GEOGRAPHY
Instructor: Immanuel Kant
Physical Geography
Königsberg, 1757–96
While attempting to secure a post at the local university, the Prussian philosopher began offering this course as a private tutor; by the time he retired, he had taught it forty-nine times. Lecture topics included the history of the oceans, the history of wind currents, and the “history of the great changes that the earth has suffered and is still suffering.”
LANGUAGE
Instructor: Vladimir Nabokov
Russian Literature in Translation
Wellesley College, 1946–47
In 1977 The New Yorker published a former student’s recollections of Nabokov’s two-semester survey class. “Mister Nabokov told us he had graded the Russian writers, and we must write down their grades in our notebooks and learn them by heart: Tolstoy was A-plus. Pushkin and Chekhov were A. Turgenev A-minus. Gogol was B-minus. And Dostoevsky was C-minus.”
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Instructor: Hannah Arendt
On Revolutions
Northwestern University, 1961
Two years before publishing her similarly titled book, Arendt taught this seminar on “the sources of revolution; the problems of a new order of things and a new constitution; the revolutionary spirit.” She concluded the course’s final exam by asking students, “The American Revolution—was there any?”