What is the Great Books Reading Program?

We take great pride in our great books curriculum, which was adopted in 1937. The tradition of all students reading fundamental texts of Western civilization is the foundation of our education. Our Great Books Reading List includes classic works by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cervantes and more.

Our goal with the Summer Academy is to introduce high school students to the world of critical thinking and discussion while reading great books in subjects like philosophy, literature, psychology, history, religion, economics, science, astronomy, language, and more.

Summer Academy 2026 Dates and Themes

Sessions are hosted on both St. John’s campus locations, in Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM, and online.

ANNAPOLIS

A Week with Shakespeare | Sunday, June 21, 2026–Friday, June 26, 2026

An admirer of Shakespeare once claimed that “Shakespeare cannot be measured.” At St. John’s Shakespeare’s immeasurability makes it impossible to predict where our conversations about his works will lead. Will we discuss how humans might best respond to suffering, or why romance makes fools of us? How to tell the difference between madness and sanity, or what conscience is? Or how gender works? Or…? With the gentle guidance of a faculty member, students themselves will shape their encounter with Shakespeare’s immeasurability, studying together one comedy, one tragedy, and several sonnets.

Class offerings

Seminar (Hamlet)
Language tutorials (sonnets, poetry, drama, and comedy)

Sight and Insight | Sunday, June 28, 2026–Friday, July 3, 2026

Early in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Elinor says of Edward, “At first sight…his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good…is perceived.” Why didn’t Elinor find Edward handsome before noticing his eyes? What influences what we see—and what we don’t? How can we make our sight more insightful? We will explore such questions with the guidance of Austen’s literary interrogation of romance; Euclid’s mathematical examination of optics; and several American poets’ exploration of perception, including Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Frost.

Class offerings

Seminar (Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility)
Language (poetry)
Mathematics (Euclid)

Equality and Inequality | Sunday, July 5, 2026–Friday, July 10, 2026

In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau argues that some inequalities—like strength—are naturally given, and we have little control over them, while other inequalities—like property—originate with us. With Rousseau we will ask: how do these second kinds of inequalities come about? And can they be justified? Through the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, we’ll examine one particularly formative example of inequality in America: slavery. We’ll also examine Archimedes’ penetrating and marvelous analysis of “the law of the lever.” Under his guidance, supplemented by our own observations and experiments, we’ll explore how equality and inequality are at work as bodies come to equilibrium.

Class offerings

Seminar (Rousseau)
Language (The Federalist Papers and American speeches)
Mathematics (Archimedes)

SANTA FE

Wisdom and Wilderness | Sunday, July 5, 2026–Friday, July 10, 2026*

What is wilderness? The American West tells its own story, and over the course of a week in Santa Fe, students will encounter authors of nature and wilderness, as well as investigate the rich landscape right outside their doors. Authors include Wordsworth, Maclean, Thoreau, Twain, Cather, and Goethe. We will ask such questions as: What is the relationship between civilization and nature? Is the human being a part of or apart from nature? How do we sensuously and temporally experience our environment? What does wilderness mean historically in America and to American identity? Why do we care about conservation? Is it possible to conserve the wild?

Class offerings

Seminar (Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, Wordsworth)
Language (Thoreau, Mark Twain, Wallace Stegner)
Lab and Practicum (Annie Dillard, Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants)

*Add on: Friday, July 10, 2026, daytrip with the St. John’s College Outdoor Program, stay one more night with us on campus or two consecutive weeks!

Courage and the Soul | Sunday, July 12, 2026–Friday, July 17, 2026*

What is courage, and what are its deepest possibilities for each of us? What does the life-risking courage of battle have to do with the courage to reflect upon our own lives? We will follow the theme of courage through a range of texts, spanning the ancient and modern worlds: from the Greek historian Herodotus’ 480 BCE account of the battle at Thermopylae, where three hundred Spartans held off the massive Persian army for seven days by fighting with “bare hands and teeth,” to Aristotle’s philosophic exploration of the virtues of courage and “greatness of soul” in the Nicomachean Ethics, to 20^th-century depictions in American film, and finally to Charles Portis’ American novel True Grit, the story of a tenacious young girl’s self-discovery on a quest to avenge her father. We will also reflect upon quietly courageous contemplations in the poems of Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, and Angelou.

Class offerings and special activities

Seminar (Charles Portis’ True Grit, Herodotus and Aristotle)
Film (film screenings will be hosted throughout the week)
Language (Tennyson, Angelou, Dickenson, and more)

*Add on: Friday, July 17, 2026, day trip with the St. John’s College Outdoor Program, stay one more night with us on campus or two consecutive weeks!

Thinking about Paintings and Poetry | Sunday, July 19, 2026–Friday, July 24, 2026*

What can a poem accomplish that no painting can achieve, no matter how great the painting—and vice versa? Both forms of art can profoundly affect our minds and emotions, but in different ways, because each form or genre has its own peculiar possibilities and limits. Our project will be to study painting and poetry by comparing them, both experientially and philosophically. For experience, we will encounter and interpret particular poems (by poets such as Homer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth) and paintings (by painters such as Rembrandt and Bruegel). For philosophical insight, we will read a classic text on painting and poetry, Laocoon by Lessing. One strand of our inquiry will be to compare several works on the same theme: for example, Ovid’s poetic description of The Fall of Icarus, a painting by Bruegel inspired by Ovid’s description, and then a poem by Auden that comments on Bruegel’s painting.

Class offerings and special activities

Seminar and Language(Homer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth)
Activities (visual arts, theatre, and pottery workshops)

*Add on: Friday evening, July 24, 2026, attend the Santa Fe Opera “Madama Butterfly” with us! This is the last week of Summer Academy. All students must depart campus by Saturday, July 25, at 10 a.m.

Online

Students may take a maximum of two online seminars.

Monday, June 15–Thursday, June 18, 2026 (4 days, 2-hour meeting times/day)

• Morning seminar (11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. ET) on Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• Afternoon seminar (3–5p.m. ET) on selections by James Baldwin
• Evening seminar (7:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m. ET) on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice