Zena Hitz

Zena Hitz is an author, thinker and lecturer. She studied Philosophy at St. John’s College in Annapolis, in Chicago and in Cambridge, and obtained her PhD from Princeton University. After teaching at McGill University, Auburn University and the University of Maryland for some years, she converted to Catholicism and spent three years living and working in the Madonna House Apostolate in Ontario, where she came to envision her life mission: cultivating ‘the life of the mind’ in society. She returned to teaching at St. John’s College in 2015 and founded the Catherine Project, an open learning community. Additionally, she has taught in prison programs and to other non-traditional students. In 2020, Hitz published the instant bestseller Lost in Thought. The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, in which she explores the value of thinking and learning for its own sake. A review of the book was published in the Nexus Review.