2025-2026 Humanities for Everyone

2025-2026 Humanities for Everyone Forum:
Identity and Belonging

As culture changes, so do the challenges to our identity and our sense of belonging. Who we are is not a given: our identity arises from faith, family, and friends, and from our place in the larger culture. In this forum, we look forward to exploring some great texts that have plumbed the trials of identity and belonging as posed by economic aspiration, race, psychosis, political turmoil, and technological ambition.

Humanities for Everyone is a set of three, non-credit, 8-week forums for Bethel alumni and friends that provides guided, small group discussion of selected “Great Books,” under the direction of Bethel Professor Emeritus Daniel Ritchie and Professor Emerita Marion Larson. It is informally linked to Bethel’s Humanities Program—a program of history, literature, theology, philosophy, politics, and the arts in the western tradition. Each 8-week forum will consist of four, bi-weekly Zoom meetings, in which we will discuss about 50 pages of text. Ample guides will be provided for the readings. 

Humanities for Everyone seeks to nurture Bethel community members and friends in their lifelong learning and Christian discipleship. It aspires to cultivate meaningful relationships among Bethel community members and connections to the ongoing life of Bethel University. Participants (Bethel University alumni, parents/family members, friends and employees) can register for one forum, two forums, or all three forums. 

Fall 2025: 

Masking Oneself: Social masking in The Great Gatsby and Nella Larson’s Passing

We all face times when masking our true selves seems like a choice worth considering. Exactly one hundred years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s  The Great Gatsby (1925) tells the story of a midwesterner who hides his identity and remakes himself in hopes of recapturing his lost love. Clare and Irene, light-skinned Black protagonists in Nella Larson’s Passing (1929), hide  their identities in order to navigate the racist barriers they face. The results, in both stories, are fascinating and terrifying. 

• September 16: First lecture on The Great Gatsby available

• September 23: Meeting #1 on The Great Gatsby

• October 7: Meeting #2 on Passing

• October 21: Meeting #3 on Passing

• November 4: Meeting #4 on The Great Gatsby

Winter 2026: 

Knowing Oneself: discerning identity among family and friends in “The Dead” and Good Will

In this forum we’ll explore two stories by authors who help us consider both our self-knowledge and our beliefs about how well we actually know the people we are closest to. In “The Dead” (1914) (from Dubliners), James Joyce takes us into the inner lives of the Conroys when Gabriel realizes how little he really knows about his wife Gretta. Jane Smiley’s novella Good Will (1989) (from Ordinary Love and Good Will) is told from a father’s perspective. His deep satisfaction in life is beautifully depicted—but events force him to reconsider how well he knows his family.

• January 20: First lecture on James Joyce, “The Dead” available

• January 27: Meeting #1, “The Dead”

• February 10: Meeting #2, “The Dead”

• February 24: Meeting #3, Good Will

• March 10: Meeting #4, Good Will

Spring 2026:

Recognizing Oneself: Distinguishing humanity from barbarity in Brave New World and Gulliver’s Travels

Our spring forum will take us into literature that examines the promises of science. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726),  the floating island of Laputa and the “horse utopia” of the Houyhnhnms turn Gulliver’s mind inside out: the technological projects of Laputa never seem to fulfill their expected potential, and the horses seem more human than Gulliver’s own neighbors. In Brave New World (1932), Aldous Huxley shows us the underside of trusting in technology to fulfill all human desires—and a shocking alternative  to that trust. 

March 17:  First Lecture on Gulliver's Travels available

March 24: Meeting #1, Gulliver’s Travels, “Voyage to Laputa.”

April 14: Meeting #2, Gulliver’s Travels, “Voyage to the Houyhnhnms”

April 28– Meeting #3, Brave New World

May 12– Meeting #4, Brave New World