As a distinctive feature of Shimer’s Great Books curriculum, you’ll choose electives that complement and deepen your engagement with the classics of Western thought. As a four-year student at Shimer, about one-third of your coursework will be elective courses, most of them in an area of concentration you choose.

Spend a whole semester relishing a classic like Plato’s Republic. Learn to read the classics in their original languages. Explore calculus, statistics, and the modern sciences of physics, chemistry, biology. Experience masterpieces of drama from Sophocles to Shakespeare; visit world literature from Eastern classics like The Tale of Genji to James Joyce’s Ulysses; and engage key contemporary writers in aesthetics, feminist theories, history, philosophy, and theology.

Read on for a sampling of recent electives. Many elective offerings at Shimer originate out of a creative blend of the broad interests of our faculty and the boundless curiosity of our students. What elective courses will you encourage your teachers to add in the coming years?

Sophocles
Shakespearean Drama
Shakespearean Comedy

American Literature
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens as Social Critic
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Dostoevsky
James Joyce, Ulysses
E.M. Forster
American Short Stories
The Harlem Renaissance
D.H Lawrence
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Literature of the Shtetl
The Writings of Tolkein

The Buddha: Life and Teaching
Wandering Free in the Dao
Classics of India
The Tale of Genji
The Qur’an
Confucius
Japanese Poetry: Waka, Rengu, Haiku

Hebrew Scripture
Genesis and Exodus
The Historical Jesus
Origins: Religion and Science on Human Origins

American Labor History
Famous Trials: Socrates, Salem Witches, Wilde, Leopold & Loeb, Scopes, Hiss
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Adam Smith and the Market Society
The Twentieth Century
Critical Theory
Ethics of War
Feminist Theories
Feminist Theology
Heidegger
Plato’s Republic
Spinoza’s Ethics

Introduction to Film History & Criticism
Gender and Sexuality: A Post-Structuralist Approach to Film
Screen Narrative: Anderson, Bergman, Kurosawa, Lynch

Abnormal Psychology
Child Psychology and Theories of Education

Calculus I and II
Chemistry I and II
Biology I and II
Botany
Environmental Science
Geometry and Cosmology
Physics of Music and Sound
Statistics

German for Reading
Latin I
Latin II: Descartes’ Meditations