Welcome to EverScholar

Come back to the classroom and once again be a part of the fabric of learning as you immerse yourself in a life-changing program of study, camaraderie, and joy. Brilliant seminars, world-class professors, and the hidden glories of colleges, universities, and cultural institutions await you.

Several of our amazing EverScholar faculty speak about the program and their experiences.

Watch and listen as Steve Tomlin talks about his EverScholar experiences.

Learn about our Current, Upcoming, and Past Programs

EverScholar programs all preserve the small class, seminar experience. Below, see upcoming courses along with details on some past courses. Click on the courses to learn more!

Reverberations of the Revolution II

Professors: Akhil Reed Amar, Gordon Wood, and Paul Grimstad

March 21-24, 2024

Yale Law School, New Haven, CT

Registration is now open – waitlist only

The course will examine greatest event in American History – the American Revolution – and assess its revolutionary nature, its radicalism its transformative character, its aftermath and echoes through the early 19th Century.

By 1776 Americans knew they were launching a grand experiment in republican government. They were confident they could by their own efforts remake their culture, create anew what they thought and believed. Their Declaration of Independence told them that their equal status at birth did not determine what they might become. Suddenly, everything seemed possible. The revolutionary leaders were faced with the awesome task of creating out of their British heritage their own separate national identity. Americans now had the opportunity to realize an ideal republican world, to put the Enlightenment into practice, to create an ordered virtuous society and an illustrious classical culture that men since the Greeks had yearned for.

Little worked out in the way the Revolutionary leaders expected. By the third decade of the nineteenth century it seemed to many that American society was coming apart. So – what are we to make of the Revolution, all in all? Beyond the Revolution’s own ideas and ideals, we will also look at those ensuing decades, and see how all these things shaped the new republic; whether and which ideals were enduring and remained influential; whether they were hollowed out or even abandoned; and what all this means for the so-called “idea of America.”

But America was not “just” an idea – it was a new legal, juridical system. But what kind of system? In 1776, was America one nation or thirteen? What about in 1789? In what ways were the so-called “United States of America” united? Why did this matter? How does this set of questions connect to American ideals, both at its founding, and going forward?

We are uniquely privileged to undertake this journey with the most extraordinary leaders imaginable. Two peerless historians – Professors Gordon Wood, the greatest living historian of the Founding, and Professor Akhil Reed Amar, the greatest scholar, theorist, and historian of the American Constitution – will be joined by Professor Paul Grimstad, a prominent expert on the expression of these ideas and ideals as they were written by the Americans and their observers themselves – by Emerson, by Tocqueville, by Jefferson. The history of ideas is best studied by including the best expounders and chroniclers of those ideas, and therefore Professor Grimstad will bring those thinkers and writers to our door.

Join us as we feast on the richest material with the finest faculty, with the greatest experts on beautiful ideas expressed in the most magnificent words, for three days of exuberant immersion together.

 

China Encounters the World

Professors: Peter Perdue, Sulmaan Khan, Arne Westad, Rana Mitter, and Zaib Aziz

November 2-5, 2023

Boston/Cambridge, MA

Registration will open soon!

In this course, we will discuss intensively cultural and political interactions beween China and the West in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. According to a recent estimate, only 350 Americans are now actively studying in China, compared to 15,000 a decade ago. The personal relations of Americans and Chinese have declined to unprecedented lows. In the first half of the twentieth century, by contrast, China and the West engaged in widespread cultural contact. In this seminar, we will examine some of the important characters and events that affected Sino-Western relations, by looking at the writings of some of the most colorful personages of the period.

The course will connect current concerns about Chinese foreign relations with the most important underlying themes of modern China: empire, culture, nationalism and geopolitics. By exploring decisions of elites alongside popular conceptions of the identity of the Chinese nation, we expose longer trends that persist beneath day-to-day crises. Every session will use primary historical sources to address our understanding of current events. Our faculty include specialists on the Qing dynasty, Chinese nationalism, global history, cold war history, and Chinese foreign policy in the Maoist and post-Maoist era. We promise to challenge your understanding of how modern China works. Please join us for this exciting intellectual adventure!

Everything Past is Present: Rome and Florence as Theaters of the Mind

Professors: Shane Butler, Lila Yawn, and Lawrence Manley

May 28 – June 11, 2023

Rome and Florence, Italy

Course has completed.

Capital of empires for more than two millennia, continuously inhabited for well over three, Rome presents itself to the knowing observer as a palimpsest in space, a three-dimensional page written upon, cleaned of its writing (though never entirely), and rewritten in the visual idioms of later eras, often multiple times. Rome’s unique ‘look’ and its salient place in the history of world art derive in part from the consequent intricate overlays and promiscuous interminglings of time-specific materials, aesthetics, and visual ideas. Newer elements cover and efface—while responding to— older ones; older ones inspire and condition the new while revealing themselves fully, fragmentarily, indirectly, or not all.

The layered nature of Florence will be explored through “The Palimpsest of Fame,” an examination of the changing meaning and significance of important Florentine texts, artifacts,and sites from the twelfth century to the twentieth centuries. The lives and works of five illustrious Florentines (Boccaccio, Leonardo Bruni, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo) will be explored in terms of the multiple pasts and presents of medieval, Renaissance, and Grand Tour histories of the city.

Along the way, we’ll think with writers like Lord Byron who similarly reflected on Italy as a place that seemed to belong, at once, to all times and to none. We’ll also look at artists, like Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who tried to represent this untimeliness visually. And we’ll also think a lot about books and libraries, including some actual palimpsests. The course will offer a rare opportunity to begin to see Rome and Florence as so much more than the sums of their parts.

Statesmanship and Its Practitioners

Professors: Steven B. Smith and Daniel Schillinger

April 20-23, 2023

New York, NY; EverScholar in NYC

Course has completed.

This seminar examines the nature of statesmen and statesmanship itself. It returns to the history of political thought, examining its rich dialogue on statesmanship ancient and modern. In the company of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Burke, Hume, Tocqueville, and Weber, we will consider the defining characteristics and activities of statesman. We will also discuss the circumstances that call forth statesmanship, the relation of statesmanship to (democratic) citizenship, and the distinction between statesmanship and demagoguery.

At the same time, we will study statesmanship’s practical dimension. Alongside the examples depicted and analyzed by political thinkers such as Thucydides and Machiavelli, we will attend to the careers and writings of James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass. In effect, America itself will be our prime “case study.” One of our goals is to distinguish the statesman from other forms of political actors, whether this be demagogue, technocrat, charismatic leader, or would-be tyrant.

The Modern Axial Age

Professors: Peter C. Perdue, Helen Huiwen Zhang, and Zaib Aziz

January 12-15, 2023

New York City, NY

Course has completed.

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers and the Norwegian theologian Kristian Schjelderup coined the term “Axial Age” to designate a time period in ancient history of intense interactions of distinct cultures, whose multiple resonances constructed the bases of major civilizations. We use the term “Modern Axial Age” in this seminar to examine multiple interactions between major writers, artists, and thinkers from China, Europe, and America who constructed the modern world.

Relying on purposefully curated excerpts in translation, we practice transreading of major texts to stimulate wide-ranging yet focused discussions. From a vast array of outstanding artists and writers, we select those who reached readers in a wide range of countries, Western and non-Western, and shaped the most important global developments of the twentieth century. These writers are listed at the end of the syllabus.

One or two faculty members are designated as the lead for each session, but all of us will participate fully in all the discussions. We aim to make this a fully interactive experience between all the faculty and students together. Active discussion is what we encourage most: don’t be afraid to express your opinions!

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In the Shadow of War: Europe and America, 1914-2022

Professors: Antoine Prost, Jay Winter, Julian Jackson, and John Horne

June 20 – July 3, 2022

Course has completed.

Cerisay, Normandy, and Paris; EverScholar in France

Building on an amazingly successful 2021, EverScholar is proud to announce a two-week “dream course” in France, June 20-July 3, 2022: “In the Shadow of War: France and America, 1914-2022.”

Imagine studying this profoundly compelling topic in a depth you never knew existed with our “dream team” of decorated faculty, authors of the leading works in the field and renowned as the finest and most personable teachers. Now, transport yourself to an ancient chateau, today a private residence, perfectly preserved and equipped with modern comforts even as its timeless character remains. You begin the program there, with you and the faculty in residence, hosted by the chateau’s gracious owner (and fellow EverScholar).

Following nearly a week in the French countryside, you move on to the great battlefield, the hallowed beaches, guided by these experts of the Normandy invasion. And then, you find yourself in the City of Light, where the epic defeat, the heroic resistance, the disgraced collaboration, the dark deportations, and ultimately the euphoric liberation all lived – and we study them all, deeply.

With you are like-minded friends old and new – your fellow scholars. All day, every day, you engage in seminar discussions, and journeys to cultural, historic, and artistic sites that enhance the immersion and the learning. Meanwhile, you enjoy fine accommodations, elite guides, and authentic and gourmet cuisine at the chateau and fine restaurants.

The program actually begins months ahead with fantastic readings, curated by our faculty; sources you would never have approached or even known about. The reading is its own reward, even as it excites and prepares you for the EverScholar seminar discussions that await you in France.

You will return home with a new cohort of friends; freshly acquired expertise and insight; and a life-highlight set of memories.

This, then, is “In the Shadow of War: France and America, 1914-2021,” an EverScholar program in Cerisay, Normandy, and Paris. Learn more by clicking on the links to our course page, and join us for this unforgettable experience.

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Montaigne and The Art of Living

Professors: Giulia Oskian and Stephen B. Smith

April 28 – May 1, 2022

New York, NY; EverScholar in NYC

Course has completed.

Be immersed in the Essays by Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) for a long weekend. Enjoy close reading of what many consider the greatest text of European early modernity. Montaigne remains an obsession (and a joy) to many, with books constantly released explaining how Montaigne guides us to meaning and happiness today.

This course will offer a close reading of the Essays. The Essays are commonly considered a classic text of European early modernity. The very form of the book was, appropriately, a new literary genre, a form of experimentation. The French word essai meaning “attempt” or “try” indicates the unfinished and maybe unfinishable character of his book. The changes in the text naturally raise the question of Montaigne’s consistency. Was the work, as it sometimes appears, a random collection of thoughts that express Montaigne’s changing moods and interests or does it reveal ahidden plan or design?

Some (but by no means all) of the topics engaged in the Essays include autobiography and the discovery of the self, freedom of thought and toleration, individualism, friendship, the role of nature and the body, custom and the limits of rationality, otherness and diversity, experience, and moderation. An important theme to be examined will be the politics of the Essays. Was he, as he sometimes appears, a conservative ironist who recommended living according to prevailing custom or was he in fact the founder of a new kind of liberal philosophy -not a liberalism of rights and duties – but a liberalism that put the avoidance of cruelty and humiliation front and center? The course will include some brief selections from some of Montaigne’s contemporaries as well as writers who have tried to adapt Montaigne to our times.

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Ancient Greece, Complex Histories

Professors: Emily Greenwood and Kirk Freudenburg

August 1-12, 2021

Nafplio and Athens; EverScholar in Greece

Course has completed.

The EverScholar model of immersive seminar-based study and exploration moves to a new level with this groundbreaking program in Greece.  The modern world has inherited competing histories of Greece, mediated through different national traditions, none more powerful than the Romantic ideal of Philhellenism, which formulated an idea of Greece that is still used and abused to frame expectations of the Greece of the present. These ideological histories of Greece cast long shadows across the academic study of ancient Greek history and complicate attempts to analyze the societies and cultures of ancient Greece in their historical contexts. The picture is further complicated by the different perspectives on the past offered by material culture, ranging from the detritus of the past to the ruined monuments that dominate our attention in archaeological sites. Visits to archaeological sites have the potential to complicate as well as to clarify: to explore any Greek archaeological site is to visit a heavily edited version of the past, in which particular strata and aspects of the past have been privileged over others.

This course will offer participants a sustained inquiry into the challenges of studying Greek history in the round, taking into account the evidence of several intersecting disciplines (literature, archaeology, epigraphy, ancient art, geography and geology, and anthropology). Through seminars and site visits we will develop a dynamic understanding of what we know about ancient Greek history and how we know it. To this end, we will study both canonical works and works from the “shadow canon” of ancient Greek literature, and we will supplement our study of the more obvious urban centers, such as Athens, by looking at evidence for what it was like to live in more average (and more representative) Greek cities. While focusing on the history of the Greek world from the Bronze Age to the end of the Hellenistic era, we will give due attention to Roman Greece, Byzantine Greece, and the multi-layered history of the modern Greek state. The course will begin in Nafplio (the capital of the newly independent nation of Greece, from 1829-1834), where we will be based at the Harvard-affiliated Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) for our morning seminars, then travel to a variety of thrilling sites in the afternoons for on-site study. Nafplio is a city of immense historical importance in its own right, and an excellent base for visiting archaeological sites in the Argolid region; after six days in Nafplio we will travel to Athens (stopping at Corinth on the way), where we will have five days of site and museum visits, and seminars.

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The First American Founding

Professors: Akhil Reed Amar and Steven B. Smith

August 15-21, 2021

New York, NY

Course has completed.

Join with your fellow scholars, Sunday to Saturday, in residence, to assess a world-changing event: the American Founding, in historical, legal, philosophical, political, and social perspectives. As the title also contemplates, the notion of subsequent “American Foundings,” and the notion that the Founding was a beginning, perhaps an unfinished one, will be central to the study. What was new? Where did it come from? What did it mean? How did it happen?

This is the story, in part, of the epic cast of characters that is at the heart of the American Founding. Washington, Hamilton, Franklin – the three greatest of the Big Six – are joined by Madison, Jefferson, and Adams. James Wilson, John Jay, Abigail Adams, James Otis, Thomas Hutchinson, John Marshall – a host of fascinating figures – will parade before us.

This course will locate the founding moment in a broader, wider slice of time than have most historians who have told the story of the Revolution. We will explore the period from 1760, through the Declaration and Revolution, through the early state constitutions, through the convention and the ratification, into the Washington presidency and the adoption of a bill of rights, the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another, and through the founding period to perhaps 1805.

Close readings of texts including the Federalist, Constitutional Convention and Ratification Conventions transcripts, British and other traditions, “big philosophy” from Locke and Montesquieu to Tocqueville, Paine, Emerson, and more, “smaller philosophy” from newspapers, congressional debates, and popular society, will all inform our discussion.

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China: Formless War, Future Visions

Professors: Peter Perdue and Jing Tsu

September 23-26, 2021

Cambridge, MA; EverScholar at MIT

Course has completed.

For this “long-weekend” immersion,  arrive Thursday evening for a journey that will not end, but pause, on Sunday evening.  Some of our group has previously studied “China Present to Past.” This program, a transition to a full-week program planned for 2021, will look at “China Present to Future,” drawing on the past to understand the present and speculate on the future.  We will explore China in the 20th-21st centuries and beyond from literary and historical perspective, through two connected themes:
1] “Formless War:” a recently employed term, originating from the recent/current trade war, which helps model the current strategic situation of China and the US wherein cyberwar and technology replace conventional conflict, as strategy [Thucydides redux], trade, and technology flow together.
2] Visions of the future: Futurism is everywhere in China.  Just one example: the 1900s were the great first period of flourishing of Chinese science fiction literature, with all sorts of crazy imaginations, including technology. Chinese sci-fi is a modern incarnation of soft power, as it is wildly pervasive globally.  The fabric of the immensely diverse Chinese views of the future is a clue to its present and past as well.

Importantly, however, neither of these themes are entirely new.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Qing empire of China and its 400 million subjects constituted the largest political unit in the world, with nearly one quarter of the world population. They had been heavily battered by foreign imperialism during the nineteenth century, but in order to confront existential threats to the state and classical civilization, they forged radically new forms of literary and political argument. The decades from 1890 to 1920 marked an extraordinary period of cultural and social dynamism, whose echoes China and the rest of us still live with today. Broad world views like nationalism, racism, anarchism, constitutionalism, and the literary movements of modernism, transculturalism, language reform, and Eurasianism all had their origins in this time. In this seminar, we will explore, by beginning with closely reading primary sources from China and Europe in translation, along with selected secondary works, the foundational concepts that defined China during the following century. We will also examine how Europeans and Americans incorporated their knowledge of China into their own political and cultural programs.  Past, present, and future will coalesce for us through this study.

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