St. John's College

10/17/2026

This weekend is Johnnie Family and Friends Weekend in Annapolis! To celebrate, enjoy a throwback to the 1954 film, "A St. John's Story." The film's opening celebrates the universal importance of a liberal arts education while stating the advantages of the college's small, tight-knit community.

If someone in your life would benefit from a St. John's education, please send this Reel along to them!

10/13/2026

On Saturday, October 3, St. John's College Santa Fe honored pioneering New Mexican author Rudolfo Anaya (1937–2020) as part of Santa Fe Reads and National Banned Book Week. Anaya's most famous work, "Bless Me, Ultima," is perhaps the most famous Chicano text in the world and has undergone bans and burnings since its landmark publication. It is certainly New Mexico's most famous banned classic.

Published in 1972, "Bless Me, Ultima" tells the story of Antonio, a young boy growing up in rural New Mexico, and the curandera Ultima, who guides him as he wrestles with faith, family, and identity. Like many of New Mexican and Chicano ancestry, Antonio is torn between the Spanish Catholicism within his culture (his mother hopes he will become a priest) and the traditional curanderismo represented by Ultima, who birthed him. This tension and a desire to harmonize it sits at the heart of many New Mexican and Chicano works, of which "Bless Me, Ultima" is perhaps the most defining example. More than 50 years later, the book has sold over two million copies and has been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese.

St. John's "Bless Me, Ultima" tribute brought together many members of the Anaya family, including his sister Dolores and niece Belinda, as well as his longtime literary agent, Susan Bergholz, who championed Anaya's work for decades.

President J. Walter Sterling opened the program by reflecting on why reading great books, and talking about them with one another, matters so much, especially books that have been challenged or banned. He said the freedom to read is also the freedom to think, question, and understand one another.

Carmella Padilla, co-founder of the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, and New Mexico storyteller Jeremy Jojola spoke about Anaya's lasting impact. They described how "Bless Me, Ultima" gave generations of Nuevomexicano and Chicano readers a story that reflected their own lives, language, and landscape, and how it continues to shape students, teachers, writers, and the culture of New Mexico.

To close the program, St. John's Government Relations Officer Pier Quintana presented the Anaya family with a framed copy of our "3,000 Years of Banned Thought" poster. It traces 50 books that have been banned or challenged over three millennia, from Homer's Odyssey and the Bible to the "Inferno," "The Bluest Eye," and "Bless Me, Ultima." The tribute ended with the dedication of the Rudolfo Anaya Reading Hearth in The BookMark, a place where students and community members can gather to read for generations to come.

10/09/2026

What is education for? Victoria Kiper (AGI26) for the Future View section of the Wall Street Journal:

"Education, properly understood, is a practice in humility. It requires poring over difficult books and patiently listening to what others have to say. A good education requires the student to subordinate himself to something beyond his own preferences so that he may receive the wisdom of another. This posture is one that AI is functionally incapable of assuming.

A university’s ultimate aim shouldn’t be to graduate high-functioning employees. If we reduce education to this purpose, young people certainly have reason to fear what AI will make of their prospects. Instead, a university should form well-rounded, moral, virtuous and humble people devoted to the care of neighbor and country and eager for fuller participation in their communities.

Classical liberal-arts education fits this model and will take on a greater importance in the age of AI, even as utilitarian models for education wane. The liberal arts introduce students to the best that has been thought and said, teaching them to listen before they speak and inherit before they innovate. Only through a renewed encounter with Athens, Jerusalem and Rome can we recover the intellectual and moral glue that binds a society together despite technological and cultural changes.”

See the link below for the full piece:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/college-grads-vs-the-ai-job-apocalypse-8858fc7e

10/06/2026

How did the writings of “Publius” persuade Americans to support the new Constitution?

That question inspired St. John’s College tutor Harvey Flaumenhaft to author The Framework of the Federalist, which visually traces the arguments of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay into unified account of their political theory.

Flaumenhaft, who recently presented his work to the Polity during a talk and book-signing session at the St. John’s Annapolis Bookstore, argues that people “don’t read the papers as an articulated whole,” and that political actors tend to “pick out lines” that suit their agenda.

“With my book, you can see a detailed skeleton of the writers’ arguments,” he says. “After that, if you see certain lines in context, you see them very differently.”

Visit the link below to learn more about Flaumenhaft’s scholarship on the Federalist Papers.

https://www.sjc.edu/news/tutor-harvey-flaumenhaft-revisits-federalist-papers-amid-nations-250th-birthday

10/05/2026

Last summer, Liesl Geiger (A28) worked as a physics intern at the University of Virginia (UVA)! Here is how she describes the experience:

"I built a magnetic sensor for the lab, which meant learning a lot about circuits, coding in C++, and working within the specific interfaces UVA used.

From St. John's and high school, I knew a lot of theoretical physics, but I'd never really had the chance to put anything I knew into practice. Turning that theory into 'how is this circuit actually working?' was really difficult. It was a great learning experience."

Liesl's work was made possible by the St. John's Internship Program, which guarantees every student at least one fully funded internship!

09/29/2026

Last weekend, our Annapolis community welcomed more than 250 Johnnies back to campus to celebrate Homecoming.

From robust discussions of Burnt Norton and the echoes of Sicut Cervus in the Pendulum Pit, to waltz lessons and a room full of eager students networking with alumni in the workforce, the weekend offered countless opportunities to celebrate what makes St. John’s so special. The class of '76 also turned out to celebrate their 50-year reunion with quiet conversation and tea with President Sterling.

Thanks to our alumni for a wonderful weekend!

09/25/2026

How can we use technology to share the best of humanity?

That question led Jeremy Sheeler (AGI18) to cofound The Koinos Project, an online publication that highlights exceptional artists, ideas, and historical figures. Koinos recently collaborated with the Johnnie-founded band Summerfield, including Helen Wagner (A26) and Wylie Robbins Thorne-Thomsen (A26), to create an original music video entitled “The Canyon” and a podcast discussion about Wagner’s creative process.

Here is what Sheeler says about his initiative to feature Summerfield and other artists:

"As part of our attempt here at The Koinos to restore humanity to the humanities, we are launching a new series featuring artists who we feel represent the best of what humanity has to offer. The project will include music videos accompanied by a podcast discussion about the artists’ creative process, their inspiration, and the books and other works of art that have helped them to become who they are and do what they do.

"As the challenge of AI art continues to spread like the plague, we believe it is becoming imperative to not only appreciate the truly human aspect of art, but to be able to give an account of it — what the ancient Greeks called logos. Understanding why we do what we do will be as important as continuing to do it."

Visit the link below to listen to Sheeler's podcast with Wagner and Summerfield's single, "The Canyon."

https://www.koinosproject.org/p/koinos-cast-ballroom-sessions-1

09/24/2026

Freshmen at St. John’s recently finished Homer’s Odyssey, the second text every student reads after the Iliad. The Odyssey is a popular freshmen and senior essay topic for students who want to probe its characters, from πολύτροπος (wily) Odysseus and περίφρων (prudent) Penelope to ἀμύμων (blameless) Telemachus.

Given the excitement around Christopher Nolan's adaptation, St. John's College faculty have been invited by publications including the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Banner to share their thoughts on one of the world's oldest myths.

Visit the link below to view a conversation featuring St. John’s College President J. Walter Sterling, Catholic University professor and artist Anika Prather (AGI09), and Bard College humanities professor and Homer translator Daniel Mendelsohn as they explore topics such as Homer’s place in contemporary pop culture, the dichotomous relationship between cinema and text, the mercurial nature of the epic hero Odysseus, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i2GtrUz0-c

09/23/2026

What does vanilla gelato have in common with higher education?

Quite a lot—at least, that’s what former University of Utah Dean of Humanities Hollis Robbins thinks. She compared a Wirecutter article by Annemarie Conte about the decline of Talenti gelato with problems in higher education, while naming the St. John’s model as a solution. She writes:

“[Conte] interviewed the founder [of Talenti] and a food scientist and tracked down old labels from friends who had kept old Talenti jars. She compared the listed ingredients over the past ten years. Many had changed, and not in a good way.”

The same thing that happened to the Talenti jar, Robbins argues, has happened in higher education classes. Enabled by laws that bar accreditors from investigating what happens inside college classes, universities have weakened the substance of their instruction while externally appearing as they always have. She writes:

“States and accreditation agencies look at the jar and the lid and nothing else... the U.S. Department of Education in 2011 decided to define ‘credit hour’ as “amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement.” No state requires anything like an actual ingredients list. Just a jar labeled gelato and a lid.”

When Robbins ultimately cites the St. John’s model as a solution to this crisis she says, “There are famously no majors, no departments, no catalog of interchangeable three-credit units... [Students] go there because it is different and the recipe has barely changed since 1937.”

Find her full thoughts on Substack below:

It might be the end of the shell game

09/22/2026

St. John’s College Santa Fe will be giving away classics FOR FREE to local high school students and their families who come to The BookMark, which is the St. John’s College bookstore, on October 3rd and 4th.

The list includes 50 historically censored classics, with titles ranging from the ancient world--such as the Odyssey, the Bible, and Plato's Symposium--to the modern world, including The Bluest Eye, Brave New World, and The House on Mango Street.

As part of the event, we invite students to think about why, for millennia, humans have tried to ban, cancel, and avoid thoughts with which we disagree? And how can we develop the intellectual courage and generosity of spirit to consider them, even if the end result is respectful disagreement?

Then, on Saturday, from 4-5 p.m., we invite New Mexicans up to the campus coffee shop for a tribute to New Mexico's most famous banned classic: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. Come hear why this book has touched so many people and why it was it was so consistently banned across the American Southwest in the 1980s and 90s.

We expect this event to be popular and parking on campus is limited, so come early in case you need to park in our overflow lot and catch our shuttle. Or bike to campus! We have many places around campus to lock your bike.