The Catherine Project

Roger Berkowitz

Scott Samuelson reports on his experience teaching the humanities for free to those who sign up with the Catherine Project, named for “Catherine of Alexandria, the scholar who refuted the crusty academics who’d been hired to refute her—and then suffered an ancient form of cancellation.” Samuelson teaches what he calls “slow cooker” courses, where “participants work more deliberately through one or two great books. Every week readers submit reflection papers on the assigned reading that serve to structure the discussion. We also have peer-led reading groups on various books or topics.” This approach to the humanities mirrors the approach of the Hannah Arendt Center’s Virtual Reading Group, which I lead weekly, although we don’t make participants hand in papers. It is evidence, Samuelson writes, that when the humanities are pursued on their own terms—to cultivate the life of the mind—there is hardly a crisis of the humanities. Samuelson writes:

How have my various slow-cookers and I spent the pandemic? Fall 2020: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Spring 2021: Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Fall 2021: Dante’s Comedy (we’re currently ascending Mount Purgatory—our climbing wall!). Two of my most passionate readers in those seminars have been with me on the epic journey ever since Apollo inflicted a plague on the Achaeans. I dare say there are more than a few PhDs in literature who haven’t carefully read all five of these foundational treasures. We’ve explored complex moral issues like when manipulation is justified or how to learn from flawed people, thorny questions of human nature pertaining to honor codes and sexual violence, aesthetic wonders of epic similes and character doubletakes, theological problems of evil and justice, political realities of emigration and colonization, our own personal issues of suffering and soul-making, and so much more. Because one of our fellow readers was interested in art history, we all got a little obsessed with analyzing masterpieces of visual art based on the Metamorphoses. The benefits of the humanities have danced so gracefully through these tutorials that it’s never occurred to any of us to ask what’s the point. If anything, my readers and I have been wondering what’s the point of doing other things. 
What I’ve given to the Catherine Project somehow hasn’t taken away from the classes I’m paid to teach—just the opposite. Being in crisis mode all the time is draining. When I spend time and energy on what matters, I magically have more time and energy. I haven’t felt so free since when I was teaching in prison! Sure, higher education must confront our particularly critical version of the permanent crisis, and the Catherine Project alone can’t save liberal education. But without its spirit infusing the humanities, what’s the point?