ABSTRACT
Stringfellow Barr returned to the University of Virginia in 1951. His old friend Scott Buchanan wrote, “I am glad you are back in Charlottesville since…the University probably needs transfiguration….”1 Barr had a two-year appointment as a Visiting Professor in the Political Science Department, of which Barr’s other old friend, Robert Gooch, was the chairman. Barr’s primary responsibility at the University was to teach a two-year course crafted out of a mix of Darden’s 1948 and Barr’s 1950 proposals. Titled Political Science 73-74, “Origin and Development of American Political Thought and Institutions,” the course description was as follows: “Reading and seminar discussion of the great political classics of the Western tradition including The United States Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and selected works of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Calhoun, de Tocqueville, and Bryce.”2 The course, in spite of its departmental mooring, was concerned with more than political science, indeed, it was largely an introductory great books seminar. As at St. John’s, the first book read was Euclid’s Elements.3 The second year of the course, titled Political Science 75-76, The Western Political Tradition, offered “Reading and Seminar discussion of great political classics, including selected works of Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, Dante, and Montesquieu.”4
