COMMUNITY SEMINAR
Thoreau College Community Semnar
The Thoreau College Community Seminar is an ongoing invitation to join in an open, engaging, and egalitarian conversation about important texts and universal ideas. Inspired by the Great Books Seminar model of higher education and Henry David Thoreau’s visionary dream of “villages as universities”, the Community Seminar is open to Thoreau College students, fellows, and faculty and to members of our wider local community of all ages. All that is required is a willingness to read carefully and to engage in thoughtful discussion with respect for fellow participants, a sincere desire to understand the authors and their ideas with openness and good will, and reverence for the truth.
Thoreau College understands liberal arts education to be fundamentally concerned with the cultivation of free human beings who have the capacity to impart direction and meaning to their lives and bring about positive transformation in the world. In our striving to realize an education that meets the needs of the whole human being–body, soul and spirit–we have been deeply informed by the lives and work of Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden), Rudolf Steiner (founder of Waldorf education), and LL Nunn (founder of Deep Springs College).
The question of how the young are educated and brought up into adulthood has been one of central importance for all human communities, in all times and places. This is a field of practice and thought which touches on all disciplines and dimensions of life – philosophical questions of what is true, meaningful, moral, and beautiful, political questions of authority, centralization, and social justice, and economic questions of technology and professional training. Above all, thinking about education forces us to consider deeply what it means to be human, how a person becomes an adult, and the role of an individual in their community. For these reasons, some of the most influential and interesting texts in history have tackled this question in some way, and we will be reading some of them together this semester, starting with Plato and continuing through educational projects seeking to meet the challenges of the present time, including microcolleges like Thoreau College.
Tuesdays from 5:00-6:30 – Starting September 15
At Arkadia/The Commons – 401 E. Jefferson St, Viroqua
To join, please contact Jacob Hundt at admin@thoreaucollege.org or 608-632-3829
Community Seminar Details
Thoreau College Community Seminar – Fall 2026
COMMUNITY SEMINAR DETAILS
Schedule: One Session Per Week – Tuesdays- 5:00-6:30;
Starting on September 15, 2026
Location: Arkadia/The Commons – 401 E. Jefferson St. (In the Cafe/Gallery)
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution encouraged!
Contact jacobhundt@thoreaucollege.org or call 608-632-3829
Texts – Most readings will be selections printed for participants & distributed digitally.
Reading Schedule –
September 15: Plato – “Meno”
September 22: Plato – Republic (selections)
September 29: Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics (or Politics) (selections)
October 6: No Seminar – Thoreau College Students & Fellows on expedition
October 13: Hugh of St Victor – Didascalion (selections)
October 20: John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
October 27: Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Emile (selections)
November 3: Friedrich Schiller, Letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man
November 10: Ralph Waldo Emerson – “The American Scholar”
November 17: WEB Du Bois – Souls of Black Folks (selections) & Booker T. Washington (selected writings)
November 24: No Seminar – Thanksgiving Break
Dec. 1: John Dewey, Experience and Education
Dec. 8: Rudolf Steiner – Selected lectures
Dec. 15: Maria Montessori – Selected essays
Spring 2025 (Starting February 11): Midwestern Visions
Midwestern Visions
Facilitated by Jacob Hundt & Julia Buskirk
Thoreau College Community Seminar – Spring 2025
COMMUNITY SEMINAR DETAILS
Schedule: One Session Per Week – Tuesdays- 4:30-6:00;
Starting on Tuesday, February 11
Location: The Commons – 401 E. Jefferson St. (In the Cafe/Gallery)
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution + cost of books
Contact admin@thoreaucollege.org or call 608-632-3829
Texts –
Copies of short stories will be provided. Copies of books will be available for purchase or to borrow. Edition information available upon request.
Reading Schedule –
February 11: Richard Wright – Native Son
February 18: Richard Wright – Native Son
February 25: Richard Wright – Native Son
March 4: Ernest Hemingway – In Our Time
(March 11: No Seminar – Thoreau College students on solos)
March 18: Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
March 25: Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
April 1: Louise Erdrich, Tracks
April 8: Louise Erdrich, Tracks
4/15, 4/22: (Thoreau College Spring Break & Expedition – No Seminar)
4/29-5/20: TBD
About Community Seminar
The Thoreau College Community Seminar is an ongoing invitation to join in an open, engaging, and egalitarian conversation about important texts and universal ideas. Inspired by the Great Books Seminar model of higher education and Henry David Thoreau’s visionary dream of “villages as universities”, the Community Seminar is open to Thoreau College students, fellows, and faculty and to members of our wider local community of all ages. All that is required is a willingness to read carefully and to engage in thoughtful discussion with respect for fellow participants, a sincere desire to understand the authors and their ideas with openness and good will, and reverence for the truth.
Fall 2024 (September 25-December 4): Southern Gothic
Exploring Southern Gothic
Facilitated by Jacob Hundt & Julia Buskirk
Thoreau College Community Seminar – Fall 2024
Decay, corruption, cruelty, hypocrisy, the grotesque, the uncanny. All of these words have been used to characterize “Southern Gothic,” this uniquely American regional literary genre, born out of the trauma of slavery and war in the 19th century and the alienation and dissonance of rapid industrialization and change in the 20th century. Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Annie Dillard, and Carson McCullers – some of the greatest writers America has ever produced – confront us unflinchingly with physical, moral, and psychological deformity at every turn, while, every so often, still allowing lightening strikes of transcendent natural beauty and human grace to flash through the gloom.
Schedule: Wednesdays from 4:30-6:00 – Starting September 25
Location:the Commons – 401 E. Jefferson St, Viroqua
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution + cost of books. Some copies are available to borrow. Edition information available upon request.
To join, please contact us at admin@thoreaucollege.org or call 608-632-3829.
Reading Schedule
September 25: Flannery O’Connor – Selected Short Stories
October 2: Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
October 9: Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
(October 16: No Seminar – Thoreau College students on expedition)
October 23: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
October 30: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
(November 6: No Seminar – Performance at Landmark Center)
November 13: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
November 20: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
(November 27: No Seminar – Thanksgiving Break)
Dec. 4: Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
About Community Seminar
The Thoreau College Community Seminar is an ongoing invitation to join in an open, engaging, and egalitarian conversation about important texts and universal ideas. Inspired by the Great Books Seminar model of higher education and Henry David Thoreau’s visionary dream of “villages as universities”, the Community Seminar is open to Thoreau College students, fellows, and faculty and to members of our wider local community of all ages. All that is required is a willingness to read carefully and to engage in thoughtful discussion with respect for fellow participants, a sincere desire to understand the authors and their ideas with openness and good will, and reverence for the truth.
Spring 2024 (March-April): Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Community Seminar – Spring 2024
Schedule: One Session Per Week – Thursdays – 4:30-6:00; Starting on Thurs. March 7
Location: Thoreau College Campus – 224 E Highway 56, Viroqua
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution + cost of books. Some copies are available to borrow.
To join, please contact us at admin@thoreaucollege.org or call 608-632-3829.
Reading Schedule
Anna Karenina is a tragedy in 8 parts, with each part consisting of between 80 and 120 pages. We will read and discuss one part for each week of the seminar. The primary translation we will be using is Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky’s Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (2000 – Unabridged).
March 7: Part 1
March 14: Part 2
March 21: Part 3
March 28: Part 4
April 4: Part 5
April 11: Part 6
April 18: Part 7
April 25 Part 8
About Community Seminar
The Thoreau College Community Seminar is an ongoing invitation to join in an open, engaging, and egalitarian conversation about important texts and universal ideas. Inspired by the Great Books Seminar model of higher education and Henry David Thoreau’s visionary dream of “villages as universities”, the Community Seminar is open to Thoreau College students, fellows, and faculty and to members of our wider local community of all ages. All that is required is a willingness to read carefully and to engage in thoughtful discussion with respect for fellow participants, a sincere desire to understand the authors and their ideas with openness and good will, and reverence for the truth.
Fall 2023 (September-November): Introducing Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was one of the most prolific and original thinkers in modern times. The initiator of Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, new modalities in medicine, economics, and architecture, and several new forms of art, Steiner is also notoriously difficult to approach as a thinker. His writings are vast in volume, wildly diverse in content, and sometimes assume familiarity with challenging philosophical or spiritual background information. It can be hard to know just where to start with Steiner, and it helps to start this exploration as part of a group.
This fall the Thoreau College Community Seminar will give participants a chance to encounter Steiner in an open and welcoming context. Together we will read and discuss selections from four of Steiner’s most fundamental texts, covering his conceptions of the nature of human beings and of reality, of the process of esoteric initiation, and of how this kind of knowledge might possibly be attained. This seminar is intended for members of the community who are curious about Steiner, perhaps because they have become involved with Waldorf education, biodynamics, or something else touched by Steiner’s work. Perhaps you are a seeker, perhaps you are a skeptic, or perhaps you are a bit of both. Either way, this is a chance to begin to build an informed perspective. In this seminar there will be no dogma and no off-limits questions. Any jargon we encounter will be translated into plain English, and we will strive to maintain our sense of humor.
About Jacob Hundt –
Jacob has been studying Rudolf Steiner and trying to explain the parts he has understood for over 25 years, since he was involved with the creation of the Youth Initiative High School as a teenager. Jacob completed training as a Waldorf high school teacher and was Program Director and Faculty Chair at YIHS for more than 15 years. Over the years he has participated in and led courses on Steiner, Waldorf education, and biodynamics, and is now Executive Director of Thoreau College, a microcollege initiative striving to apply some of Steiner’s ideas to education for young adults.
COMMUNITY SEMINAR DETAILS
Schedule: One Session Per Week – Wednesdays – 4:30-6:00;
Starting on Weds. September 6
Location: Thoreau College Campus – 224 E Highway 56
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution + cost of books
Texts –
- A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception – a foundational early philosophical work in which Steiner develops his ideas of the relationship between perception, thinking, and knowledge, based on his close study of the scientific works of the great German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
- Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Its Attainment which describes the conditions and preparations needed to begin the process of esoteric initiation, the state of being in which it becomes possible to perceive subtle dimensions of reality not accessible to ordinary physical senses. This is a basic statement of Steiner’s methodology as a researcher of the realms of soul and spirit.
- Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, which presents some of Steiner’s most fundamental assertions about the spiritual makeup of the cosmos and of the human being, as well as what happens to us when we go to sleep and when we die. This text introduces some essential concepts and vocabulary necessary for following Steiner’s discussions of Waldorf pedagogy and most other topics.
- An Outline of Esoteric Science – we will read one later chapter from this lengthy work. The book as a whole deals with many topics, including Steiner’s vast account of the evolution of the cosmos and of human cultures. The chapter selected here is another, quite different, statement of his methodology, which he here describes as a form of Rosicrucian visualization.
Copies of these texts will be provided as a printed reader, although participants may also choose to purchase their own copies of the full works in order to follow up with what we have started together.
Reading Schedule –
September 6: Presentation on Steiner’s context and biography
September 13: A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception – Section D
September 20: Knowledge of Higher Worlds – Chapter 1
September 27: Knowledge of Higher Worlds – Chapter 2
October 4: Knowledge of Higher Worlds – Chapter 3
October 11: Knowledge of Higher Worlds – Chapters 4 & 5
(Thoreau College students on expedition)
October 25: Theosophy – Chapter 1 – (Sections I-III)
Nov. 1: Theosophy – Chapter 1 – (Section IV)
Nov. 8: Theosophy – Chapter 2
Nov. 15: An Outline of Esoteric Science – Chapter 5
Thoreau College Community Seminar - 2022-2023
PROPHETS and PROPHECIES
Thoreau College Community Seminar – 2022-2023
Facilitated by Jacob Hundt and Annie Kelley
The Thoreau College Community Seminar is an ongoing invitation to join in an open, engaging, and egalitarian conversation about important texts and universal ideas. Inspired by the Great Books Seminar model of higher education and Henry David Thoreau’s visionary dream of “villages as universities”, the Community Seminar is open to Thoreau College students, fellows, and faculty and to members of our wider local community of all ages. All that is required is a willingness to read carefully and to engage in thoughtful discussion with respect for fellow participants, a sincere desire to understand the authors and their ideas with openness and good will, and reverence for the truth.
Contact Jacob Hundt at jacobhundt@thoreaucollege.org or call 608-632-3829 to join.
2022-2023 Theme: PROPHETS AND PROPHECIES.
Human beings thrive in a very narrow world. We expect a life in which things make sense without making too much sense; where time shuffles forward with the future chastly covered, and the divine remains politely just out of reach. Usually, it is so. Sometimes, though, the divine decides to show somebody something the rest of us can’t see. These people become prophets. And then what do they do?
Old testament types die on seeing the face of God. MacBeth goes mad. Oedipus stabs out his eyes. The transcendentalists, inadvertently and posthumously, found Thoreau College. Throughout history, prophets and their prophecies have proved a wellspring of narrative, poetry, philosophy, and tragedy.
However, these special few are not the only ones who sometimes trip and find themselves with a leg down the gopher hole that is the future. While few of us are prophets, almost all of us, at some point or another, contend, with the unexpected, the strange, the divine, and the horrible. We all see things we shouldn’t have. And then what do we do?
This seminar presupposes that careful study will allow us to find a solution that does not involve marrying our mothers.
Schedule: One Session Per Week – Thursdays – 3:30-5:00
Location: Thoreau College Campus – 224 E Highway 56
How to Join: New participants are welcome at any time. Free will contribution + cost of books
Contact jacobhundt@thoreaucollege.org
November 10: Sophocles, “Oedipus Rex”
November 17: Sophocles, “Oedipus Rex”
(Thanksgiving Break)
December 1: William Shakespeare, “MacBeth”
December 8: Martin Buber, Ecstatic Confessions
December 15: Martin Buber, Ecstatic Confessions
(Holiday Break)
January 5: John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
January 12: John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
January 19: M.C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
January 26: M.C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
(Thoreau College Winter Expedition:
February 9: Selected Poets
February 16: Dante Aligheri, Inferno, Cantos I-XI
February 23: Dante Aligheri, Inferno, Cantos XII-XXII
March 2: Dante Aligheri, Inferno, Cantos XXIII-XXXIV
(Thoreau College Solo Week)
March 16: Dante Aligheri, Purgatorio, Cantos I-XI
March 23: Dante Aligheri, Purgatorio, Cantos XII-XXII
March 30: Dante Aligheri, Purgatorio, Cantos XXIII-XXXIII
(Spring Break)
April 13: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Cantos I-XI
April 20: Dante Aligheri, Paradiso, Cantos XII-XXII
April 27: Dante Aligheri, Paradiso, Cantos XXIII-XXXIII
(Thoreau College Spring Expedition)
May 11-June 8 – TBD
Please click here to contact us.
Texts:
Ecstatic Confessions $18.55
Black Elk Speaks $20.41
Centering: $22.95
The Divine Comedy: $19.53
Photocopied Texts: $10 (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Poets)
TOTAL: $91.44
Spring Quarter (March 22 - June 2, 2022): Future Visions of Nature and Humankind
Science and science fiction explorations of bioethics, social organization, and the future development of humanity and nature on Earth from writers of diverse backgrounds and orientations.
Some Possible Texts:
- Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
- Ayn Rand, Anthem
- Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble
- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World
- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
- Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing
- Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist
- Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon
Please contact us here to contact us.
Winter Quarter (January 4 - March 10, 2022): The Individual
Philosophical and literary explorations of the moral and existential challenges and opportunities faced by individuals in the context of society.
January 4: Sophocles, Antigone
January 6: Sophocles, Antigone
January 11: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?
January 13: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
January 19: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Excerpts)
January 21: Fyodor Doesteovsky, “The Grand Inquisitor” (from The Brothers Karamazov)
(TC Expedition)
February 1: Martin Buber, I and Thou
February 3: Martin Buber, I and Thou
February 8: Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
February 10: Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
(Thoreau College Road Trip – 2 weeks)
March 1: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
March 3: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
March 8: Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Excerpt)
March 10: Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Excerpt)
(End of Winter Quarter)
Please contact us here to contact us.
Fall Quarter (October 5 - December 9) 2021: Origins and Essences
During the fall quarter of 2021, the Thoreau College Community Seminar will delve into the most ancient and profound texts of world civilization. These are the primordial accounts of the origins of the universe, of human beings, and of human cultures and peoples that have been passed down in oral traditions for centuries until eventually recorded in writing, to be passed down for centuries more, forming the foundation stones of the world’s great civilizations and cultures.
Fall Quarter Texts:
- October 5: The Epic of Gilgamesh
- October 7: The Epic of Gilgamesh
- October 12: Hesiod, Theogony
- October 14: Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda
(TC Expedition)
- October 26: Popol Vuh
- October 28: Popol Vuh
- November 2: The Book of Genesis
- November 4: The Book of Genesis
- November 9: Plato, Timaeus
- November 11: Plato, Timaeus
- November 16: Bhagavad Gita
- November 18: Bhagavad Gita
(Thanksgiving Break)
- November 30: Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things)
- December 2: Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things)
- Dec 7: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
- Dec 9: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
(End of Fall Quarter)
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