MKA Teacher Selected for Prestigious NEH Summer Seminar

Congratulations to MKA Upper School English teacher Dr. Eric Salehi who is one of only sixteen teachers selected to attend a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities five-week summer seminar on Dante's Divine Comedy to be held in Siena, Italy.

The seminar "immerses participants in studying Dante's Divine Comedy in its historical, political, theological, philosophic, and artistic contexts, under the direction of William Stephany (University of Vermont) and Ronald Herzman (State University of New York at Geneseo).  In addition to exploring the Middle Ages and how the poem reflects its period of creation, the seminar examines Dante's responses to recurrent human concerns: the potential for good and evil, the possibilities for spiritual transformation, the nature and purpose of political institutions, and reasons for reading and writing."

This seminar will be especially beneficial to those Upper School students who take Dr. Salehi's "Romance to Reality" course that focuses on the European Middle Ages, beginning with a study of Dante's Inferno and concluding with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Coincidently, Dr. Herzman played a pivotal role as a consultant to MKA's Core Works Program when it was developed several years ago.