The Reading List For My Summer Online Existentialism Class

In just a bit over two weeks, I will be opening up my 6-week online summer course for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design - Existentialist Philosophy and Literature.  Quite a few people have been asking about the reading list for the course, so I decided that it might be good for me to post it here.

Teaching any subject in 6 weeks is tough.  Even though they know it is an intensive class, you simply can't expect students to engage with the same quantity of reading as they would be able to handle in a 15 week semester.  This is even more the case for Philosophy classes, in which it often takes some time for the material to "sink in".

The class is divided into twelve modules, each roughly half of a week.  The first and last modules don't have assigned readings, since they're an introduction and conclusion to the class.  Each of the other 10 modules focuses on one important existentialist writer.

I had originally intended to give students 3 readings for each of those writer modules.  One of them would be required. One would be "supplementary" (students would have to read one of these per week).  And one would be "optional" (students would have to read one of these over the course of the class").  I decided instead to go with two readings per module - one required, and one optional (but students would need to engage with two optional ones over the six weeks).  The one exception is the Kierkegaard module, in which I'm still wavering about assigning two required texts.

So, here's the reading list:

Week 1, Unit 1 – What Is Existentialism?

• Optional secondary text readings on Existentialism

Week 1, Unit 2 - Soren Kierkegaard

• Required readings: The Crowd Is Untruth and The Present Age (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: Fear and Trembling

Week 2, Unit 1 – Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Required reading: Notes From Underground
• Supplemental Reading: The Brothers Karamazov (selections)

Week 2, Unit 2 – Friedrich Nietzsche

• Required reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 1
• Supplemental Reading: The Genealogy of Morals

Week 3, Unit 1 – Rainer Maria Rilke

• Required reading: Letters to a Young Poet
• Supplemental Reading: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Week 3, Unit 2 – Martin Heidegger

• Required reading: What Is Metaphysics?
• Supplemental Reading: The Origin of the Work of Art

Week 4, Unit 1 – Franz Kafka

• Required reading: The Metamorphosis
• Supplemental Reading: The Trial

Week 4, Unit 2 – Gabriel Marcel

• Required reading: On The Ontological Mystery
• Supplemental Reading: A Broken World

Week 5, Unit 1 – Albert Camus

• Required reading: The Myth of Sisyphus (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: The Stranger

Week 5, Unit 2 – Jean-Paul Sartre

• Required reading: Existentialism is a Humanism
• Supplemental Reading: Nausea

Week 6, Unit 1 – Simone de Beauvoir

• Required reading: The Second Sex (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: The Useless Mouths

Week 6, Unit 2 – Wrapping Up

• No required readings

I've been creating a lot of new core concept videos for my students in this class, some of which I've already early released to my Patreon supporters.  I'll be releasing those videos to the general public over the course of the summer as well.