Enduring Questions, a two-year program of five courses (QUEST 113-218), poses existential, political, and moral questions and engages with a variety of genres including epic poems, memoirs, novels, speeches, hymns, short stories, philosophical treatises, art works, letters, manifestos, and scriptures.
The program draws together and synthesizes a set of enduring questions that are otherwise dispersed across the humanities and the liberal arts at large: What makes us human? How have ideas and experiences of the divine and the sublime developed over time and across cultures? Is there a meaning in suffering, enslavement, objectification, or death? What is justice? How do traditions imagine salvation? What does liberation mean? What does it mean to read texts, broadly defined and in translation? And what happens to ideas, concepts, and texts as they travel around the globe and across millennia?
Students in Enduring Questions live in the same residence hall their first year and continue learning in a community their sophomore year. The faculty members who teach an Enduring Questions cohort remain with the students through the sequence. An optional January term course that travels to places of the cohort’s interest (QUEST 280, 282, or equivalent) is offered in alternating years.
Admission to the Program
Admission to the QUEST is open to all incoming first year students regardless of prospective major in accordance with the registration process for the First Year Seminar. No separate application is needed.
QUEST 113-QUEST 218 are offered only to first-year students and sophomores enrolled in Enduring Questions. Enduring Questions students must take these courses in sequence. Enrollment in subsequent courses is contingent upon successful completion of all prior courses in the sequence.
QUEST 113: Heroes, Gods, and Monsters
In this First-Year Seminar, students explore the ancient Mediterranean and Asia via sacred texts, heroic and dramatic poems, and philosophical treatises. This course emphasizes close critical analysis, inclusive discussion, and learning in community, as students ask: "How do the philosophy, arts, literature, and religion of various traditions edify our lives?" Through this engagement, students reflect on the purpose of the liberal arts and their positions as modern students of ancient texts. Offered annually in the fall semester.
OLE Core Requirement: First-Year Experience: First Year Seminar.
QUEST 115: Emperors, Orators, Disciples
In this second course of Enduring Questions, students delve further into the relationships between religion and power that emerged in the Roman and Chinese empires. Students engage with historiography, oratory, epic poetry, philosophical and religious texts, and practice oral communications skills to explore questions such as "What is history?" "How does the past relate to the present?" "How does change happen?" and "What constitutes a good life?" Offered annually during January Term.
Prerequisite: QUEST 113.
OLE Core Requirement: Religion, Faith and Values.
QUEST 116: Warriors, Mystics, Reformers
This writing-intensive course continues the intellectual odyssey of Enduring Questions into the medieval and early modern West, Middle East, and East, as students delve into the legacies of warriors, pilgrims, mystics, and reformers. Students engage with courtly cultures, honor, and romance, as well as travelogues and encounters with what is perceived as strange and foreign, pondering: "Who has access to transcendence?" and "How does the imagination contribute to the search for truth and happiness?"
Prerequisites: QUEST 115.
OLE Core Requirement: First-Year Experience: Writing and Rhetoric.
QUEST 217: Explorers, Rationalists, Revolutionaries
Covering the period from 1600 to 1900, this course examines themes of explorers, rationalists, and revolutionaries across cultural spheres including Western Europe, Russia, China, and the Americas. Students explore how emerging forms of thought inspired social movements, advocated intellectual and political liberation, but also contributed to colonization, political exclusion, and slavery, questioning: "What constitutes knowledge?" "How should a government use its power justly?" and "How can one achieve freedom and equality within the modern state?"
Prerequisites: QUEST 116.
OLE Core Requirement: Writing Across the Curriculum; Global Histories and Societies.
QUEST 218: Critics, Dreamers, Radicals
In this course, students consider the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in light of their Enduring Questions experience. Topics include the decline of colonialism, the rise of nationalism, globalization, migration, and the persistence of racism. Engaging with modern and postmodern texts, students identify and evaluate their own creative and ethical views in relation to literary, aesthetic, and moral theories encountered throughout the Enduring Questions program, and reflect broadly on their learning over five consecutive courses. Offered annually in the spring semester.
Prerequisites: QUEST 217.
OLE Core Requirement: Creativity; Ethical Reasoning in Context.
QUEST 280: What is Europe? The Grand Tour, National Museums, & European Identity
This course critically engages the notion of European identity by exploring the idea of the Grand Tour and the emergence of national museums. Students will experience firsthand some of the sites, artifacts, and works of art encountered in the Enduring Questions program and reflect on the ways in which the program, like the Grand Tour itself, delineates cultural borders as well as disrupts them. Offered alternate years during January Term. Apply through Smith Center for Global Engagement.
Prerequisite: completion of GCON 217 or QUEST 217 or permission of the instructor.
QUEST 282: What is Europe? Enduring Questions in Seville, Venice and Vienna
Students explore constructions of Europe by critically engaging with museums and heritage sites in two European cultural capitals and their vicinities. Travel experiences serve as the core course "texts," with students entrusted with facilitating their cohort's learning. On excursions, students experience first-hand architecture, artifacts, and artworks they encounter across St. Olaf's liberal arts curriculum. In class discussions and reflective writing, they consider the ways in which those sites and objects delineate and disrupt cultural borders. Offered alternate years during January term.
OLE Core Requirement: OLE Experience in Practice.
