No.927: A Summer Integrated Humanities Program // An Introduction

I’m so, so excited to announce a project I’ve been working on behind the scenes!  I’m calling it A Summer Integrated Humanities Program and it will be a twelve-week blog series, posted every Thursday in June, July and August.

Inspired by John Senior and his Integrated Humanities Program from the 1970s, I wanted to create something that would help women, especially mothers, pull themselves from the modern consumerist/influencer viewpoints of today and into the perennial truths of the past.  Clearly, this will look a little different from John Senior’s college course.  We’re coming together through a computer screen, unable to sit face-to-face, contemplating the works together and sharing our thoughts.  I still hope it’s a fruitful endeavor.

My goal is to provide a feast of good, true or beautiful things for you to peruse; you can choose none, one or all!  The feast is meant to make you think, ponder and contemplate.  Whether you agree with the authors or not, it should help you in forming coherent opinions and see humanity in a longer lens.  I hope it shows that there’s nothing new under the sun and if we want to affect positive change in our current day, we should probably learn from the past.

Each week, there will be a mix of the traditional humanities subjects of literature, history and theology but also art, music, poetry and nature study.  Since we crawl before we walk before we run, there will be a mix of the simple to the complex, “easier” subjects vs. ones that require more focus and attention.  I also wanted to add a bunch of “touch grass” activities to connect us to the realities around us.  Like Fulton Sheen said, Life is worth living!  I strongly believe that in this technological age, we need to intentionally engage with the natural world as much as possible.

I really hope you will chime in and comment your thoughts and ideas each week too.  We are all a product of our individual experiences and have so much to share and learn from each other.  See you next Thursday for Week 1!