Shimer College Core Program

The core curriculum of Shimer College is a sequence of 16 required courses humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and interdisciplinary studies. "Basic Studies" courses are generally taken during the first two years, and "Advanced Studies" during the final two years. The "Advanced Integrative Studies" courses, numbered are taken in the final year.

In addition to required core classes, electives offer in-depth work in a particular subject, or basic skills instruction. Tutorials follow a similar protocol, but with only one or two students per course, and are similar in structure to the Oxford-Cambridge supervision system.

Small seminars are sole form of instruction. Classes are composed of no more than twelve students, and read and discuss only original source material.

Through a process Shimer internally calls "shared inquiry", "the text is the teacher, and thus the faculty member's role is to facilitate interaction between the text and the students",as well as between the students themselves. Readings are also organized by broad historical and philosophical themes, rather than conventional fields.

Faculty are always addressed by first name. Teachers "facilitate" discussion, and therefore may talk little during actual class-time. Often teachers provide historical and relational information not available from other students or the text itself.

Shimer's current 200-book reading list remains largely faithful to the original Hutchins plan; however, new works are judiciously added to the core curriculum. These have included voices originally overlooked in the formation of the canon. Now included, for example, are works by Martin Luther King, Jr., Carol Gilligan, Frantz Fanon, and Michel Foucault, along with other contemporary authors.

The humanities core begins with the study of visual art and music, and progresses through literature, philosophy, and theology. The culminating course, "Critical Evaluation in the Humanities," attempts to approach all the areas of the Humanities through critical evaluation of significant works of the 18th century and later. This course includes Martin Buber's I and Thou, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.

The social sciences sequence opens with major works regarding the individual and society, and proceeds to classical political thought. Advanced courses investigate modern social and political theory, and conclude with the "Theories of Social Inquiry". This course focuses on interpretive methods in sociology, linguistic theory, and 20th century social thought, through works including Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures, Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia.

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