Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts Graduate Programs

There is nothing quite like the joy we experience in our direct encounter with the greatest books that have been written, each one serving as a door to another world, a ladder by which we can ascend, or a window to a hidden reality.

Through the Philosophy and Humanities sequence, we read together the greatest works of the imagination and the intellect in a spirit animated by joy that flows from the classroom to animate all that we do as a college.

Through six semesters of sustained reflection, students engage with the fundamental themes of theology:  God, prayer, the sacraments, Sacred Scripture, first and final things, love, human action, and the hope of heaven.

Deeply integrated with the Humanities sequence, these four courses lead students through an odyssey into the nature of language, writing, and the substance of reality.

Students immerse themselves in the languages of Greece or Rome, choosing the path that leads to Troy or the Eternal City.

Through our unique “Arts of the Beautiful” Program, students can integrate the practices of music, visual art—including iconography—and drama with sustained reflections on aesthetics, all while experiencing these arts in the museums and concert halls of New England.

In our pursuit of wisdom, we seek the visible and hidden orders of creation. Here the Book of Nature, through which Euclid and the greatest scientific minds serve as our guides, becomes indispensable.

As a complement to the generous core of great books read in common, students take up one of the classic disciplines in the junior and senior year, reading books from within that discipline and developing a vision of reality shaped by that discipline.

At the beginning of the junior year, when a major discipline has been chosen, each student selects a single author as the subject of an extended exploration of reading and then, as a senior, selects a classic book and related question that become the basis of a senior thesis or portfolio.

In the college’s Honors Program, students and faculty explore—in a seminar setting—classic texts and themes chosen by a senior tutor of the college, while also completing an Honors Thesis during their senior year.

Our faculty have spent their lives joyfully pursuing wisdom through the classic books and the central disciplines, mentoring students who wish to join them in the exploration of the highest and most permanent things.