Jeffrey Bilbro is an Associate Professor of English at Grove City College. He grew up in the mountainous state of Washington and earned his B.A. in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in Oregon and his Ph.D. in English from Baylor University. His books include Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (written with Jack Baker), and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms.
Jeffrey Bilbro
Articles by Jeffrey Bilbro
The Rust Belt, Ducks, and Lanternflies
“Barbara Kingsolver: ‘Rural people are so angry they want to blow up the system.’” Lisa Allardice talks with Barbara Kingsolver about her new novel: “Raised in Kentucky, Kingsolver describes herself…
The Commons, Alfalfa, and Oats
“Piety, Technology, and Tradition.” Jon Askonas responds to a critique from Alan Jacobs about the difficulty of conserving traditions in our current technological environment: “I can hand down my faith…
Localism, Liberalism, and Regionalism
“Fidelity to Place.” James Matthew Wilson speaks on behalf of honoring our unchosen bonds: “What is missing from modern life is fidelity—and not just fidelity in general, but fidelity to…
Money, the Wild, and the Metaverse
“Living as Humans in a Machine Age.” Registration is now open for our fall conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Paul Kingsnorth will be the keynote speaker, and we’ll post the full…
College, Conservation, and Computers
“What College Students Need Is a Taste of the Monk’s Life.” Molly Worthen explores the possibilities that college offers for helping students unplug from their devices and think deeply: “We…
Payne Hollow, Ice Cream, and National Parks
“Thriving on the Fringe of Society.” Carrie Blackmore Smith describes the life that Harlan and Anna Hubbard made at Payne Hollow and the work now being done to restore and…
David Foster Wallace, Brian Doyle, and Francis Fukuyama
“Fresh Cliché.” In a wise essay that puts David Foster Wallace in conversation with Wallace Stegner, Matt Stewart gives two cheers for clichés: “Surely there are phrases that are lazy…
Hospitality, Exile, and Mushrooms
“Hospitality from the Front Porch.” Bethany Hebbard describes how a front porch lifestyle promotes genuine hospitality: “If you actually have a front porch or balcony, then I what I am…
AGI, Hiddenness, and Grace
“We Must Slow Down the Race to God-like AI.” Ian Hogarth gives a sobering assessment of the unpredictable ramifications of AGI: “I thought about my four-year-old who would wake up…
Cruises, Liberty, and Plastic
“Nature is Healing.” The Lamp recently put this essay online, and it’s a doozy. Stay all the way to the end of Sam Kriss’s haunting meditation in living in a…
Diversion, Leisure, and Beauty
“We’ve Lost the Plot.” Megan Garber details the consequences of blurring the lines between reality and entertainment: “Each invitation to be entertained reinforces an impulse: to seek diversion whenever possible,…
Conversion, Catan, and Vinyl
“Arcs of Life.” Matthew Loftus considers the claim that all suffering is bad and should be eliminated: “Yet taking this dictum and making it into a law is at the…
Barbarians, Liberalism, and Disinformation
“We Must Become Barbarians.” Paul Kingsnorth sketches out possible strategies of resistance to the Machine that evade its systems rather than confronting them directly: “What Scott’s book shows me above…
Happiness, Blues, and the Farm Bill
“Renunciation and Christian Happiness.” In this excerpt from her new book, Zena Hitz probes the paradox at the core of a Christian view of happiness: “Both Aristotle and Paul have…
Bison, Ignorance, and Selfies
“The Return of the Bison.” In the latest issue of Plough (which is another excellent issue), Nathan Beacom explores how bison continue to hold ecosystems together: “The American bison stands…
AP Classes, Vertical Farming, and Surf Localism
“The College Board’s Hollow Vision.” Annie Abrams draws attention to the College Board’s self-serving tactics and bureaucratic approach to pedagogy. AP classes really aren’t equivalent to a good college course:…
Hedgerows, Bird Flu, and Truckers
“Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyone’s Bracing for Apocalypse.” James Pogue goes to the American West to investigate how opposition to globalism…
Wild Christianity, Trains, and Chatbots
“A Wild Christianity.” Paul Kingsnorth considers what we can learn from the cave Christians and their rich legacy: “In a time when the temptation is always toward culture war rather…
Slime, Memorization, and Forests
“Creatures That Don’t Conform.” You don’t have to agree with Lucy Jones’s politics or philosophy to share her amazement at slime mold (and don’t miss Barry Webb’s photographs): “They can…
Livestreams, Motherhood, and Education
“Watch the Great Fall.” Paul Kingsnorth acknowledges his own tendencies toward nostalgia and draws on some fine poets to articulate the proper posture toward decline: “The theologies of Zen, Orthodoxy,…
Gratitude, Competence, and Libraries
“Ronald Blythe Obituary.” Patrick Barkham remembers a great localist writer: “Never out of print and read and studied around the world, Akenfield made Blythe famous and perhaps overshadowed the many…
Time, Pig Farms, and Peer Review
I’m helping to lead a study abroad trip in Rome for the next couple of weeks, so the Water Dipper will be on hiatus. But I plan to return at…
Surveillance, Hope, and Poetry
“Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech to Expand Global Surveillance.” A team of AP reporters—Garance Burke, Josef Federman, Huizhong Wu, Krutika Pathi and Rod McGuirk—detail how COVID surveillance technologies are being…
Mary Bailey, Francis Bacon, and San Francisco
“Generations.” Plough’s new issue is out, and while I’m waiting to read it until my physical copy shows up, Peter Mommsen’s opening editorial, probing the yearning for roots and the…