Inklings & Classics—Cycle Year 1

Description:

Current for 2026–27

In this tuition-free class series led by Dr. Gary Hartenburg, Form 4 students (15 to 18 years old) will develop critical thinking, listening, and discussion skills through Socratic discussion as they grapple with foundational questions of faith and existence. Students will read and discuss a variety of classic literature along with selected works of the writers known as the Inklings, such as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, as well as similar-minded contemporaries such as Dorothy Sayers and G. K. Chesterton. Students will be expected to complete reading assignments in preparation for class, and there may be optional writing assignments.

The Inklings & Classics series of courses is offered in a three-year cycle with rotating historical themes: (Reading selections for any given cycle are subject to change each time that cycle year is offered.)

Cycle 1 (2026–27) focuses on the Inklings and the classics of antiquity and the early church such as Homer, Plato, Herodotus, Lao Tsu, Horace, Athanasius, and the Bible.

Cycle 2 (2027–28) focuses on the Inklings, the Bible, and great works of medieval & renaissance literature such as Hildegaard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Hafez, Khatun, Dante, Chretien de Troyes, Christine de Pizan, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, Shakespeare, Basho, Calvin, Luther, and Don Quixote.

Cycle 3 (2028–29) focuses on the Inklings, the Bible, and key works and authors of the modern period such as Blaise Pascal, Victor Hugo, David Hume, Descartes, Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, John Wesley, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lorraine Hansberry, Jorge Luis Borges, Flannery O’Connor, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Willa Cather.