Great works of literature are often regarded with admiration and even intimidation for their role as the lofty subject of scholarly analysis, but these books were not written for the halls of the university alone. These works were composed to be used: insofar as they are able to challenge, guide, and transform the lives of those who come into their possession. The redemptive power of philosophy and literature is something we focus on often at the college, but few people today model this power as well as Rod Dreher. In this lecture, we find a potent example of the enduring vitality that exists in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The resulting expanse is an account of literature as something spiritually operative. Dante's poem becomes, in Dreher's telling, a work not only to be interpreted but to be inhabited, as a means by which grace can possess the imagination and heal what argument alone cannot.

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• Inferno

• Purgatorio

• Paradiso

• Augustine's Confessions

• Julian of Norwich

• Benedict XVI

• Thomas Aquinas

• Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue

In his first lecture at Ralston College, Spencer Klavan offers a reading of Aeschylus' Oresteia that seeks to make sense of the American political landscape. The Furies exemplify the impersonal arithmetic of blood and counter-blood, while the younger gods introduce personal claims, partiality, and the integrity of the individual. When these powers collide with a single human being, we enter into a tragic cycle that demands a payment which only deepens the debt. Resolution is brought about by Athena and the city that bears her name. Deliberative justice creates a forum in which opposing claims can be weighed without the need for more bloodshed. Vengeance and wrath are transmuted into law that enable the city to live with its past, rather than being ruled by it. Klavan reminds us that scapegoating increases when deliberation is foregone, leaving us prone to ritual violence.

Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply

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• Plato's Euthyphro

• Homer's Iliad

• Aeschylus' Oresteia

• The Code of Hammurabi

• Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• Herodotus

• Aristotle's Poetics

• The Book of Exodus

• Shakespeare's Hamlet

• Abraham Lincoln

• Ken Burns' The Civil War

• Palace of Knossos

• The Acropolis and Parthenon of Athens

• The Theatre of Dionysus

• Barbara Fields

• Eddie Izzard

• Neil Gaiman's the Sandman

In this lecture, historian Dr Barry Strauss examines Augustus as the architect of Rome's imperial settlement, tracing how a young heir of extraordinary ambition transformed a republic struggling with civil war into an enduring political order. Tracing events from the turmoil following Julius Caesar's assassination to the victory at Actium, the creation of the Pax Romana, and Augustus's claim to rule as Rome's "first citizen," Strauss highlights how Augustus secured power by building trust, managing rivals, and reshaping public life through law, ritual, architecture, and art. The talk concludes by asking what is preserved and what is lost when a society exchanges republican freedom for imperial stability, and what the study of ancient leadership can still teach us about prudence, courage, and political responsibility today.

Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply

• Winston Churchill

• William Shakespeare

• Herod the Great

• Homer

• Virgil's Aeneid

• Cicero

• Mark Antony

• Julius Caesar

• Cleopatra