Perelandra Scholars Program

High School Students

We offer engaging learning opportunities for high school students in the 11th and 12th grades, with a focus on philosophy, religion, politics, and literature. Through study of the humanities we seek to foster thoughtful civic discourse and constructive debate.

Note the Perelandra Scholars Program is on hiatus and will return Fall 2025.

How Do I Know If These Courses Are Right For Me?

Are you interested in big ideas and the great intellectual conversations of western culture?
Would you like to engage these discussions on the college level, through critical dialogue, close reading of texts, and question-and-answer sessions with visiting speakers?
Do you value intellectual freedom and are you willing to prioritize truth-seeking and clarity of argument even in disagreement?
Can you engage controversial points of view, including positions you may find personally offensive, with the goal of understanding them and thereby sharpening your own thinking?

If you answer "yes" to these questions, then you are very welcome to join in!

Classes are held on Monday or Tuesday evenings and cost $75 per course. Need-based scholarships are available. Each course is currently limited to 15 registrants. A one-credit course is offered each term.

Location: Classes are held in-person on the Portland State University campus in Lincoln Hall: 1620 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97201 (at intersection of SW Broadway and Mills Streets). Link to PSU campus map

Provisional Course Offering for Academic Year 2025-2026

(for high school students)

Runaway Brides and Men With Yachts: Classic Hollywood Comedy (1 credit)

Instructor: Professor Michael Weingrad

One of the great American art forms is the Hollywood “screwball comedy” of the 1930s and 40s, with roots in Shakespeare, and much giddy delight and canny wisdom about men, women, and relationships. In this course we will discuss five screwball classics (plus one drama) that deal with marriage, divorce, and how to find healthy relationships and avoid bad ones. Films: It Happened One Night (1934), The Lady Eve (1941), Dodsworth (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), The Palm Beach Story (1942), plus short readings, including excerpts from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves.

Michael Weingrad, Director of the Perelandra Scholars Program

The Perelandra Scholars Program is directed by Michael Weingrad. Professor Weingrad is a member of the faculty of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University, and has held fellowships at Harvard University, the University of Leeds, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lives in Portland and is the father of three teenagers.

Grades for the course will be determined based on student participation, preparation, and attendance, as well as short writing assignments. Students are required to attend all class sessions and complete all assigned readings prior to the class session designated. Students will be asked to formulate questions for visiting speakers, submitted to the instructor in advance.

Thanks to donor generosity, including a new grant from the Jerry & Helen Stern Grandchildren’s Fund of the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, we are able to invite international guest speakers to our courses via zoom for students to learn from and interact with. Our speaker list will be announced prior to each course.

History

The Perelandra Scholars program made its maiden voyage in the 2021-2022 academic year. In 2022-2023 we added a fourth course on classic American film. Guest speakers in the program have included Batya Ungar-Sargon, Lauren Southern, Peter Boghossian, R. R. Reno, Ryszard Legutko, Stephen Daisley, Sasha White, Michael Millerman, Sarah Rindner-Blum, Vamsee Juluri, Marat Grinberg, Aylana Meisel Diament, Sri Craven, and Abigail Favale.

Prior Course Offerings

(for high school students)

FALL TERM 2023

Fantasy & the Religious Imagination - 5 sessions
Mondays 7:10 - 9:00pm

WINTER TERM 2024

The Idea of the Nation - 7 sessions
Tuesdays 7:10 - 8:40pm

SPRING TERM 2024

Identity and US Politics - 6 sessions
Tuesdays 7:10 - 8:40pm

Fall 2023:

Fantasy Literature and the Religious Imagination (1 credit)

Through extended discussion of C. S. Lewis’s novel "Perelandra" as well as other texts by Christian and Jewish writers, we will explore how fantasy writers have engaged questions of good and evil, faith and redemption, through the literary imagination.

Readings include Lewis’s "Perelandra," J. R. R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” and G. K. Chesterton’s “The Ethics of Elfland,” as well as selections from the book of Genesis.

Register

Winter 2024:

The Idea of the Nation (1 credit)

In this course we will examine what it means to be a nation, when national identity is a force for liberty and when a source of conflict, how the national idea has developed in America as compared with other countries, and the importance and challenges of national identity today as compared with its alternatives.

Students will get to discuss these questions with international speakers from Israel, India, and Europe.

Readings include Ernest Renan’s essay “What Is A Nation?” and selected short texts on national identity in American and other contexts.

Spring 2024:

Identity and US Politics (1 credit)

What are the enduring philosophical disagreements between left and right and how do these shape political discourse today? How can we cultivate a more thoughtful, political culture, even in disagreement? In this course we will look at the ideas of two foundational thinkers of the modern left and modern right: the fiery revolutionary Thomas Paine, and the statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke. We will draw on their wisdom and insight to reflect on American political division today.

Students will converse in real time via Zoom with exciting guest speakers about how contemporary US politics is impacted by group identities based on race, faith, class, and gender. We hope to engage in a session of active in-person learning with philosopher Peter Boghossian as well (to be confirmed).

Readings include Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left.

All course materials provided free of charge.