What's It All About? R.J. Julia's Great Books Program Tries to Find Out

A funny thing happened when R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut, announced its new, ongoing Great Books Seminar Program -- a monthly seminar designed to provide people with the opportunity to study and discuss the great works of literature, philosophy, and history. Very quickly, post-college adults were showing up in droves to register to study the classics with Yale professors -- just for the fun of it -- in the intimate setting of their neighborhood bookstore. "A hundred people tried to sign up for the [first] class," said store owner Roxanne Coady. "I've never seen this kind of demand."

Fittingly, it was a book that inspired Coady to launch the Great Books Seminar Program in March 2008. "A friend of ours, [Yale Professor] Tony Kronman wrote a book called Education's End, Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life [Yale University Press]," said Coady. The book discusses how the most important question one can ask in life -- What is living for? -- has been removed from university classrooms and calls for its return in humanities studies.

This focus on the meaning of life recently returned to at least one university, with Yale University's Directed Studies Program. Prof. Kronman is on the faculty of the Directed Studies program, which focuses on this essential question through the study of 12 classics of Western literature, from Homer's Odyssey to St. Augustine's Confessions. "I read [Kronman's book] early on ... and I thought it's not just college kids who are interested in [studying] the meaning of life [through literature], it's adults, too," said Coady.

Each month, in two-hour seminars, the program is focusing on one of the 12 books from the Yale Directed Studies syllabus with a Yale Professor (there were no classes in July or August). The cost of each session is $50, which includes the price of the book, coffee, and refreshments, and there is a limit of 20 people per seminar. Customers can sign up for individual classes or for all 12 seminars. R.J. Julia provides attendees with a study guide prior to each seminar.

Thus far, the store has held four classes, with rousing success. The program kicked off with The Odyssey, with seminar leader Prof. Jane Levin. This was followed by sessions on The Orestia, with Prof. Justin Zaremby; the Apology of Socrates, with Prof. Kronman; and Nicomachean Ethics (Books I and X), also with Kronman.

Beginning September 18, the Great Books program will study St. Augustine's Confessions. In the following months, the sessions will tackle Dante's Inferno; Machiavelli's The Prince; Shakespeare's King Lear; Descartes' Meditations; Madame Bovary by Flaubert; Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals; First and Second Discourses by Rousseau; and Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. Already, the classes studying St. Augustine, Dante, and Shakespeare are filled.

"I've attended most of the seminars," Coady said, who noted that these nights have been "some of the most satisfying for me as a bookseller. [Professors] Levin and Kronman both said how incredibly life-affirming it is to see adults participate for the pure pleasure of learning. I think this is a great opportunity for all independents. Being in a bookstore [for a class] is very exciting -- there are a lot of people who want this opportunity."

Because of the success of the Great Books Seminar Program, R.J. Julia is planning a similar program, organized by Meghan Ownbey, the store's events and marketing assistant, that will cover the work of Virginia Woolf. "This will be a shorter, more focused program -- a four-part series that will take place during the daytime," Ownbey told BTW. Professor Hedda Kopf of Quinnipiac University will be teaching the sessions. --David Grogan