CLICK HERE to read an online version of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare.
We’re all very excited to hear Dr. Crider and Dr. Stryer speak this Friday, 11/13. See you all there!
November 10, 2009
CLICK HERE to read an online version of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare.
We’re all very excited to hear Dr. Crider and Dr. Stryer speak this Friday, 11/13. See you all there!
April 23, 2009
Unfortunately, we’ve had to cancel the Crider/Stryer Salon. I know that many of you were excited to hear both speakers (we were too!), but we’ll have to try again in the Fall.
Until then,
Paul, Ruth Anne, Katie, and Jason
April 15, 2009
Click here to read Samuel Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare
Dr. Scott Crider is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at the University of Dallas. His research interests include the English Renaissance, the rhetorical tradition (Ancient and Modern), and the history and character of liberal education. He is author of The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay, and is currently completing a book on Shakespeare’s Ethics of Rhetoric and a book on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Dr. Steven Stryer is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Dallas. His research interests include Alexander Pope, Edmund Burke, Eighteenth-century prose and poetry, and the essay. His dissertation is The Past/Present Topos in Eighteenth-Century English Literature: A Pattern of Historical Thought and its Stylistic Implications in Historiography, Poetry, and Polemic (2006).
March 18, 2009
Dr. David Oliver Davies is Assistant Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of Dallas. His most recent publication is “Eve’s First Words: Ovidian Wit, Platonic Self-knowledge and Milton’s Translations in Paradise Lost 4.440-491″. Classical and Modern Literature Vol. 27 No. 2 (Winter 2008). He is presently at work on a book on the rational endowment of the human pair in Paradise Lost.
February 26, 2009
February 18, 2009
Available Readings:
King Lear (purchase on Amazon.com)
Renaissance drama resources on luminarium.org
Dr. Leo Paul de Alvarez is Professor and Graduate Program Director of Politics at the University of Dallas. His research interests are Thucydides, Politics & the Bible, Shakespeare, Aristotle & Plato, and Machiavelli. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he is author of The Machiavellian Enterprise: A Commentary on The Prince.
October 29, 2008
Available Readings:
King Lear (purchase on Amazon.com)
Renaissance drama resources on luminarium.org

Dr. Louise S. Cowan has devoted her professional life to the study and teaching of literature and to the creation of institutions of liberal education. In 1991, President George Bush bestowed upon Dr. Cowan the nation’s highest award for achievement in the humanities, the Charles Frankel Prize. Dr. Cowan’s dedication to the University of Dallas resides at the heart of her long career in education. Beginning in 1959, she and her husband Dr. Donald Cowan, worked to transform a diocesan college of modest ambitions into one of the most prestigious Catholic universities in the nation. As chair of the English Department and later as dean of the Braniff Graduate School, she devised a curriculum, with literature at its center and classic texts as its primary content, that is still in place today and acclaimed for its advancement of learning in the tradition of liberal education. Throughout the years, her wide-ranging literary interests have included Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Caroline Gordon, and many other writers both ancient and modern. Dr. Cowan has written or edited several books and is the author of numerous articles on literature and culture. She is the recipient of many awards and honors in Dallas and throughout the nation for her contributions to education and her excellence in teaching, most recently as a Laura Bush honoree in October, 2001, for the establishment of The Teachers Institute at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.
October 18, 2008
Thanks to Dr. Tom West and Dr. Steven Forde for a stimulating discussion of Locke on Natural Law and Natural Right, and thanks to Matthew Post for serving as our moderator.
If you missed the salon, or if you would like to revisit the discussion, a recording is available to download, courtesy of Dr. Dupree.
To listen to the recording, left-click on the link. Quicktime will load the recording in a separate browser window.
To download the recording, right-click on the link, and select “save as.” Your browser will download the recording to your computer.
October 8, 2008
Readings for the salon are available for download:
Excerpts from Locke’s Writings on Natural Law & Natural Rights

Dr. Thomas West is Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, where he has taught since 1974. He is also a Director and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, which has generously supported and publicized his research. Born in 1945, Dr. West received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1967 and his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in 1974. He served in Vietnam as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1969-70. He was Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation in 1988-89, and Salvatori Visiting Scholar at Claremont McKenna College from 1990-92.
Dr. Steven Forde is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. He is winner of the American Political Science Association’s Leo Strauss Prize for the Best Dissertation in Political Theory (1986). He is author of The Ambition to Rule: Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides and of articles in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and International Studies Quarterly. He specializes in classical and American political thought and international ethics.
October 4, 2008
Thanks to Dr. Gerard Wegemer and to all who came to hear him speak about Raphael’s “School of Athens” and the Liberal Arts at UD. Our first event was a great success, and we look forward to more events like this one in the future.