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Honors Reading List


The Honors Institute reading list is at the core of the Honors seminar discussions and features a range of great texts from antiquity to the modern era. The reading list is assembled each semester by the Honors faculty and covers foundational works of theology, philosophy, history, political science, literature, natural science, and psychology. In addition to the study of great texts, Honors faculty incorporate great works of music and visual art as objects of study.

HNRS 101: The Ancient and Old Testament World

Cover of The Holy Bible ESV
The Iliad book cover
Aeschylus - book cover
Sophocles - book cover
Euripides - book cover
Aristophanes - book cover
Herodotus - book cover
Plato - book cover
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle - book cover
Poetics by Aristotle - book cover

HNRS 103: The Roman and Early Christian Worlds in Antiquity

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Book cover - The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald
Book cover - The Metamorphosis by Ovid
Book cover - The Apostolic Fathers in English third edition - Michael W. Holmes
Book cover - Plutarch's Lives, volume 1
Book cover - Plutarch's Lives, volume 2
Book cover - The Handbook by Epictetus
Book cover - Agricola and Germania by Tacitus
Book cover - The Metamorphosis by Ovid
Book cover - On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius
On God and Christ by St. Gregory
Confessions by St. Augustine
Book cover - City of God by St. Augustine
Book cover - The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Book cover - The Rule of St. Benedict in English
Book cover - Three Treatises on the Divine Images by St. John of Damascus

HNRS 201: The Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Worlds

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Book cover - the Qur'an
Book cover - Beowulf
Book cover - Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
Book cover - Averroes's Decisive Treatise & Epistle Dedicatory
Book cover - Aquinas on Nature and Grace
Book cover - Dante's Inferno
Book cover - Dante's Purgatory
Book cover - Dante's Paradise
Book cover - The Poetry of Petrarch
Book cover - Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Book cover - Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich
Book cover - The Book of the City of Ladies and Other Writings by Christine de Pizan
Book cover - The Prince by Niccolo Machiavilli
The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
Book cover - on the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus
Book cover - Three Treaties by Martin Luther
Book Cover - Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

HNRS 203: The Enlightenment World

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Book cover - Sir Philip Sidney, The Major Works
Book cover - The Norton Shakespeare
Book cover - The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne
Book cover - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Book cover - Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes
Book cover - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei
Book cover - Pensées by Blaise Pascal
Book cover - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
Book cover - Principia by Sir. Isaac Newton
Book cover - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and other works by David Hume
Book cover - Paradise Lost by John Milton
Book cover - The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Book cover - John Wesley's Sermons
Book cover - Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
Book cover - The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu
Book cover - the Federalist and Anit-Federalist Papers

HNRS 301: The Modern World

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Book cover - Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Book cover - Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
Book cover - Introduction to The Philosophy of History by G.W.F. Hegel
Book cover - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Book cover - Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
Book cover - Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
Book cover - The Portable Frederick Douglass
Book cover - Karl Marx, Selected Writings
Book cover - The Major Works of Alfred Tennyson
Book cover - Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
Book cover - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Book cover - Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Nietzsche
Book cover - T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962
Book cover - Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
Book cover - Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1 - The Gathering Storm
Book cover - Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Book cover - Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories
Book cover - Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr.

HNRS 304: Reclaiming Wisdom in the Contemporary World

Cover of The Holy Bible ESV
Book cover - The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Book cover - East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Book cover - Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses
Book cover - Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes by John Milton
Book cover - Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Book cover - The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
Book cover - Theodicy by G.W. Leibniz
Book cover - Anselm, Basic Writings
Book cover - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Book cover - The Norton Shakespeare
Book cover - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Book cover - The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
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