Aquinas's Summa Theologiae and Dickens's Great Expectations are certainly both great works, but the former requires a much more careful and detailed examination, owing in part to its technical vocabulary. In view of such diversity, classes at Rose Hill are of two kinds. On the one hand, there are tutorials, which are reserved primarily for the weightier books, and in which the faculty take a firmer lead in discussion. Tutorials promote a close reading of a relatively small body of material. On the other hand, there are seminars, which are broader in scope, and in which students take primary responsibility for conducting the discourse along relevant lines.
Seminars invite a reading that is less detailed, but more comprehensive.
What follows are lists of specific books read either in whole or in part in the Rose Hill curriculum. As can be seen at a glance, the readings are organized over the course of four years in such a way that students are working, in different contexts, both chronologically and thematically. In general, the work of the tutorials unfolds in the usual chronological order, from ancient to modern, while readings for the seminars interrupt that sequence, investigating thematically works from several periods. The constant effort to integrate and to unify disciplines therefore results in a conversation among historical epochs as well. Engaged in a dialogue spanning the centuries, students begin to see that how and what people think is closely linked with their choices, more or less informed as the case might be, and is not the result of some blind historical fatalism.