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. Jul 1

    Lessons in Admiration: George Eliot's Beatiful Atheistic Religiousness. (Richard McCombs)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Richard McCombson June 24, 2026 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.  The Graduate Institute Office has providedthis description of the event: “After rejecting Christianity and God, George Eliot continued to speak, seemingly with approval, of conversion, saints, worship, and religion.  Onemight be tempted to write off her extensive use of religious language as mere metaphor or as vague and impotent spirituality.  But before adopting this easy explanation, one must reckon with several highly suggestive facts.  First, there is the utter seriousness of her moral vision.  Second, it is very tempting to venerate the protagonists of her last twonovels as saints.  And third, she writes many stories of conversion, two of which at least are perhaps more moving than that of St. Augustine in his Confessions.  In this lecture I will argue that George Eliot’s last three novels should be read as attempts to reveal that the best human life is lived with a kind of secular or natural religiousness.”

  2. Jul 1

    The Worst Kind of Slavery (Michael Grenke)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Michael Grenkeon May 15, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided thisdescription of the event: “In his novella, Benito Cereno, Herman Melville depicts the aftermath of a slave uprising aboard a Spanish ship.  The ship is encountered by an American vessel, and the unknowing and friendly American captain visits the now slave-run ship to aid in its distress, assuming it is still a Spanish-run ship.  The sights and incidents witnessed by the visiting American captain repeatedly give rise to suspicions that are dismissed or allayed by the American’s kindliness, obtuseness, and prejudice.  The reader, though no better informed, can hardly help conclude the truth of the situation.  In this respect alone, Melville’s story is amasterful presentation of the kind of anticipatory emotion that fear itself is.  But there is a deeper thought underneath.  The leader of the slave revolt, Babo, turns out to be a mastermind of unsuspected authorial power.  He authors the whole pageant aboard ship that convinces the American that Spanish rule persists.  He authors the revolt itself.  He authors the actions and speech of the titular character Benito Cereno.  Babo’s authorship raises the very possibility one man can so enslave another as to infect the very seat of choice and action.  How is such a slavery possible and can it be undone?  Is there a slavery from which the slave cannot be freed?”

  3. Jul 1

    I Know You All (Sarah Stickney)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Sarah Stickneyon May 8, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “This lecture will look at Prince Hal’s passage fromtavern brawler to battlefield hero in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part I.  Many elements of the play suggest that Hal will fail and Harry Hotspur will triumph; why does the opposite happen? What kind of education does Hal need in order to become king and keep the newly usurped throne in the family?  From Bolingbroke’s perspective, Hal is threatening the precious reputation of the new kingship, wrested so unconventionally from Richard’s poetic but impotent hands.  Hal’s high jinks could come at enormous cost to the kingdom’s tenuous stability.  Yet Hal might understand better than his father that the new order of the kingdom will have to be newly invented now that the divine right of kings no longer holds.”

  4. Jul 1

    Taking the Measure of Metaphysics (Jim Carey)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Jim Carey onApril 24, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “According to Aristotle, there is a science (epistēmē) that considers being as being, or that which is insofar as it is.  This science later came to be known as ‘metaphysics,’ a word that Aristotle himself does not use but which came into use a few centuries after he died and has been with us ever since. Metaphysics does not consider that which is in terms of its particular features, as do other sciences such as astronomy, chemistry, biology, and psychology.  The concern of metaphysics is broader than that of physics.  Physicslimits itself to the study of perceivable beings, to bodies that are in motion or capable of being put into motion. Though metaphysics does not limit itself this way, it does not adopt as a premise that there is something outside the domain of physics.  Instead, it begins by considering the verythings that physics considers, but in a different way.  Whether, starting from such a basis, metaphysics can demonstrate the existence of something ‘beyond’ nature, and, if so, what pertains to its essence, is a controversial question.  The various answers to this question constitute the history of metaphysics, or discourse about being, from ClassicalAntiquity through the Middle Ages and into Modernity.  In my talk I will highlight and attempt an assessment of what I consider to be the most consequential events in thishistory, which culminates, after a fashion, in Heidegger’s claim that not only is discourse about being historical, but being itself is historical."

  5. Apr 19

    The Vacuum Tube (Howard Fisher)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on April 15, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "A puzzling phenomenon observed by Edison in one of his early light bulbs seemed to disclose a kind of electric current that did not fit the received ideas, for it was not confined to a conductor, and it would flow in one direction but not in the reverse direction. From this 'Edison effect' arose the modern vacuum tube, which enabled, first, the detection of electromagnetic waves by a process readily understood (rectification), and second, a means for effectively multiplying the strength of an electric current (amplification). Both of these capabilities brought dramatic improvements in wireless telegraphy, and they also introduced the prospect of radio transmission of voice and sound. This is the second of three talks on early radio technology."

  6. Apr 7

    Visual Arts Panel (Alison Chapman, Krishnan Venkatesh, David Carl)

    Audio recording of a tutor panel given by tutors AlisonChapman, Krishnan Venkatesh, and David Carl on April 3, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “What is aportrait?  The English word comes from the Latin word protrahere, ‘to draw forth,’ ‘to drag forward,’ ‘to bring tolight,’ ‘to produce for inspection,’ while the main component trahere comes from an Indo-European root -tragh—that is cognate with our words tract, traction, trawl, drag, track, trace.  What does a portrait draw or drag forth?—a human being, a self?—and what are those?  In books, we can see how writers like Chaucer or Montaigne ‘portray’ individual people with words that can capture a distinctive interiority—but how can paint or a photographic image do that?  Does a portrait have to have eyes, or even a face?—indeed, are there any portraits without human figures?  In this panel discussion, three tutors (Alison Chapman, David Carl, and Krishnan Venkatesh) will attempt to approach these questions by talking us through a small selection of pictures.”

  7. Mar 24

    On the Mortality of Minds (John Peters)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by John Peters on March6, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “As far as we know the most complex thing the universe has brought forth, besides itself, is the human mind.  Among many other things, minds know things.  But what should we make of the fundamental fact that knowledge is housed in such fragile, forgetful, and short-lived vessels as human beings?  Why do minds die—or do they?  Since the origin of writing, and likely long before that, humans found ways to externalize mind.  In complex societies, the library is the key symbol of mind embedded in matter.  At least since Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus, thinkers have been anxious about this externalization.  Was he right to criticize writing?  And how might we think about the would-be total library of the internet, and of its administration by AI-intoxicated techCaesars whose ambition often seems to be to by-pass death altogether?  This lecture pursues very basic questions,drawing on (at least) the Phaedrus and works by Jorge Luis Borges.”

  8. Mar 23

    Λόγος and Ανθρωπος: a Genealogy (Ken Wolfe)

    Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Ken Wolfe on February 6, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series.  The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “In the Origin of Species, Darwin points to analogies between biological and linguistic evolution and classification.  How strong are those analogies?  Why do they exist?  What do they tell us about human evolution?  The first part of the lecture will discuss Darwin’s Origin of Species, focusing in particular on his diagram of the ‘tree of life,’ the definition of species, and the relation between species, varieties, and individuals.  We shall consider some issues raised in The Descent of Man in order to see how Darwin thought about human nature.  It will also include some considerations of more recent discoveries in genetics and how they bear on these questions.  The second part of the lecture will focus on linguistic evolution, on both what we know and don’t know about the development and beginnings of language(s).  It will discuss in particular the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by nearly half of the world’s population.  Are all the world’s languages related?  Do they have a single origin?  This lecture will end by returning to Aristotle and considering whether his definition of man as the animal with λόγος can still be defended."

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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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