News & Media

Seeking Graduate Reading Groups for the Winter Quarter

The University of Chicago is famous for its graduate student reading groups, in which students pursue their own intellectual interests among friends in an informal setting. The Lumen Christi Institute supports this endeavor by sponsoring a number of graduate student reading groups each quarter. LCI provides space, hospitality, and books. The Institute also provides a modest stipend for the graduate student who leads and organizes the group.

Reading groups cover the whole spectrum of ideas. Texts do not need to be explicitly Catholic, though we follow St. Paul’s injunction to attend to whatever is true, noble, right, admirable, and lovely (Phil 4:8). Groups must follow LCI’s guiding principles, which may be found below.

Previous groups have studied and discussed:

• Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana

• Early Modern Utopias

• A Confederacy of Dunces

• Medieval Romances

• The Book of Genesis

• The short stories of Leo Tolstoy

• The stories of Franz Kafka

If you are interested in leading a reading group, please write a description (maximum of 300 words) of what you would like to read, your vision for the group (why you chose the work, ideal format and time slot) and how it fits the mission of the Lumen Christi Institute.

Our best practices guide may be an aid to you as you think about your prospective group.

Guiding Principles

Program proposals should…

• Affirm the intellectual life as good in itself

• Ask questions animated by the principle that “all knowledge forms one whole”

• Transcend the ideological / political divide (i.e., programs should not be partisan in nature)

• Welcome religious perspectives as part of the intellectual life (i.e., programs need not be theological in nature but conversations should be open to religious insights)

• Nurture friendships, to support the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness (i.e., programs should have a social component)

Send an email to dstrobach@lumenchristi.org, cc’ing awalker@lumenchristi.org with your proposal by December 4th.

Nicklin Fellows Program for Undergraduates 

The Nicklin Fellows are the recipients of a competitive, application based fellowship for  undergraduate students. Nicklin Fellows are granted exclusive access to research and development grant funds to pursue their intellectual interests. Grants can be used to pursue projects like the following:

• Organize a reading group
• Bring a speaker to campus
• Organize a movie night
• Develop and plan future Fundamental Questions seminars
• Write a paper for a journal
• And more

The purpose of the Nicklin Fellows is to support undergraduate students in the pursuit of their personal academic & intellectual interests, especially those related to existential questions of being. The Nicklin Fellowship cultivates robust intellectual friendships rooted in a common love of truth, beauty, and goodness.  Student projects should adhere to the guiding principles (see below) of the Lumen Christi Institute.

Nicklin Fellow Prerequisites

• attend two sessions of a Fundamental Questions seminar in Fall 2024
• attend one other Lumen Christi event per academic year
• be an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago

Nicklin Fellows Application Process

Send an email to dstrobach@lumenchristi.org, cc’ing awalker@lumenchristi.org. Include a one-page cover letter that explains:

• Who you are
• What LCI programs you have attended
• Why you want to become a Nicklin Fellow

Also include a CV/resume, and responses to the following questions (a maximum of 150 words per response):

• Which Fundamental Questions seminar did you attend? What did you get out of it?
• What do you think is worth thinking about?
• Give us a couple ideas for how you might spend your Nicklin fellowship money. (This is not a test, nor are you obliged to use these ideas when you receive your fellowship). Please remember to calibrate these suggestions to the guiding principles of the Lumen Christi Institute.

Applications should be submitted by the end of the day on December 15th.

Guiding Principles

Program proposals should…

• Affirm the intellectual life as good in itself

• Ask questions animated by the principle that “all knowledge forms one whole”

• Transcend the ideological / political divide (i.e., programs should not be partisan in nature)

• Welcome religious perspectives as part of the intellectual life (i.e., programs need not be theological in nature but conversations should be open to religious insights)

• Nurture friendships, to support the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness (i.e., programs should have a social component)

The In Lumine Network, consisting of thirteen independent institutes for Catholic Thought located at elite research universities in the U.S., will hold its annual best practices meeting October 17th-18th at the Study Hotel at University of Chicago. The event will bring together leaders from the various institutes for workshops and panels on how institutes for Catholic thought can best achieve their mission of sharing the Catholic intellectual tradition today at secular universities. The event will also offer an opportunity for fellowship, communal prayer, and participation in the liturgy among the attendees.   

While the annual meeting is by invitation only, there will be a public panel titled “Virtue, Moral Formation, and the University” on Thursday, October 17th from 5:00pm – 6:30pm.

We sat down for an interview with John Boyer, Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and long-time Dean of the College (1992-2023). Prof. Boyer is the author of several books, including The University of Chicago: A History and Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897-1918. Earlier this year, Professor Boyer and Lumen Christi Executive Director Daniel Wasserman-Soler co-taught “The Closing of the American Mind and the Death of Philosophy,” a seminar for undergraduate students at the University of Chicago. Part of LCI’s Fundamental Questions Seminar program, the course is designed foster rigorous conversation around significant texts – enabling students to experience the force of the existential questions which animate our lives. 

You attended Loyola University of Chicago as an undergraduate. Please tell us about your experience in Catholic higher education / Jesuit education.

Loyola University had a core curriculum, emphasizing theology, philosophy, and (for some students) Latin. It was a Catholic version of what we would call “general education” at UChicago today, and I admired their willingness to ask students to engage in a broad set of liberal arts courses that were completely unrelated to their major.  The Jesuits also had a compelling philosophy of education. Their idea was that everything you do is for the greater glory of God, even if it’s not directly religious. So, if you asked them to describe the purpose of a liberal education, they would say something about the cultivation of critical thinking skills, but they would also argue that you should deploy these skills for the good of society. That is a philosophy that I tried to carry over to my time as Dean of the College at UChicago. It is why I supported creating organizations like the Institute of Politics that involve civic engagement and why I worked very hard in the establishment of the Odyssey Scholarship program.

What led you to your interests in the history of modern Europe, particularly Austria and the Habsburg Empire?

I originally planned to study modern German history, but during my first year in graduate school I became fascinated by the history the Habsburg Monarchy.  The Empire was a multinational empire held together by an extremely effective and relatively honest central civil service, balanced by a complex set of regional and local governments.  It was a very decentralized empire, with strong regionalist political structures, and it had to be, because of the multiple (and often competing) ethnic groups that constituted it.  The Empire also reminded me of the history of the United States in the nineteenth century:  whereas our “Frontier” was towards the west, the “Frontier” of the Habsburgs was towards the east.

By the way, the College is similar. To make it work, you need coherent, responsible local government—effective department chairs, Collegiate masters, chairs of Core courses. Much of the heroic day-to-day work is done by these local leaders. Whatever larger, macro-level plans one has about moving the institution in one direction or another, you have to have their buy-in and support. Otherwise, your reforms are likely to be short-lived, and perhaps even fail from the outset.

You’ve taught Western Civilization at the University and edited Chicago’s Readings in Western Civilization series. What do you see as the place of Western Civilization in higher education today and particularly at the University of Chicago?

Most of my teaching in the College has been in the Civilization Studies component of the Core curriculum, focusing on Western Civilization and European Civilization, and I would hope that many of our students will continue to want to take European Civ or Western Civ as their Core civ requirement, or even as an elective.

I started teaching Civ in the College as an advanced graduate student in 1973.  During my first quarter of teaching, I was asked to teach Greek and Roman history to two sections of 20 students each.  My research specialty is modern Central European (German and Austrian) history, so I had to go to the library and give myself a crash course in ancient Greek and Roman history, along with the history of ancient Judaism and of early Christianity.  I think I took perhaps as many of 200 books out of the library in ancient history, just to get caught up.

It was a transformative experience, and I have been teaching ancient, medieval, early modern, as well as modern European history ever since.  I found that studying intensely new scholarly fields in European history that were (nominally) unrelated to my own research area was fascinating, and it certainly broadened my historiographical horizons.  I really enjoyed the intellectual challenge of working up fields of study that were not directly relevant to the conduct of my own scholarly research.

The broad compass of the History of Western Civilization course also underscores the importance of an informed knowledge of the whole history of Europe, from ancients to moderns, and not only on the undergraduate level.  I fear that doctoral education in History in the United States is becoming ever narrower and more specialized, to the point where students are losing a command of the field as a whole.  This is a common complaint, and no one knows what to do about it. To give but one example: one really cannot understand modern European culture without a solid knowledge of ancient history and the cultures of antiquity.  Yet, how many American graduate students specializing in modern European history nowadays have read such ancient authors as Thucydides, Aristotle, Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, and Augustine in a serious and systematic way?

As you worked on your first edition of The University of Chicago: A History, what was something that surprised you? 

I was surprised by the boldness and openness to risk that marked key leaders of the University, and I was also surprised by serious financial and organizational challenges that those same leaders had to deal with over time. The success of the University of Chicago resulted from its ability to combine two very different cultural traditions, one of which was deeply indebted to the model of the classic nineteenth-century European (and especially German) research university, while the other resulted from an American conception of the college as a local institution embracing the mission of civic service to the community and anchored especially in undergraduate instruction.   From the outset the new University had enormous ambitions, and it enjoyed and grew accustomed to having very substantial philanthropic support.  Yet over the decades tensions between ardent zeal of innovation and the reality of constrained financial resources became all too apparent.  My book explores both themes: the surging academic distinction of the University and its capacity for bold, transformational reforms in American higher education, and its ongoing search for the necessary resources to sustain such distinction.

You participated this year in two Lumen Christi Institute seminars. Can you tell us about what you think the Institute offers to the university community?

I think that Lumen Christi has remarkable opportunities to supplement and enrich the regular academic work of the University by the kinds of intellectual conversations, lectures, workshops, and debates that it has regularly sponsored, particularly in the context of the multiple Catholic traditions of learning and scholarly engagement.

You were Dean of the College for over 30 years. What do you think makes the University of Chicago a special place in American higher education?

The College that has a very distinctive cultural profile in American higher education, consisting of particularly strong intellectual values and standards and bold interdisciplinary programs (the Core, etc.).  The College is also engaged in an educational and developmental process of considerable coherence.  The first and the second years give our students a community of common intellectual discourse and discipline as well as a rich network of friendships and collegiality.  In their third and fourth years we then ask our students to use this social and intellectual platform to engage our curriculum in more specialized studies, as well as to engage the wider world via our remarkable study-abroad programs.

We value students who are disciplined, hardworking, fearless in the face of uncertainty, and intellectually curious about many different facets of the human condition.  Our Core curriculum is an excellent way of training our students on all four fronts. 

A defining feature of our academic culture is also the in-your-face intellectualism of our community. We expect people to both have ideas and be able to defend them, as well as to be open to engaging rival or competing ideas. We say a lot about our commitment to academic freedom, but you cannot really debate ideas freely if you don’t have ideas to debate, so we always want to recruit students who are creative thinkers and who like to play with ideas.

What is a good life? How do we find a purpose from our talents and passions? And, how does religion (or its absence) inform our answers to these questions? These were the questions University of Chicago student Arjun Mazumdar (College ‘25) was asking himself as he designed his Nicklin Fellowship project – a reading group on Jorge Luis Borges and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Arjun is part of the inaugural cohort of Nicklin Fellows, a new initiative launched by the Lumen Christi Institute this year. The fellowship supports University of Chicago undergraduates in the pursuit of their academic interests, especially those related to existential questions of being and purpose. The fellowship cultivates robust, intellectual friendships rooted in a common love of truth, beauty, and goodness. 

We asked three fellows about their experience in the inaugural cohort of the Nicklin Fellows Program: Arjun, Jacob Neplokh ‘27, and Max Baumeister ‘25

LCI: UChicago already has a rigorous academic program. What does the Nicklin Fellows Program at the Lumen Christi Institute add to your intellectual pursuits?  

Arjun: I came to LCI seeking the “life of the mind” and conversations of great, canonical texts. LCI’s Fundamental Questions seminars, which I’ve attended as a Nicklin Fellow, have become a haven for me, a place to discuss fundamental questions with open-minded, intellectually curious peers. Being a Nicklin Fellow has enabled me to embody the University’s intellectual spirit more than any other activity or class, and my work this quarter has been among the most rewarding experiences of my college career. 

Jacob: The Nicklin Fellows Program was one of the highlights of my freshman year at the University of Chicago. The Nicklin Fellows Program gave me the opportunity to personally engage with scholars that LCI brings in, broadening my exposure to various thinkers even further.

Max: The Lumen Christi Institute not only adds to my intellectual pursuits, but actually allows me to pursue them in the first place. As a college student, you tend to mostly focus on…college. The Nicklin Fellows Program allows me to pursue my intellectual interests outside classes.

LCI: Part of the fellowship is designing and implementing an intellectual, community-oriented project. What is your Nicklin Fellows project and how did it go?  

Arjun: For my project, I designed a reading group that fuses fiction and philosophy to discuss existential questions: “Texts of Existence: The Interplay of Religion, Individualism, and the Cosmos in Borges and Nietzsche.” We read and discussed “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim” and “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges, and selections from The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche. Anecdotally, I can confirm that regardless of their familiarity with Borges and Nietzsche, participants left feeling inspired, interested, and hungry for more.

Jacob: I am planning a reading group for next year on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The work is famously lengthy and dense, but guidance from LCI—like organizing conversations with Dostoevsky expert Paul Contino—will make this manageable and a success.

Max: My Nicklin Fellows project is a weekly reading group on James Burnham’s 1941 The Managerial Revolution, and it is great to be able to read it with students from all majors.

LCI: What are some questions you found yourself engaging with in your fellowship project or during the Fundamental Questions seminar? What inspired you to pick your fellowship project?

Arjun: My inquiries were: What is a good life? How do we find a purpose from our talents and passions? And, how does religion (or its absence) inform our answers to these questions? It seemed fitting for me to discuss these using a confluence of fiction and non-fiction existentialism, something rare within the classroom. Nietzsche inspires our critical faculties, while Borges excites our imaginations. It was this combination that allowed for a unique approach to our inquiries. These questions occupy the minds of most undergraduates, but academic and social pressures inhibit us from truly dedicating ourselves to them. The opportunity to debate these points, uninterrupted, for an hour and a half every other week, accompanied by two great thinkers, is nonpareil.  

Jacob: The first program I participated in at LCI was a fundamental questions seminar on José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses. A key part of the text and discussion focused on an absence of a) respect for history (or tradition) and b) something higher to aspire to. Given Ortega y Gasset’s correct prediction on the destructive effects of such a condition, I wanted to interrogate an earlier text addressing similar existential themes. Particularly, The Brothers Karamazov focuses on religion—a potential solution often absent in contemporary discourse.

Max: Some big questions we found ourselves battling with in the fellowship project are (1) are we still living under capitalism? and (2) what even is capitalism? Burnham, as early as the 1940s, was already arguing that capitalism was in fact dead. Being a foreign policy student myself, I actually first became interested in Burnham for his influential foreign policy views. But then I realized that he actually had a very rich background in political philosophy and theory. After reading his book The Machiavellians, I knew I wanted to read The Managerial Revolution.

LCI: How will the Nicklin Fellows program prepare you to take future leadership roles in the workplace and society? 

Arjun: I had to prepare talking points for each session, introduce each text to a diverse audience, and develop a faithful, profound understanding of each text for my fellowship project. Most importantly, I had to field unexpected questions, mediate debates, and be willing to throw away my prepared notes when a more insightful discursive direction revealed itself. This summer, I will be working in a client-facing role in a corporate environment, and the ability to distill information quickly, translate arguments, and invite differing perspectives will be immeasurable. Most importantly, both Borges and Nietzsche emphasize the importance of time, the resilience of free will, and the merits of critically examining one’s values. These principles will make me a better co-worker, and employee. They have also helped align my professional ambitions more clearly with my passions. 

Jacob: The Nicklin Fellows program expects fellows to carefully prepare the pedagogical design of our projects. These skills will, of course, be quite helpful in any professional or social role because they depend on prudence and deliberation.

Max: It taught me that intellectual pursuits should be genuine in order to get the most out of them. It also taught me that intellectual pursuits should be unpretentious and shared. You never know who might share your interests.

LCI:  How did working with LCI’s staff help you shape this project and offer support?

Arjun: LCI was invaluable in helping me craft my project. Danny Wasserman encouraged me to apply, after observing my curiosity during LCI’s Fundamental Questions seminar on Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses. Austin Walker helped me streamline my lofty proposal, and narrowed my extensive reading list down to two authors, who would most engage and excite students and offered advice on how to navigate Socratic conversations as a leader. Finally, David Strobach’s operational support was instrumental. I’m so grateful to the Lumen Christi Institute and its donors for investing in my intellectual development.  

Jacob: I owe much gratitude to the LCI staff for helping me to workshop my project idea, assisting with logistical matters, and for putting me in touch with a Dostoevsky expert: all have been crucial. More generally, I also want to thank the entire LCI team for creating a welcoming, intellectual space on campus.

Max: A better question would be “How did working with Lumen Christi staff NOT help you shape this project and offer support?” In short, the Lumen Christi Institute was incredibly supportive, useful, and generous. The Lumen Christi Institute provided the place, the material, nutrition, and most important, intellectual guidance. What else could a college student ask for?