Question: What is a Fundamentals major?

Everyone ponders the big questions: What are we doing here? What’s the meaning of life? How do we solve society’s biggest problems? But not everyone gets to design their undergraduate major around it. In the College, however, undergraduate students can apply for the Fundamentals: Issues and Texts major to do just that.

In devising their personalized course of study, Fundamentals majors develop a single question to guide their course of study and engage with texts across time periods and cultures, in courses in a variety of departments and disciplines, to attempt to answer it.

Fundamentals: Issues and Texts was established in 1983 by a number of Committee on Social Thought professors, including Leon Kass, Allan Bloom, and Jamie Redfield, along with Kass’s wife Amy Apfel. The major was formerly housed under the New Collegiate Division, which was disbanded and its departments allocated to other divisions, with Fundamentals landing in the Humanities division. 

Nevertheless, Fundamentals is multidisciplinary in nature and includes faculty from a number of divisions, including the Social Sciences, Humanities, Divinity School and Committee on Social Thought. 

Recent efforts within the major have led to a call for a return to some of the traditional practices of the major intended to foster community, for example calling one another by their last names only and facilitating more mixers and events for students to interact with faculty.

Students typically apply for the program during Spring Quarter of their first year. Upon acceptance, they are assigned a faculty adviser who works closely with them to develop their courses and hone their question.

Members of each class’s cohort take a Gateway course, meant to provide a sense of community for students in the major and to allow them to focus on one common text not related to their question. Recent Gateway Courses have focused on texts like Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws” and Vico’s “The New Science." Next year’s Gateway course is set to be Kafka’s “The Trial."

Their study then culminates in a Junior Paper, in which they explore their question using a single classic text through a 22-25-page essay, and a Senior Examination, two shorter essays that allow them to reflect on one of their chosen texts and on their question more broadly. 

“Our program requires that the student puts together their own curriculum with the mandate that their studies be broad and deep,” said Fundamentals Chair Malynne Sternstein, AB‘87. “For that reason, it’s my belief that the Fundamentals major is the embodiment of the true spirit of the College.”

The College sat down with three Fundamentals majors to discuss why they chose the major, what their question is and how they are endeavoring to answer it.

Olivia Gross | Question: How do we agreeably disagree?

Third-year student Olivia Gross says one of the primary reasons she came to UChicago was the Fundamentals major. Sofia Gross, AB‘15, her sister, told her that her only regret from her time in college was not majoring in Fundamentals, encouraging Olivia to consider the major.

Gross chose her question because of a longstanding commitment to and passion for free speech and the interactions between opposing viewpoints. She cites an interest in constitutional law and the Supreme Court as some of her biggest inspirations for her question. After founding the first high school law review at her high school, Gross founded The High School Law Review, which helps high schools start law reviews of their own. The Supreme Court recognized her for this achievement.

“For me, getting to create a space where agreeable disagreement not only exists, but is encouraged is what has been so inspiring about forming the High School Law Review,” Gross said. “The structure of the Court highlights this dynamic – when you see the care and thought that Supreme Court justices are putting into their side of the argument that didn't win in writing their dissent, it teaches you a powerful lesson. There's value in hearing the other side, or the side that doesn't win.”

Olivia is a member of the Programming Committee for Fundamentals, a group of undergraduate students who are passionate about forming community spaces for students  within the major. They recently began holding “Issues and Texts Dinners,” where professors have informal conversations with students in the major about classic texts.

“We are in a period of community and cultural growth,” Gross said of the new initiatives being implemented to foster community within the Fundamentals major.

Gross spoke highly of the individuality – and the difficulty – of designing your own course of study. 

“There is no one who has done your question before,” Gross said. “That is something that either makes you excited or intimidated. It's not meant for everyone, but it has made me a lot more comfortable in situations of uncertainty and allowed me to build a library I don't think I would have ever had the confidence to build prior to joining the major."

Lila Rice | Question: Can Church and State ever truly be separate?

Lila Rice is a second-year student in the College double majoring in Fundamentals and Religious Studies. She initially planned to study Law, Letters, and Society, but was quickly drawn to the Fundamentals major as a first-year.

"When I interviewed for the major, I said that I had been asking this question my entire life, and I think there's truth to that,” Rice said. “Growing up, I learned about how religion had caused conflict in the world and had been a source of strife and oppression. Yet, I was going to church with my family on Sundays, and even though I didn't feel like I had a relationship with God, I could see that it was motivating people to act with good will. There was such a disconnect between the doctrine being taught and the way it is used in the world.”

Rice said a major contributing factor to her decision to pursue this major was a course she took during her first year on the New Testament taught by Margaret M. Mitchell. From that experience, she became interested in the Book of Revelation, and how apocalyptic literature has been co-opted by white supremacists in the U.S.

In addition to working to build new initiatives that forge community between Fundamentals majors, Rice says one of her favorite parts of the major is the one-on-one connections with professors, particularly her individual advisor.

“I really like that you are able to bounce ideas off of a person who could completely change the direction of your question,” Rice said.

Rice plans to attend law school after college, and hopes to pursue a joint J.D./PhD in religious studies or divinity. She plans to practice law, but also credits the Fundamentals major with a new interest in pursuing a career in academia.

She said that she has found this path to be an extremely rewarding way to complete her undergraduate degree.

“When else in my life am I going to have the time to take these amazing classes and get a degree out of it?” Rice said. “I’m not sure what else college is for other than spending time reading things you’ll never have the time to spend great lengths on again.”

Ferdinand Le Galcher Baron | Question: How do we cope with uncertainty?

Third-year student Ferdinand Le Galcher Baron, a double major in Fundamentals and Business Economics, says his question is also inextricably linked to both the personal and the political. He began considering the major during Spring Quarter of his first year, amidst the continued COVID-19 pandemic.

“This feeling of uncertainty I had was very personal, but there was also a lot of political uncertainty and economic uncertainty at the time,” he said. “I tried to pose a question that was as broad as possible, a question that addressed human agency in modernity and as well as my feelings as a disoriented agent myself.”

Originally from Paris, Le Galcher Baron is highly involved with the political ecosystem of the French living abroad in the U.S. He is the lead animator of the local committee in Chicago for Renaissance, the French political party founded by current President Emmanuel Macron, as well as the U.S. head of communications for the youth wing of the party, Les Jeunes avec Macron (JAM). Though he plans to start his career in the U.S. in the private sector, he hopes his future career will involve public service in France.

"I try to feel structured by being linked to home in a sense. Although I want to start my career in the U.S., politics is very important to me," Le Galcher Baron remarked.

Politics, he said, allow him to deal with personal uncertainty.

"When you're disoriented and feel like everything is liquid under you, a sense of engagement in human action can be channeled through political action,” he said. “Politics is unstable, and the source of a lot of uncertainty, but it is also a way to be anchored."

Le Galcher Baron also says the Fundamentals major itself has been a way to cope with uncertainty and stay grounded: by forging close relationships with professors and developing a connection to the texts and authors you write about. He described faculty-student connections as a relationship between individuals with a “mutual intellectual interest,” and discussed the closeness one feels to even the writer of an ancient text, a way of “appreciating the wisdom of the people who write this, and learning what makes this [text] fundamental.”

In terms of what he has gained from the major, Le Galcher Baron points to his personal philosophy and values.

“College is for pursuing what you love,” he said. “It's learning about eternal truths and developing your personal philosophy and morality. Of course if you want to pursue a career in academia and become an intellectual, a major like Fundamentals is a great way to go. But even if you don't, you have a real foundation and appetite for knowledge for knowledge's sake, for thinking with a different lens on society. For me, I cannot picture an education that was just practical."

“What do I want to do with it?” Le Galcher Baron questioned. “I’m doing it right now.”