The American Presidents and the Western Tradition

We are accustomed to engaging the American presidency as a public office best approached through the prism of government or political science, but this course studies the ways in which the presidents in thought and action are part of a larger continuum of humanistic expression in the western tradition. It is organized around five categories: memory, language, consolation, farewell, and self-reflection. Our work involves reading and viewing/listening to various materials, including videos and original documents. The words we study, both by and about presidents, will be compared to various masterworks of Greco-Roman antiquity and the western Middle Ages.