Virtual Reading Groups
Would you like to join interesting people and have interesting conversations based on readings from the history of liberty?
Free Participation! | Powered by Zoom
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
George Eliot's Middlemarch
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Pre-registration is required.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) is widely regarded as one of the greatest English novels, shaped by her remarkable life and intellectual background. The novel explores the tension between individual freedom, social…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams
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Pre-registration is required.
This session explores the evolving relationship and ideological divide between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who went from collaborators on the Declaration of Independence to political rivals with sharply different views on…
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…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Daniel Webster vs. John Calhoun...the Slavery Debate
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Pre-registration is required.
In this Liberty and the American Statesman VRG, we will examine the contrasting responses to the sectional crisis presented in John C. Calhoun’s “Speech on the Slavery Question” (March 4, 1850) and Daniel Webster’s “The…
Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Twelve-Part Series - Part One
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a twelve-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!
Each month, Peter Mentzel will lead a 90-minute…
Brave New World and We: Dystopian Visions and the Nature of Tyranny
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Pre-registration is required.
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, first published in English in 1924, is often considered the grandfather of dystopian science fiction and influenced classics such as Orwell’s 1984, Vonnegut’s Player Piano, and Rand’s Anthem. In this…
The Rise and Fall of a Self-Made Man: Freedom and Falsehood in The Great Gatsby
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Pre-registration is required.
The Great Gatsby is one of America’s most-read novels, in large part because of its use in countless high school and college English classes. It offers the story of Jay Gatsby as told by Nick Carraway, his new neighbor. It…
Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower
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Pre-registration is required.
Join Aeon Skoble for a three-session VRG exploring Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower, an ambitious examination of the dynamic relationship between hierarchies and networks throughout history. As participants work through…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Before The Federalist: Alexander Hamilton as Revolutionary
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Pre-registration is required.
How did Hamilton become Hamilton? His earliest writing in favor of the American colonial cause evinced all the marks of a limited government Whig seeking redress for imperial overreach and violation of rights. By the end of the…
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Twelve-Part Series: Part Two
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a twelve-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!
Each month, Peter Mentzel will lead a 90-minute…
Past Sessions
Tragedy and Politics on Stage: An Encounter with Euripides
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Join us for a four-week discussion of ancient Greek tragedy. Together, we will read four plays by Euripides, the playwright Aristotle called “the most tragic poet.” We will consider how Euripides reimagines epic mythology and…
A Timeless Reading Group: James Baldwin on Black Liberty
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James Baldwin’s masterfully written The Fire Next Time is a timeless exploration of racial injustice. This reading group will discuss this revolutionary book as well as supplemental readings on slavery, civil rights,…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare Plays: Two Gentlemen of Verona
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Possibly Shakespeare’s earliest, and definitely one of his least popular plays, Two Gentlemen of Verona, winds its way through young love, betrayal, violence, treachery, and even pirates before settling on a happy ending. What…
Liberty After 50: Exploring John Rawls and Robert Nozick
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Two of the great works of contemporary political philosophy – John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia – have turned 50 in recent years. The aim of these two one-day VRGs is to explore…
A Timeless Reading Group: Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy: Wine and Politics
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with Alice Temnick
This is the fourth in our series of Timeless reading groups about Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy. For this discussion, we will read and discuss the novella “French Wines and Politics.”…
Tolstoy's War and Peace
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Soviet writer Isaac Babel said of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, “if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” The novel’s author seems to be especially interested in the contrast between the artificial and the…
Spontaneous (Dis)Order: Enlightenment Thinking on Anarchist Thought
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Spontaneous (Dis)Order: Enlightenment Thinkers on Anarchist Thought, is designed to explore the intellectual lineage from Enlightenment thought to the development of modern anarchism. Anarchism’s emphasis on decentralization,…
Civil Society and Political Economy
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Debates surrounding public policy often bifurcate the world into private markets and government. When social and/or economic problems arise, pundits are quick to propose government solutions to so-called failures of private…
