St. John's College (Santa Fe) Lectures

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Recordings of lectures from St. John's College, Santa Fe. Includes lectures from the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series and the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.

  1. Oct 22

    A Yanki Yogi? Henry David Thoreau and Asian Philosophy (Krishnan Venkatesh)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Krishnan Venkatesh on October 9, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “’To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogin.’ Any reader of Thoreau will have been struck by the quotations and allusions to Chinese and Indian thinkers on almost every page of his major works. He has read more Asian than Western philosophy, and even wrote essays on Confucius and Buddhism, as well as a translation (from French) of part of the Mahabharata. His reading in the Eastern Classics was extensive and formidable. He was not alone in this: Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Whitman, and other Transcendentalist writers were also fired up by Asian thought. They were preceded by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. In this lecture I will be exploring Thoreau’s reading of Asian philosophy: What exactly did he study, how deeply did he understand these books, did they influence him, can he be considered an American version of an Asian philosopher? I will also explore Thoreau’s profound affinity with a body of work he could not possibly have known: the poet-recluses of China and Japan, the Japanese poetic diarists, and his peripatetic brother Matsuo Basho. What is the significance of all this? It will become evident in this lecture that the presence of an Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe reflects an interest that is as American as…the Founding Fathers and the Transcendentalists.”

  2. Oct 22

    Why Tolstoy's War Writing Does Not Grow Old (Donna Orwin)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by Donna Orwin on October 2, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “This talk will compare the three Sevastopol sketches. Ms. Orwin will discuss the narrative structure of all of them with an eye to whether or not the point of view of the narrator changes. Who is this narrator in each sketch, and what is his attitude towards war in general and the particular situation in each sketch?”

  3. Oct 7

    Reflections on the American Constitution (Grant Franks)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Grant Franks onSeptember 18, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided thisdescription of the event: “Our country is now celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everyone understands the urge to place special emphasis on anniversaries that are even multiples of ten, but July 4, 1776, was neither the beginning of the American revolution nor its end.  Arguably a more important date in our nation’s history was September 17, 1787, two hundred thirty-nine years ago – sadly, a prime number! – when the Constitution under which our country still operates was signed in Philadelphiaand submitted to the thirteen states for ratification.  This lecture will inquire into the nature of a ‘constitution’ in general, describe some of the intellectual, historical, and political currents that shaped the document produced by the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, ask which of its features have proved especially valuable, and discuss whether some other might profit from reconsideration or amendment.”

  4. Oct 7

    Three Thresholds: Notes from the Studio (Jillian Conrad)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by Jillian Conrad onSeptember 11, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “When is a threshold just an in-between space, andwhen is it the whole point?  A threshold is at once a place, a metaphor, a structure given to use by language.  It marks the space between one thing and another.  Drawing on notes from the artist’s studio, this talk asks what changes when a threshold is worked from different directions, in different sculptural materials, across different artworks.”

  5. Oct 7

    The Stories Keys Can Tell: A New Approach to Film Soundtracks (Táhirih Motazedian)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by Tahirih Motazedian onSeptember 4, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “Key is one of the simplest building blocks of musicand a central property of a work’s musical identity—we refer to “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor,” not “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Four Movements and 34 Minutes” or “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony With the Very Iconic Motive.”But for a variety of reasons, key has always been ignored as a significant parameter in film music. This talk will show how keys can tell stories in film. The concept of soundtrack is expanded beyond just original scoring to includepre-existing music and sound effects, which represents a paradigm shift in how we perceive films since sound effects aren’t normally heard as “music.” Studying the keys traversed in a film can reveal fascinating insights and hidden layers of narrative meaning, granting new ways to engage with ourfavorite films.”

  6. Sep 18

    Standing Before the Mysteries (Sarah Davis)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by Dean Sarah Davis on August 28, 2026 as part of the the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “At St. John’s we talk a lot about the importance ofquestions.  We understand that questioning is required for independence of mind, for one to come to one’s own conclusions, to live according to one’s own convictions. In this lecture, questioning looks even more radical.  More than simply the way we access the truth of things, the suggestion is that questioning itself, the shape of a questionas question, is particularly revealing of the nature of the world we are trying to understand, not as a means to an end, but in its own right.  The lecture focuses on the description that Socrates gives Meno of shape in Plato’s Meno as the only existing thing that is found always following color.  I argue thismoment marks a turn in their inquiry into virtue toward the question as question.  I investigate this turn and connect it to Heidegger’s argument in his essay ‘The Way to Language’ and the way-making that happens when, as he puts it, ‘language speaks.’”

  7. Sep 18

    Equity, Justice, and the Rule of Law (Nick Gooding)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Nick Gooding onJuly 29, 2026 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.  The Graduate Institute Office has providedthis description of the event: “In Book V, Chapter 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers an account of ‘equity’ (epieikeia). The virtue of equity, according to Aristotle, serves as a necessary ‘correction of justice according to law.’  This presents us with difficulty: on the one hand, the need for ‘equitable’ judges seems to belong to the nature of the case – there is simply no way of capturing the demands of justice in a set of general rules; on the other hand, one thing justice demands is that ‘like cases be treated alike’ and that all individuals not be treated arbitrarily – and this seems to require legal verdicts to be determined by general rules, with judicial discretion kept to an absolute minimum.  I want, in this talk, to go some way towards resolving this tension.  I’ll do so on the basis of a careful consideration of why justice resists being reduced to a set of rules, and why we nonetheless value the rule of law.”

  8. Sep 18

    Vaclav Havel and Jan Patočka: To Live (and Die) in Truth (David Satran)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by David Satran on July22, 2026 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.  The Graduate Institute Office has provided thisdescription of the event: “Between the events of the Prague Spring of 1968 and the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in the final months of 1989, a preeminent figure emerged within the dissident movement: Václav Havel, a young playwright whose dramatic works had been banned from the stage but whose political essays gave trenchant expressions to the principles and goals of the dissenters.  It is no surprise that Havel was one of the principal signatories of ‘Charter (Charta) 77,’ the central document of opposition to the regime, but far from obvious was one of the namesthat appeared next to his: Jan Patočka, a professor of philosophy nearing seventy, a student of both Husserl and Heidegger, and who, until this moment, had remained far from the political stage.  Even as an academician, Patočka had been a marginalized figure – barred from university teaching for almost his entire career due to his refusal to join the Communist party.  His unofficial seminars, however, attended by Havel and scores of other curious and creative youngpeople, earned him an extraordinary stature and deep influence within the Opposition movement.  Patočka’s tragicdeath, only a few months after his emergence as one of the spokesmen of the movement, transformed his status into that of a philosophic martyr for truth and freedom.  This talk will examine the relationship between Havel and Patočka, with an emphasis on central themes in their views on moral responsibility, sacrifice and living in truth.”

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Recordings of lectures from St. John's College, Santa Fe. Includes lectures from the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series and the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.

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