Chronology, evidence, and change
World and American history, historiography, political development, war, institutions, and the recovery of past worlds on their own terms.
A continuing program
Education
Formal degrees established a foundation. The continuing work is to broaden that foundation into a coherent liberal and classical education.
What formal study provided
My M.A. in History trained me to work with chronology, context, primary evidence, historiography, causation, contingency, and the problem of judging the past without reducing it to the present.
My B.A. in Political Science provided grounding in political institutions, constitutional arrangements, public policy, political thought, and the recurring tension between formal authority and political power.
Why continue
Specialization is necessary, but it can leave important parts of the intellectual landscape disconnected. A liberal education seeks proportion: history in conversation with literature, philosophy, science, mathematics, rhetoric, religion, art, and political thought.
A classical education adds inherited forms of inquiry and expression—close reading, grammar, logic, rhetoric, historical languages and contexts, and sustained engagement with works that shaped later civilizations.
Method rather than accumulation
The goal is not to collect titles or perform erudition. Each unit of study should answer a real question, establish context, include primary work and strong interpretation, and produce a written record of what was learned.
The curriculum therefore remains demanding but finite. It must be possible to pursue alongside work and family life, and it must produce completed cycles of reading, reflection, and writing rather than an indefinitely expanding queue.
Fields of study
Broad enough to connect. Structured enough to complete.
The fields are not silos. They are different disciplines for approaching enduring questions about nature, human action, authority, beauty, truth, and the good life.
Language, imagination, and inheritance
Epic, tragedy, poetry, drama, the novel, classical civilization, and the literary traditions through which societies understand themselves.
Arguments about truth and order
Logic, ethics, metaphysics, political authority, liberty, justice, citizenship, and the strongest competing accounts of human flourishing.
Quantity, explanation, and the physical world
Mathematical literacy, scientific reasoning, astronomy, biology, physics, and the methods by which empirical knowledge becomes reliable.