About the Great Books series
The Great Books series was a Faculty of Arts public program launched in 2014 for lovers of literature. The series gave members a front row seat to learn about books that have shaped the way we see the world. After ten years and 100 books the program concluded in 2023. You can view the full booklist here.
The Melbourne Public Humanities Initiative is pleased to present ‘Great Books: bite size’ to showcase a selection of the recorded masterclasses from more recent years.
Videos and reading guides will be posted throughout the year for you to enjoy at your own pace or can be used to guide your local book club or reading group.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates on masterclass releases, as well as other current public programs.
Happy reading!
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is Simone de Beauvoir’s first – and arguably most successful – attempt to bring 'Simone' into the official narrative and thereby counterbalance the personal attacks that portrayed her as a bitter, cynical, 'unwomanly' woman.
Join Professor Jacqueline Dutton as she explores Simone de Beauvoir’s superlative autobiography. Public intellectual, global icon of the feminist movement, and one of the greatest writers of her generation, Simone de Beauvoir describes her formative years in early-20th-century Paris through to her experiences at the Sorbonne.
Watch Professor Jacqueline Dutton's masterclass presentation.
My Brother Jack by George Johnston
My Brother Jack is an Australian classic, first published in 1964, that is often compulsory reading for high school English literature subjects. Its author, George Johnston, was Australia’s first accredited war correspondent during World War II.
Join Professor Sally Young as she analyses the book’s semi-autobiographical nature, its anti-war message, and the important questions it raises about how we define success and failure.
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Join Professor Deirdre Coleman as she discusses J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.
Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel has courted controversy since its release in 1999. With its depiction of gang rape, racism, and violence in post-apartheid South Africa, it’s a disturbing vision, leading some readers to see it as the wrong kind of book for its time. And yet, more than a quarter of a century on, it’s a book that remains eerily relevant to our polarised times. In this lecture, Deirdre considers how the world has changed, and how it hasn’t, through the lenses of sex, power, and a shocking history of racial injustice.
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Join Professor David McInnis in a journey from the page to the stage as he discusses William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Despite being celebrated as a light-hearted, comedic romp, Much Ado About Nothing is a play with surprising undertones, as it presents a superficial world where finding love, and a genuine connection, is a bet against the odds.
But what the play gives us, as Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio navigate their courtship, is a glimpse into their growth as individuals, that is as moving as any love story.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Color Purple is a powerful journey of self-realisation, empowerment, and self-worth. Now considered by many scholars to be a corner-stone of African-American literature and feminist writing, it is a text that has moved, and opened the eyes of generations of readers.
Join Associate Professor Kalissa Alexeyeff as she discusses the history, and legacy, of this incredible book.
Watch Associate Professor Kalissa Alexeyeff's masterclass presentation.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Join Professor Sarah Churchwell as she discusses F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 2025 masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Heralded by many as ‘the Great American Novel’, it’s reported that Fitzgerald knew this was going to be the case before it was even published. But what makes Gatsby so Great? Why does this novel dominate such a place in our cultural consciousness, and why are we still talking about it 100 years later?
Watch Professor Sarah Churchwell's masterclass presentation.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) marks a turning point in the history of the modern novel. Flaubert's aim in writing Madame Bovary was to make his readers think, to open their minds to different ways of viewing and interpreting reality. When reading the novel – with its artful ambiguity, slippery language and complex mixture of pathos and irony – we can never really know how to understand what is happening.
Watch Professor Russell Goulbourne's masterclass presentation.
On Old Age (Cato Maior de Senectute) by Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) wrote this dialogue (although really it is more of a monologue, in the mouth of the venerable Cato the Elder) in 44 BC, probably just after the assassination of Julius Caesar; he wrote another short work on friendship at the same time, along with a much longer work on duties (De Officiis). The treatise on old age is a fine piece of Latin prose, beautifully crafted and generally informative and interesting, although Cato/Cicero does have a tendency to ramble a bit at points (especially about farming), as he himself admits.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A masterpiece both of indirection and assured comic exuberance, Pride and Prejudice is the most canonical and popular of Austen’s novels – the carriage that transported the divine Jane along her breezy, inexorable way to 21st century world domination. Yet its relentless comedic spirit has been seen to hold it back, not least by Austen herself, who found it ‘too light & bright & sparkling’: ‘it wants shade’, she wrote to her sister, Cassandra.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Nineteenth-century fiction creates the illusion of a fully realised social world – one that shapes the psychological development of its main characters. In many novels from this period, individual desires clash with dynastic imperatives, social conservatism, the careful negotiations of marriage and family life, and the traditional distribution of wealth.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (serialised between 1875 and 1877, then published in book form in 1878) is a pre-eminent example of this kind of fiction. It often features on lists of the greatest novels ever written, not least for its moving dramas of the self and its vividly realised scenes of urban and rural life.
