Lectures, performances, and theatrical productions are free and open to the public

ANNAPOLIS, MD [January 20, 2026] — St. John’s College has announced its spring Formal Lecture Series on the Annapolis campus. Each week, members of the St. John’s College community gather in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium to hear a lecture, concert, or theatrical performance from visiting scholars, artists, poets, or faculty. 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.

“I’m excited to welcome thoughtful speakers from many different fields of study, and artists who always perform with such beauty,” says St. John’s College President Susan Paalman. “As always, all members of the community are welcome to join us for the lectures and performances.”

All lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays at St. John’s College, Mellon Hall, Francis Scott Key Auditorium, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401, unless otherwise noted. They are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. The full list of concerts and lectures is here: Formal Lecture Series on the Annapolis Campus. Please visit this page for updates and lecture descriptions. Most lectures are also recorded and available on the college’s YouTube channel.

“That St. John’s is a genuine community of learning is shown to all when all members of the college community, joined by friends and neighbors from Annapolis and the area, gather for lectures and concerts at their leisure on Friday evenings,” says Dean of the College Joe Macfarland. “In the discussion period after lecture, attendees form a community of inquirers from all ages and backgrounds.”

The spring 2026 lectures, concerts, and performances are:

• January 9: Assistant Dean Ron Haflidson delivered the lecture “On How to Be Judgmental About Eros” about the Book of Genesis and Aristophanes’ Symposium.

  • Watch a recording of the lecture here.

• January 23: Translator and Bard College Humanities Professor Daniel Mendelsohn will deliver the annual Steiner Lecture, “What’s ‘the Greek Word for ‘Picnic’?’: A Guided Tour of the Translator’s Task.”

  • Daniel Mendelsohn explains the process of translating Homer’s Odyssey with a series of case studies in translation culled from over six years of working on his Odyssey translation. He shows the translator at work as he grapples with the distinctive challenges posed by Homer’s poetry, which still bears the traces of an oral composition: the rhythms, diction, and tone, the poet’s use of line-breaks, alliteration, and assonance, and the real meaning of some of his most famous phrases, such as “gray-eyed Athena” and “winged words.”

• February 6: Annapolis tutor Janet Dougherty will deliver the lecture “Montesquieu’s Persian Letters: Cartesian Rationalism, Rebellious Souls.”

  • Usbek, the most prolific writer in Montesquieu’s epistolary novel The Persian Letters, is in voluntary exile from his homeland and his harem. During his sojourn in Europe his perspective as a stranger provides the freedom he needs to develop an understanding of good government completely different from Persian despotic rule. His ideas cohere into a sort of Cartesian political science. But while these ideas diverge continually from an endorsement of despotism, he feels more and more compelled to impose his will on his wives and their guards. Usbek’s hope to be loved by the women he oppresses endures alongside his enlightened views of law and government. Eventually his wives openly rebel; the collapse of the seraglio leads to Usbek’s collapse. I will argue that Usbek’s blindness to his despotic authority derives from his Cartesian method of inquiry. His enlightenment is linked by ‘a secret chain’ to his deepest prejudice. Montesquieu is pointing to a more thorough science of human, i.e. erotic, beings.

• February 13: Annapolis tutor Leah Lasell will deliver her lecture on chemistry, “Jane Marcet on Free Caloric.”

  • Antoine Lavoisier claims that there is no free caloric in his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry. Less than twenty years later, Jane Marcet, in her Conversations on Chemistry (1806), claims that there is. Moreover, she argues that free caloric is essential for understanding temperature equilibrium. Who is right? We will investigate this question as we consider the many phenomena, experiments, and theories that Marcet presents through conversations in the laboratory between Mrs. B, Caroline, and Emily. Marcet’s treatise might be unfamiliar to our community. Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry is among the most influential and widely read chemistry textbooks written since Lavoisier re-founded chemistry in the late 18th century.

• February 20: Annapolis tutor Brendon Lasell will deliver the NEH lecture, “The nature and power of numbers.”

  • Diophantus begins his Arithmetica by saying that he has “tried to establish the nature and power of numbers.” After a short general introduction, he goes on to pose and solve hundreds of difficult problems about numbers. We will explore whether numbers have a nature and how it can be established, looking at examples of the kind of work Diophantus does with numbers.

• March 20: University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Professor Inger Brodey will deliver a lecture on Jane Austen.

• March 27: Sara Klingenstein will deliver a lecture on form and function.

• April 10: The Parker Quartet will perform a concert.

• Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12: The St. John’s College theatre troupe, the King William Players, will present Shakespeare’s Othello. Times to be announced.

• April 17: Annapolis tutor Louis Petrich will deliver the lecture “Iago’s World, Our World.” This lecture is presented in partnership with the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

  • To think that Shakespeare felt Iago deeply, as he felt Othello and Desdemona. To authenticate what it’s like to corner human dispositions and fantastically turn all heads. To hear the vulgar tongue of the street on the most intimate and volatile matters. Discretion says, “be advised.” You may prefer to hear the musical tongues of men and women well-tuned for constant love and aromatic kisses. Honesty says, “leave them to time.” That is, to honest Iago, the timekeeper who makes hours seem short or seconds stretch forever. He makes only one mistake. That is enough, but we shall see. Shakespeare, when he engendered the double-timed action of Othello (and perhaps in no play did he stage a more satisfying action), probably conspired in these terms: “Iago, accomplice, let’s put people to extreme compulsion of good and evil. At stake is the determination of truth in history and the possession of unmasked souls by heaven or hell.” This lecture will notice things that matter to those outcomes—repetitive stuff, mainly, tracks in the dirt of Iago’s world. And unless my omissions and exaggerations fail to do their rhetorical job, that dirt and those tracks you may recognize as our world’s.

• Friday, May 1, and Saturday, May 2: The St. John’s College theatre troupe, the King William Players, will present Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Times to be announced.

ABOUT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
In an age of political division and digital distraction, St. John’s College offers the education America needs. Through close reading of 200 great books across 3,000 years—from Plato to Toni Morrison, Augustine to Charles Darwin, Euclid to Albert Einstein—students wrestle with the deepest questions of law, justice, freedom, and human good. At a time when many institutions chase trends, St. John’s returns to first principles. The third-oldest college in America, with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, St. John’s is a refuge for civic renewal, civil discourse, and intellectual courage. Learn more about our undergraduate, graduate, and lifelong learning programs at sjc.edu.

“St. John’s is a high-achieving angel hovering over the landscape of American higher education” —Los Angeles Times

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MEDIA CONTACT: Sara Luell, Senior Director of Communications and Operations, sara.luell(at)sjc.edu