STRINGFELLOW BARR was a historian, author, and former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he, together with Scott Buchanan, instituted the Great Books curriculum.
Born in...ver maisSTRINGFELLOW BARR was a historian, author, and former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he, together with Scott Buchanan, instituted the Great Books curriculum.
Born in 1897, in Suffolk, Virginia, he was educated at the University of Virginia and received his B.A. in 1916 and his M.A. in 1917. He won a Rhodes scholarship from Virginia, and enlisted in the U.S. Army.
After World War I he studied modern history at Balliol College, Oxford, as a result of which he is a B.A. and M.A. (Oxon).
In 1924, he became Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia, Associate Professor in 1927, and Professor in 1930. Also in 1930 he accepted the editorship of The Virginia Quarterly Review.
In 1936, President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago set up a “Committee on the Liberal Arts” to devise reforms for undergraduate education. He persuaded Mr. Barr to accept a visiting professorship and serve on the committee.
The next year Mr. Barr was elected president of St. John’s College in Annapolis with a mandate from the Board of St. John’s to set up a four-year, all-required curriculum that attracted nationwide praise and blame as “the St. John’s Program.” It was based on the study of some hundred great books from Homer to living authors, but also required of every student four years of mathematics and four years of laboratory science.
In 1948, Mr. Barr raised $1,000,000 and established the Foundation for World Government, which undertook to foster research on the problems involved in establishing a common government for mankind. He served as president since its establishment.
In the 1950s, he became Professor of Humanities at Newark College, Rutgers University.
His seventh book and first novel, Purely Academic, was published in 1958.
He died in Alexandria, Virginia in 1982 at the age of 85.ver menos