2024 SUMMER WORKSHOP
The Personal
& the Political
Tuesday, February 6th at 3 p.m. ET
Friday, February 9th at 11 a.m. ET
July 29 - August 9
at the University of Chicago
FREE FOR ALL ADMITTED STUDENTS
The Summer Workshop provides a space for undergraduate students interested in journalism, criticism, politics, art, and nonprofit work to learn about and practice engaging the public through dialogue and writing.
The theme of this year’s workshop is “The Personal and the Political.” Some of its central questions will be: Is it desirable to separate the personal and the political? Is it possible? How do we balance political allegiances with our intellectual, religious, and aesthetic values? Can we pursue dialogue, let alone maintain friendship and romance, across deep political disagreement? Students will address these and related questions in conversation with one another as well as with various philosophical, political, artistic, and religious traditions. For their final assignment, they will outline a longform essay or design a project to foster public conversation about the personal and the political on their own college campuses.
All student expenses, including tuition, room, and board, will be covered. College credit will be offered.
“The personal is political” was a rallying cry for feminists and the New Left in the 1970s, but the idea that nearly every aspect of human life should be disciplined by the “good” of society goes back at least to Plato.
At the same time, in many modern, liberal societies, political theorists have claimed that individuals have a right and even a responsibility to separate parts of their “private” life from the pressures and corruptions of politics. These competing accounts of the personal and the political lie at the root of many contemporary debates about the proper role of political considerations in every realm of our lives: from decisions about who to date and what novels to read to the way we express ourselves online, in class, and at work.
These considerations only become more urgent when we are faced with acute political crises, domestic and foreign. But do we need to take a “side” in every political debate? When everyone around us seems certain of their position, how do we find room to express feelings of uncertainty, ambivalence, even apathy? And what are the most effective ways to express our political convictions publicly, especially when we know we will be doing so in view of friends, classmates, or fellow-citizens who disagree sharply?
To raise these issues is not to downgrade or dilute our political convictions; in fact, it may be the precondition for learning how to be more effective advocates for them. But it does mean acknowledging that the answers are not obvious and that we can benefit from looking carefully at the range of ways they have been approached both in the past and today. In this workshop we will explore the relationship between the personal and the political together, facilitating the only kind of robust, living conversation adequate to meeting the challenges that the subject has always raised.
Course structure
Throughout the workshop’s two weeks, students will learn how to apply the insights of foundational works of philosophy, history, and literature to illuminate contemporary challenges. At the same time, they will practice the habits of thought and expression that will allow them to contribute meaningfully and effectively to public discourse. Seminars will include guided readings, discussions, and writing exercises. The program will also include film screenings, trips to cultural institutions, and excursions around Chicago to explore the diversity of settings in which these questions are raised.
WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS
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Jon Baskin is a founding editor of The Point and former deputy editor of Harper’s. He served as associate director of the Creative Publishing and Cultural Journalism program at the New School for six years. His essays and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, the Chronicle Review and elsewhere.
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Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post. She is also an editor of The Point and a contributing editor at the Boston Review. Her debut essay collection, All Things Are Too Small, is forthcoming from Virago this spring.
The goal is not just to arrive at the answers for oneself, but also to consider what it means to think with one another—and with the “public”—in a pluralistic society.
Students are housed on campus in University of Chicago dorms for the duration of the two-week workshop.
Tuition is free. Room and board will be provided at no cost to the students.
“In one of my writing reflections during the first week, I wrote: ‘this feeling of being part of academic dialogue is as new as learning to walk for the first time.’”
What our students had to say about the first workshop…
“The attempt to think instead of merely being clever was amazing. I felt challenged at every end.”
“Despite studying a variety of disciplines in college, this workshop is the most intellectually stimulating experience I’ve had.”
“I learned more than I have in most full-year classes and was exposed to a type of thinking and learning I didn’t know existed. If the point, as I understand it, was for us to rethink our relationship to education, the public, and the future, it was achieved.”
“This was the best, most intellectually diverse (and kind) group I’ve ever spent time in.”
