling Proust’s Swann’s Way.
Claude Berthollet “Excerpt from Essai de Statique Chimique”
Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac “On the Expansion of Gases by Heat,” “Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other”
Antoine Lavoisier Elements of Chemistry
Edme Mariotte Essays
Blaise Pascal Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids
Michel de Montaigne Essays
Blaise Pascal Generation of Conic Sections
Ptolemy Almagest
François Viète Introduction to the Analytical Art
René Descartes Geometry, Discourse on Method
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
Jean de la Fontaine Fables
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims
Madame de La Fayette Princess of Clèves
Molière Le Misanthrope
Jean Racine Phèdre
René Descartes Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Blaise Pascal Pensées
André-Marie Ampère Essays
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb “Excerpts from Coulomb’s Mémoires sur l’électricité et le magnétisme”
René Descartes Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
Charles Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mal
Arthur Rimbaud Poems
Paul Valéry Poems
François Jacob & Jacques Monod Essays
Madame de Sévigné Letters
Voltaire Candide
Marcel Duchamp Essays
Édouard Manet Art
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary
Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot
The information presented is for illustration purposes only and may not reflect the current reading list and preceptorial and study group offerings. Works listed are studied at one or both campuses, although not always in their entirety.
Tackling two different tongues—one ancient, the other contemporary—encourages Johnnies to “meaningfully think about the way that language constitutes our world, or vice versa, the way that our world constitutes language," says Santa Fe tutor Amie Zimmer.
Internships are increasingly receptive to working with students remotely—even ones in Paris.
Garrett Phelps (A18) fell in love with translation at St. John's. Now, he serves as the poetry editor at an international literary journal.
St. John’s College alumnus Chazaq Llinas (A13) spent two years in the Peace Corps in Africa and is now teaching in France.
Sebastian Huerta (SF20) spent a summer General Pathways Fellowship speaking French—and only French—at Middlebury Language Schools.
St. John’s College graduate Erin Milnes (A88) is the creative director at Catchword Branding in Oakland, California.
St. John’s College tutor Rebecca Goldner is set to deliver a talk July 5 as part of the Summer Wednesday Night Lecture Series on the Annapolis campus.
Alumna Miranda Blas (SF15) is painting portraits of St. John’s students studying abroad as she pursues her master of fine arts degree in France.
Tutors Talk Books is a series of interviews with St. John’s College faculty. In this installment, we caught up with Santa Fe tutor John Cornell, who has taught at St. John’s since 1985.
St. John’s students can study abroad during summer vacations, gap years, or the year after graduation.
