Are you looking for a doable way to explore profound ideas that shape the Christian tradition? Would you like to experience some of the most beautiful writing in Christian thought along the way? Join us to explore one of the most influential and engaging texts of church history, Augustine’s Confessions.

We’ll build community with Chesterton House alumni through a deep exploration of key moments in Augustine’s narrative. We’ll meet each week, read a short section together, and then discuss it in humanities seminar style.

Led by Dr. Hannah Eagleson, this course will include a guest interview with Augustine scholar Dr. Toni Alimi, a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics and Philosophy at Cornell.

Schedule of Readings:

Six Thursdays from Jan 13-Feb 17, 8-9:15pm Eastern

Jan 13, 20, 27; February 3,10,17

Jan 13, Week 1: Beginnings, excerpt from Book 1 (1.1-6.10)
Jan 20, Week 2: Pears and the Fall, excerpt from Book 2 (4.9-9.17)
Jan 27, Week 3: Struggle & Redemption, excerpt from Book 8 (6.14-8.19
Feb 3, Week 4: Struggle & Redemption, excerpt from Book 8 (8.20-8.30)
Feb 10, Week 5: Imagining Paradise, excerpt from Book 9 (10.23-10.25, possibly also include part of Book 11.1.1-8.10)
Feb 17, Week 6: Time & Eternity, excerpt from Book 13 (28.43-28.53, end of book)

Discussion Leader Info:

Dr. Hannah Eagleson is Director of Graduate & Faculty Engagement for Chesterton House. She also serves as Associate Director of InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network. Dr. Eagleson holds a PhD in Renaissance literature from the University of Delaware and an MA in liberal arts from St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD). She has participated in academic seminars at the Folger Shakespeare Library, crafted a lecture and concert featuring musical settings of medieval and modern poetry, and taught English courses featuring Shakespeare, fantastic literature, and a survey of medieval and early modern literature. Her published writing includes study guides to works by Tolkien, Lewis, and Sayers with Classical Academic Press. You can read more about her work here: https://hannaheagleson.com/

Guest Interviewee Info: Dr. Toni Alimi

https://philosophy.cornell.edu/toni-alimi

My research and teaching span ancient Roman philosophy (specializing in Augustine), intellectual history (focusing on freedom, slavery, law, rule, and authority), contemporary ethics and politics (idem), and philosophy of religion (especially on religion and morality). My current book project, Slaves of God, explicates Augustine’s reasons for justifying slavery and argues for the centrality of slavery in his ethics and politics. I’m in the early stages of research on an intellectual history of penal slavery (tentatively titled Precarious: Penal Slavery and the Rights of Citizens), which will trace the development of penal slavery from its ancient Roman provenances through late antique, medieval, and early modern Christian thought, and into the modern context. Other recent areas of research include: 1) the normative structure of covenants; 2) Augustine’s metaphysics of goodness; 3) theism and the problem of divine domination 4) the prospects for realism about aesthetic judgments; and 5) the meaning of ‘maturity’ in the history of philosophy. I am currently a postdoctoral associate in Classics with an affiliate appointment in Philosophy as a Klarman Fellow. Before Cornell, I earned the Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Princeton University, the M.A.R. in Ethics from Yale Divinity School, and the A.B. in Religion from Princeton University.