Tutor, Saint John’s College
Zena Hitz is a Tutor at St. John’s College. Her latest book, Lost in Thought, just appeared from Princeton University Press. The book explores the meaning and the value of learning for its own sake, through images and stories of bookworms, philosophers, scientists, and other learners, both fictional and historical. In addition to her teaching, she frequently gives lectures for the Thomistic Institute, recently on the theme of leisure and its necessity for human beings. Her scholarly work is on self-knowledge, law, virtue, friendship, and human nature in Plato and Aristotle. After she graduated from St. John’s College, Hitz studied classics and philosophy at Cambridge and the University of Chicago before finishing up her Ph.D. at Princeton University. She has taught philosophy at McGill University, Auburn University, and at UMBC before returning to her alma mater, St. John’s College. Hitz has also spent three years living and working in the Madonna House Apostolate prior to her current teaching position at St. John’s and has taught in prison programs. She has a general interest in bringing humanist studies to non-traditional students.
