This August 13-14, Magdalen College faculty will travel to New York City to lead seminars on classic texts at the First Things Intellectual Retreat on Solidarity. If you enjoy discussing questions of great significance in an environment animated by a spirit of friendship and a common purpose, this event is for you. It is a rare opportunity to get together with like-minded individuals to talk about big, timeless ideas and how they inform our understanding of the issues that occupy our culture today.
Friday evening will begin with dinner and a keynote speaker’s reflections on solidarity and contemporary society. Saturday will be spent in small group seminars. Our faculty are an ideal fit for these small group seminars, as they lead our students through this sort of Socratic conversation around great texts every day of the academic year. In each session, our faculty will guide discussion as participants explore texts alongside scholars, writers, and editors from First Things, America’s most influential journal of religion and public life. The retreat will conclude Saturday evening with cocktails, dinner, and a panel discussion. Discourse will probe topics in religion, politics, and culture, through the lens of:
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Cicero
- John Paul II
- Roger Scruton
- Russell Hittinger
Magdalen College faculty have been leading the annual New York Intellectual Retreats since 2015. To date, the retreats have been a great success, combining First Things’s mission of educating for the renewal of public life with the equally important project of building community among those committed to this task. Retreat participants consistently express their satisfaction at having found a space where they can discuss issues of fundamental importance frankly and intelligently in a friendly environment.
Learn more about the Faculty of Magdalen College.