Category: Travel
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
CATEGORIES
December 5, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
David Macaulay’s book Crossing on Time discusses the way that life inevitably changes. In it, he illustrates the making of the SS United States, an ocean liner from the 1950s. He writes about how, in his own lifetime, we moved from ocean liners meant to cross the Atlantic in less than a week to airplanes meant to cross in a few hours.
March 15, 2024
Thanks to Bill Maniotis, current HMU student, for today’s blog.
I began my first course (HUM 701: The Great Conversation: The Cornerstone Course) at Harrison Middleton University in April of 2019, and I am about to finish up my coursework at HMU with my second comprehensive exam on the Great Idea of Love in April of 2024, before I move on to working on my Capstone project this summer.
» Read more about: Community Weekend, A Student’s Perspective »
December 24, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Recently, I discovered a rare gem at my local library. How lucky to have chanced upon this reading near the holiday season, a time when I contemplate the goodness of life, of language and literature, art, my wealth in terms of family and friends, and of the goodness of the earth. Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches has nourished these contemplations.
June 3, 2016
Thanks to Sue Durkin, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Great Books Chicago weekend, advertised as “a weekend of conversations and culture,” is back and its return was glorious. I was fortunate enough to be one of the seventy participants spanning from California to Toronto who converged in the Windy City to discuss the benefits and detriments of living in utopian societies. The texts used to prompt the discussions were the quintessential dystopian novel,
May 6, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently attended Great Books Chicago 2016 to discuss utopias and dystopias. One of our readings for this event was George Orwell’s 1984. At the end of the session, someone asked me whether I believed 1984 to be the darkest novel I have ever read. My immediate response was no,
July 31, 2015
A few weeks ago, we posted a blog about the idea of experience as it relates to ego and sport. To further that idea, today we hope to investigate experience from a different perspective. Namely, how can one gain meaningful experience? In order to investigate this question, we have focused on a few recent experiments that offer a nice bridge between theory and reality. As we wander the globe,