Type of Document Dissertation Author Rule, William Scott Author's Email Address wrule@comcast.net URN etd-12152008-172132 Title Seventy Years of Changing Great Books at St. John's College Degree Ph.D. Department Educational Policy Studies Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Dr. Philo Hutcheson Committee Chair Dr. Phill Gagne Committee Member Dr. Susan Talburt Committee Member Dr. Wayne Urban Committee Member Keywords
- Curriculum
- Liberal Arts
- Great Books
- St. John's College
- Annapolis
- John Erskine
- Mortimer Adler
Date of Defense 2008-12-11 Availability unrestricted Abstract This dissertation examines a curricular approach at an institution that claims to maintain a liberal arts focus – that of the canon of Great Books as implemented as a formal curriculum at St. John’s College. My research question is: what enabled the Great Books program at St. John’s College to survive for over seventy years? The significance of this question can be seen by noticing that St. John’s College is the only college in the United States to have exclusively adopted reading the Great Books as its four-year curriculum. Other institutions that have experimented with a Great Books program prior to and since its introduction at St. John’s College have continued their existing programs as well, but many have limited their Great Books efforts to an honors course or general core requirement, if their Great Books effort survives at all. My dissertation is historical starting with the influencing factors leading to this curriculum’s introduction at St. John’s College in 1937. I then outline the implementation and document the changes to the list of Great Books comprising the program as it was updated over the subsequent seventy years as documented in St. John’s College’s academic catalogs from 1937 through 2008. I show that the list of Great Books required to be read by every student over the years has contained a consistent core while making slight adjustments.Files
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