Welcome to the Lyceum @Clemson Substack!
The Lyceum @Clemson is the official Substack for the Lyceum Program, the flagship program of The Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University.
The Lyceum @Clemson is the official Substack for the Lyceum Program, the flagship program of The Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism (SISC) at Clemson University. Using a Great Books approach, we study the moral foundations of a free society. We do this through courses we teach our Lyceum Scholars and Fellows, and Socratic tutor sessions we hold with our Lyceum Scholars throughout their four years at Clemson.
As faculty in the Lyceum Program, we share a common commitment to liberal education. We want our students to form a character that is proper to a free human being. We believe that the practice of carefully reading, thinking, conversing, and writing about the Great Books within a smaller community of teachers and students is vital to the formation of a free character.
Freedom requires knowing the truth. Our search for the truth is not merely an academic exercise. At the core of the Lyceum Program is the awareness that a liberal education does not separate the pursuit of knowledge from the moral questions about how we should live.
Our faculty know that the work we do here at Clemson with our students is the most personal and the most important of our efforts. At the same time, as an unabashedly American program, we have ambitions to reach beyond Clemson with our vision of liberal education. We do so, in part, knowing the need to counteract illiberal ambitions in the world of education.
The Lyceum @Clemson is our invitation not only to see the work we do here in the Lyceum Program, but to invite others to join us and add to our conversations. As we begin this endeavor, we want to introduce y’all (in the spirit of Southern hospitality) to the sections of our Substack.
1. “Primary Texts”: The centerpiece of our Substack will be short interpretive essays about the texts we teach in our program.
2. “Thoughts on Education”: These posts will be shorter reflections on the work we do inside the classroom and tutoring our students.
3. “Quotes From the Underground”: Written anonymously, these posts will provide short quotations from primary texts with a few thoughts or questions to spur further reading and thought about the passages or authors involved.
4. “Novel Ties”: These posts will feature insights into novels and other works of literature that we may or may not cover in the Lyceum Program.
5. “Discourses on Living”: Here readers will find essays that use the books we teach as a foundation for thinking broadly about life.
6. “Movies and Music”: Posts here will consist of short interpretations that either approach movies and music just as we approach primary texts, or explore connections between the Great Books, movies, and music.
7. “Teaching Resources”: Here readers will find resources (such as syllabuses, course assignments, etc.) that other teachers can use in their own work.
From all of us in the Lyceum Program, welcome to The Lyceum @Clemson. We look forward to sharing our work with y’all in the months and, hopefully, years ahead!
And now a message from Snow Institute Executive Director, C. Bradley Thompson, welcoming you to the Substack: