Hello, Alumni and Friends!
It鈥檚 been another wonderful year for the Herbst Program. Our biggest news is that our instructor search has been successful. From a field of more than 170 applicants, the eight Herbst faculty unanimously agreed on the two top candidates: Shilo Brooks and Laura Rabinowitz. Both of them will be starting in August, and you can read more about them below.
We鈥檝e had great success with the new sections of HUEN 1010 for international students whose English language skills need more attention. With generous funding from the (EEF), we offered three sections in 2015-16, and we will offer four in 2016-17. These sections are just as rigorous as our regular 1010 sections, but tend to be more deeply text-based and include spontaneous lessons on grammar, vocabulary and culture. Students log extra hours on writing, working with a TA and attending weekly one-on-one conferences with their instructor. A lot of work? Yes, but students and instructors alike give high marks to these sections!
In March, Herbst faculty Andrea Kowalchuk and Paul Diduch, with help from the Department of Computer Science, hosted Stuart Russell from UC Berkeley for a talk on artificial intelligence (read more below). This event will pave the way for more collaboration between Herbst and various engineering departments.
Welcoming Our New Faculty
Laura Rabinowitz comes most recently from the University of Toronto, where she has been teaching a course on virtue and politics in classical thought. Readings for the class were wide-ranging, including works of tragedy, comedy, history and philosophy. Before beginning her postdoctoral fellowship at Toronto, Laura received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, writing a dissertation on the virtue of moderation in Plato鈥檚 thought. She did her undergraduate work at Skidmore College in upstate New York, majoring in philosophy and government, with a minor in studio art (focusing on ceramics). Laura鈥檚 undergraduate studies involved formative travels in Berlin and Vienna, and after graduating she lived for a time in Dharamsala, India. While she didn鈥檛 manage to meet the Dalai Lama, she did have an encounter with his dog. She hopes she鈥檒l be able to contribute to Herbst students鈥� memorable study abroad experiences. A fan of the ancient Greek peripatetic tradition, Laura plans to step things up a bit, taking advantage of 羞羞视频鈥檚 beautiful trails and launching a hiking/reading group. She can鈥檛 wait to join the Herbst Program in its embrace of a humanities education.
Shilo Brooks comes to us from the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia, where he has been teaching courses on American political thought and finishing a book on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Before his fellowship at UVA, he was a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin College, where he taught political theory. He is eager to introduce Herbst students to foundational human questions that confront a wide variety of themes, from leadership and love to the meaning of modern life and the effects of modern technology on the human soul. In his free time, he enjoys writing, studying the history of American rock and pop music, and learning about the heroes and villains of the Old West.