Humane Letters Seminars

A cornerstone of the liberal arts curriculum at North Phoenix Preparatory Academy is the Humane Letters Seminar. In the 9th through 12th grades, English and History are combined in our Humane Letters courses: these are 2-hour long, daily seminars, directed Socratically and revolving around readings from Western Civilization’s best works in philosophy, drama, history, autobiography, poetry, novels, and essays. Students learn to read carefully, discuss clearly, and write coherently.

Freshman – American Tradition: 

American history with representative American literature including selections from Hamilton, Madison, Thoreau, Emerson, de Tocqueville, Douglass, Twain, Melville, Crane, Cather, Sinclair, Wilder, and Hemingway.

Sophomore – Modern Europe: 

English and European literature, philosophy, and history in tracing the development of political institutions from the late Middle Ages through World War II. Authors studied include Shakespeare, More, Locke, Austen, Dickens, Rousseau, Marx, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn.

Junior – Ancient Greece:

Literature, philosophy, and history of Ancient Greece with readings from Homer, Sophocles, Epictetus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. The students also study Hamlet.

Senior – Rome to Modernity:

A capstone course in which students draw upon the work of the previous two seminars in examining developments in European literature and philosophy in the transition from Rome, through the Middle Ages and into the Modern Era. Authors read include Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Descartes, Hegel, Marx, and Dostoyevsky.