St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures

Recording of a lecture delivered on April 4, 2025, by Dr. Jessy Jordan as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Dr. Jordan is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, specializing in neo-Aristotelian natural normativity. He is also the Director of the Mount’s common, integrated, and sequenced liberal arts core curriculum. He has published numerous articles on moral philosophy and is currently putting the finishing touch...

Recording of a lecture delivered on March 28, 2025, by Dr. Emily Austin as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Dr. Austin is an Associate Professor of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago, with research interests in Greek literature, especially Homer and depictions of solitude in ancient Greece. Her first book, Grief and the Hero: the Futility of Longing in the Iliad, explores the nexus of grief, longing and ange...

Recording of a lecture delivered on April 9, 2014, by Francis J. "Bing" West as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.

The lecture is the second in a series of joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, ...

Recording of a lecture delivered on February 7, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Mary Elizabeth Halper as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

She offers the following description of her lecture: "There are two kinds of speech: the speech we speak and the speech we read. This lecture is on the latter. By way of comparison with spoken speech, and with help from Plato'sTheaetetus, Phaedo,andPhaedrus, the lecture will reflect on written...

Recording of a lecture delivered on January 10, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Greg Recco as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Recco offers this description: This lecture will examine the difficulty of sustaining collective action. In working together, we respond to exigent circumstances, but the social structures we thereby create have exigencies of their own. To the student of history, it can even seem inevitable that temporary t...

Recording of a lecture delivered on February 18, 2005, by Dr. Harvey C. Mansfield as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series. The Andrew Steiner Memorial Lecture fund was created by the family and friends of Mr. Steiner, an alumnus (class of 1963) of St. John’s College, Annapolis. It was established to attract scholars from different disciplines and worlds, recognizing Andrew’s gr...