Sinclair House Seminars (for Young Professionals)
In the summer of 2020, the Sinclair House Seminars were born.
Sourced in a desire to form intentional, incarnational, intellectual community at an isolating time, Chesterton & Zoë started inviting small groups of dear friends— most of whom lived in the DC area —out to their historic home for weekend retreats where they would work, pray, learn, and enjoy life together.
With more than 30 seminars and 100 different participants later, the Sinclair House Seminars have become an amazing community of classically-minded young professionals in the mid-Atlantic area.
Sinclair House Seminars are 'invite-only'. If you are interested in potentially attending, please contact Chesterton & Zoë at chestertoncobb@gmail.com.
Past Young Professional Seminars
June 19-21, 2020
1. "True American Community"
(de Tocqueville, Robert Nisbet, Jane Jacobs, Case Studies)
July 10-12, 2020
2. "Enduring Chinese Belief & Culture"
(Confucius, Lao Tzu, Spence, Yu Hua, Buck, Mang Ke)
August 7-9, 2020
3. "Leisure, the Basis of Culture"
(Josef Pieper)
September 18-20, 2020
4. "Wendell Berry's Agrarian Vision"
October 16-18, 2020
5. "Youth through the Ages"
(Milton, Coleridge, Byron, Yeats, Longfellow, Kipling, Postman, Knowles)
November 13-15, 2020
6. "A Classical Approach to Artificial Intelligence"
(Hesiod, Protagoras, Aeschylus, Condorcet, Butler, Machiavelli, MacIntyre, Turing, Searle, Borges, Hofstadter)
January 8-10, 2021
7. "Pre- and Post-Christian Views of Death"
(Donne, Gray, Wordsworth, Dickenson, Hopkins, Housman, Millay, Tyrtaeus, Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Epictetus, Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Camus)
February 19-21, 2021
8. "Russian Happiness"
(Pushkin, Tolstoy)
March 5-7, 2021
9. "Wendell Berry's Social Vision"
April 9-11, 2021
10. "Legendary Heroism"
(MacIntyre, Gilgamesh, Homer, Beowulf, Gawain)
April 17, 2021
Students from Christendom College
11. "True American Community"
(de Tocqueville, Robert Nisbet, Case Studies)
June 18-20, 2021
12. "Art and the Gothic Mind"
(Émile Mâle, Josef Pieper)
July 9-11, 2021
13. "Cosmic Imaginaries"
(Cicero, Ptolemy, Lewis, Copernicus, Kuhn)
October 15-17, 2021
14. "Civil War in the Valley"
(Shelby Foote)
October 24-25, 2021
15. The Executive Team from Numinar
Fall Retreat
November 19-21, 2021
16. "Patristics on Culture"
(Epistle to Diognetus, Prudentius, Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Augustine, Damascene)
January 28-30, 2022
17. "Medieval Islamic Philosophy"
(al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroës, Rūmī)
February 11-13, 2022
18. "A Maiden Voyage"
July 8-10, 2022
19. "The Pre-Socratics"
(Hesiod, Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democratius)
August 12-14, 2022
20. "The Enchanted World"
(Charles Taylor)
September 16-18, 2022
21. "Marcus Tullius Cicero"
October 21-23, 2022
22. "De Civitate Dei"
(St. Augustine)
December 2-4, 2022
23. "Berry's Social Vision"
(Wendell Berry)
January 20-22 2023
24. "Classical Environmentalism"
(Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Ovid, Pliny, Athanasius, Maximus, Lynn White, Carolyn Merchant)
February 24-26, 2023
25. "Anton Chekhov"
(Short Stories)
March 10-12, 2023
26. "Atonement I"
(Athanasius, Nazianzen, Maximus, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin)
March 31-April 1, 2023
27. "Atonement II"
(Identical to Atonement I)
April 21-13, 2023
28. "Kierkegaard"
(Either/Or, Fear & Trembling, Concept of Anxiety, Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
June 30-July 2, 2023
29. "Cosmic Imagination
(Donne, Herbert, Hopkins)
August 11-13, 2023
30. "Hegel & Dickinson"
February 16-18, 2024
31. "The Future of Conservatism"
February 23-25, 2024
32. "Nikolai Gogol"
April 12-14, 2024
33. "Cicero's De Officiis"
April 26-28, 2024
34. "Patristic Mariology"
October 11-13, 2024
35. "Fate & Fortuna"
(Æschylus, Aurelius, Boëthius, Dante, H.C. Andersen)