Henry Hazlitt Meets Ayn Rand Economics and Objectivism United for Freedom Course Cover

How to Love Literature Even More Through Philosophy (2025)

With Angelica Walker-Werth, Carrie-Ann Biondi, Tim White, Luc Travers, and Timothy Sandefur

7.5 hours total | 5 sessions, beginning May 21, 2025

Enhance your love of literature by viewing it through a philosophic lens.

What if the stories you love could offer even more meaning, more inspiration, more fuel for living? They can. This course will show you how to deepen your love of literature by approaching it philosophically.

Literature uniquely dramatizes the values that shape human life. Through the integrated elements of plot, character, style, and theme, it explores the deepest questions about what it means to live, to struggle, to triumph.

By examining literature philosophically, you’ll gain a richer understanding of stories and characters as well as the ideas and choices that cause people to act as they do. This approach not only enhances your appreciation of great stories, it also teaches you to think more clearly and live more deliberately.

Guided by Angel Walker-Werth and co-instructors Carrie-Ann Biondi, Tim White, Luc Travers, and Timothy Sandefur, this course will explore key scenes and themes from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and We the Living, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and a selection of powerful poems and short stories. (The poems, short stories, and excerpts will be provided prior to the relevant session.)

If you love literature—and want to love it even more—this course is for you.

Instructor

Angelica Walker-Werth

Angelica Walker-Werth

Angelica is a fellow at Objective Standard Institute, an assistant editor and writer for The Objective Standard, and an Ayn Rand Fellow with Foundation for Economic Education’s Hazlitt Project. Her roles at OSI include developing and teaching courses, managing the junior fellowship and LevelUp scholarship programs, and mentoring students and junior fellows. She writes about philosophic ideas in fictional works at Fictionosophy.substack.com.

Luc Travers

Luc Travers

Luc Travers is the author of Stories in Paint: 50 Moving Artworks from American Museums and Touching The Art: A Guide to Enjoying Art at a Museum. He leads art museum tours around the world and teaches art appreciation and literature to all ages. Learn more about his work at www.TouchingTheArt.com.
Timothy Sandefur

Timothy Sandefur

Timothy Sandefur is vice-president of litigation atat the Goldwater Institute. He is the author of several books including The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law (2010), The Conscience of The Constitution (2014), The Permission Society (2016), Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man (2018), The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski: The Life and Ideas of a Popular Science Icon (2019), and Freedom’s Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in and Age of Darkness (2022).

Carrie-Ann Biondi

Carrie-Ann Biondi

Carrie-Ann holds a BA and MA in American Studies, an MA and PhD in philosophy, and is an independent scholar, editor, and educator. She is production editor for Social Philosophy & Policy and book review editor at Reason Papers. Previously, she was an associate professor of philosophy at Marymount Manhattan College and an adolescent program manager at Higher Ground Education. Her research interests and publications range from Aristotle, Ayn Rand, citizenship, and virtue ethics to Socratic pedagogy and popular culture.

Tim White

Tim White

Tim White is an award-winning author of eight books, hundreds of short stories, more than fifty TTRPG campaigns, and more than one thousand nonfiction articles and essays. He also edits fiction and nonfiction on a freelance basis, and he is a zealous crusader for the unique power of storytelling to promote human flourishing. He owns an escape room venue in Arizona, where he designs and builds every prop and puzzle in-house. For more information, please visit TimWhiteWriting.com

Henry Hazlitt Meets Ayn Rand Economics and Objectivism United for Freedom Course Cover

Course & Session Schedule

The course will be held Wednesdays from 8 to 9:30am Pacific Time on the following dates:

  • May 21, 2025 – Luc Travers
  • May 28, 2025 – Timothy Sandefur
  • June 4, 2025 – Carrie-Ann Biondi
  • June 11, 2025 – Tim White
  • June 18, 2025 – Angelica Walker-Werth

How the Course Works

This course is interactive and discussion-driven, so enrollment is limited. Register early to secure your spot.

The course is held live on Zoom, which you can download for free here. Sessions are video recorded, so if you miss a session (or want to review), you can watch the recording. OSI may sell course recordings and/or use them for marketing, promotional, or educational purposes.

The course is 7.5 hours long, consisting of 5 sessions of 1.5 hours each. Homework assignments are optional. Doing them may require an additional hour or more per week but will greatly enhance what you learn in this course.

Course handouts and supplementary materials are delivered via email. Course participants are invited to an exclusive OSI Courses group on Facebook, where they can post questions and engage in discussions with the instructor and other participants.

Have a question that wasn’t answered here? Read our FAQ or email us at [email protected].

By enrolling, you agree to OSI’s Course Terms and Conditions.