Professor Joseph Alulis
April 22nd at 6 PM - 2026
South Texas College Mid-Valley Campus G-288
Will’n in Weslaco would like to sincerely thank the South Texas College Library for once again hosting our Public Lecture.
We are honored to announce this year’s speaker will be Professor Joseph Alulis (University of Chicago).
Joe Alulis has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He has published articles on Tocqueville, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the filmmaker Whit Stillman, and is co-editor of two collections of scholarly essays, Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Freedom (1993) and Shakespeare’s Political Pageant (1996). His most recent publication is “’To Make High Majesty Look Like Itself’: Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Nature of the Good Regime” (2018). He has held appointments at three area colleges, Loyola University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and North Park University, where he was professor of politics and government and chair of the department. At North Park, his teaching responsibilities included American foreign policy, international politics, and the politics of the Middle East. His scholarly interests include political philosophy, American political thought, and the thought of Shakespeare, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Dostoevsky, and Saul Bellow. Alulis joined the teaching staff of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults in the University of Chicago’s Graham School in 1982 and in that position has taught many courses on Plato, Aristotle, political philosophy, history, literature, and much else.
“Shakespeare is as great a philosopher as he is a poet - that, indeed, his greatness as a poet derives even more from his power as a thinker than from his genius for linguistic expression, and that his continuing appeal and influence is a reflection of his possessing great wisdom.”
(Craig, Leon. Of Philosophers and Kings, p. 4)
“Shakespeare’s Anatomy of Love”
Much Ado About Nothing
Professor Paul Cantor (University of Virginia)
April 6, 2021
“The Middle Ages produced a new kind of religion of love. And Shakespeare was a kind of heretic and trying to reform it.”
"Love, Drugs, & Politics"
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
Professor Pamela Jensen (Kenyon College)
April 5, 2022
“Shakespeare’s greatness embraces us all… Shakespeare teaches us wisely about fundamental questions of politics… We can marvel at the acuteness of Shakespeare’s psychology.”
"Conquering Fortune: The Macbeths’ Enterprise"
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Professor Dustin Gish (University of Houston)
April 18, 2023
“Conquering fortune, rather than waiting for her to bestow her gifts in due time, is the Macbeths’ enterprise… How can order arise out of disorder; or, to put this in a Machiavellian way, how to acquire and maintain power?”
“What beast was ‘t then that made you break this enterprise to me?” (Lady Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7)
"Shakespeare's Comedy of Ancient Athens"
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Professor Emeritus Jan Blits (University of Delaware)
April 9, 2024
“Shakespeare's sparkling comedy sets forth the love of the beautiful and the triumph of art that characterized ancient Athens at its glorious peak.”
"What's So Funny About the Law?"
The Comedy of Errors
Professor William Morrisey (Hillsdale College)
April 8, 2025
“Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.”
Locke, John. An Essay on Civil Government, II, xviii, Section 202.
“Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying insofar as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.”
Agnes Repplier: In Pursuit of Laughter, 1936
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