Virtual Reading Groups
Would you like to join interesting people and have interesting conversations based on readings from the history of liberty?
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Our Virtual Reading Groups will each focus on a particular topic, and a common set of readings will form the basis for our discussions. Each group is facilitated by a professional moderator and is conducted online powered by Zoom.
Our Timeless Reading Groups are asynchronous and open to all in the Portal platform. Liberty Fund solicits a scholar to lead a discussion of a short story and/or essays that each participant will read and discuss. This format doesn’t require participants to use Zoom or “schedule” a specific time to participate.
Participation is offered at no-cost, and there is no need to be an expert on the topic for discussion! The only requirement is that participants be eager to read and engage in conversation.
Upcoming
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels at 300
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Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is generally considered a satire: a work that exposes foibles and vices with the goal of reform. In The Battle of the Books, Swift observes, “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do…
Liberty and Women's Suffrage
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This VRG will examine the arguments for and the long struggle for women’s right to vote in the United States. In the aftermath of the successful conclusion, in the form of the 19th Amendment, another constitutional change was…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Thomas Paine
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Pre-registration is required.
Certainly among the most important persons of the revolutionary era of the late eighteenth-century, Thomas Paine’s role in the shaping of world events from the American to the French revolutions demands close consideration. What…
The Federalist Papers and the Debate on the Constitution
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Pre-registration is required.
The Federalist played a role in the ratification debate of 1787-1788 and its 85 essays have long been seen as providing essential commentary on, and explanation of, the Constitution. Though written by Federalist partisans with…
Spontaneous Orders in Antiquity
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Pre-registration is required.
Spontaneous order is a central feature of classical liberal thought, especially Friedrich Hayek, and is often taken to be a key dimension of both liberal societies and market-based economies. Yet classical political thought…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Two
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare Plays: Antony and Cleopatra
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Pre-registration is required.
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is a famously difficult play to stage. Its complicated plot and constant shifting of scenes make the action hard to follow. But the beauties of Shakespeare’s language are still there, and we…
Buchanan's Essays: What Should Economists Do?
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Pre-registration is required.
James Buchanan’s goal in his 1964 essay ’What Should Economists Do?’ was to persuade economists to “concentrate their attention on a particular form of human activity, and upon the various institutional arrangements that arise as…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Roger Sherman
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Pre-registration is required.
This virtual reading group explores the life, ideas, and legacy of Roger Sherman, one of the most influential—yet often overlooked—Founding Fathers of the United States. A key figure in the American founding, Sherman was the…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Three
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Four
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Five Part One
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Five Part Two
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
Past Sessions
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare Plays: Timon of Athens
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Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens is a study in misanthropy. The generous Timon believes that his gifts to his nation and his friends will secure him their faithfulness and support, but he is deserted at every turn. At last, he…
Flannery O’Connor: Grace, Responsibility and Liberty
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This Virtual Reading Group addresses the work of Flannery O’Connor and her view of the opportunities and responsibility that individuals have to respond to the natural and divine grace that leads to self-knowledge and in turn…
Liberty and Tech: Can you really Converse with a Machine?
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This VRG has four short readings about how chatbots are changing our lives. Questions include what it means to have a relationship with a machine. Additionally, we will discuss how interactions with chatbots are spilling over…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare Plays: King John
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The contest for the crown at the center of King John is a bloody and violent one, with a surprising hero in the figure of the illegitimate Richard Plantagenet. George Orwell loved the play, but what will we make of its tangled…
Liberty and the American Statesman: John Adams
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The definition of republican government from the time of the American Revolution through the first years of the nineteenth century, drew from a diverse well of ideas about law, the nature of “The People” and the substance of…
Economics Through Literature: the 19th vs. 20th Century
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Can you teach economics through story? British sociologist Harriett Martineau pioneered the use of story to teach political economy in the 19th century. American Journalist Henry Hazlitt attempted the same thing in the mid-20th…
Liberty and Tech: Is it Spying if a Machine Does It?
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We begin with Bentham’s Letters 1, 2, 5, and 6, explaining his belief that power should be visible and unverifiable, which will lead to the betterment of the individual. The Reveley drawing helps to visualize Bentham’s plans. The…
Human Excellence and the City: Shakespeare and Plutarch on the Roman General Coriolanus
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Join us as we explore Coriolanus through the lens of the two most famous accounts of his life. First, we will read Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus, in which Plutarch tells the story of Coriolanus’s rise to greatness and the story…
