Barbara Castle
Barbara Castle has worked as a magazine editor, freelance writer, and graphic designer. She is a published children’s author and winner of the Oxford American Ambitious Writers’ Award for preliminary work on her literary memoir The Unforgiving Minute. Barbara holds a master’s degree in Philosophy through the Great Books, and a second graduate degree in Literature. She teaches English at Arkansas State University, and adjuncts in Worldview and Culture at Oral Roberts University.
Articles by Barbara Castle
Medieval Hillbilly Kings, Priests, Pagans, and Poets: Beowulf, Johnny Cash, and Trent Reznor
Cash may as well be situated in an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, a broken ring-giver, a pagan, who for all his good intentions, cannot heal that which infects his people and…
Batter My Heart Three-Person’d God–Break, Blow, Burn, and Make New: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer Re-Members the Poetic as an Opportunity to Consider Redemption
Oppenheimer replies to him “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just…
Wyrd Winter Wondered Worlds
Parker’s Winters in the World is an education fit for the Humanities and lay person who wishes to expand upon what it means to exist as humans in a world…
The Sower and the English Instructor: A Hobbit Roadside Colloquy
I interrupted his weed-pulling to gently rebuke him for perceived carelessness regarding his health, but like the mother of Christ, I was the one needing correction—for Pastor was simply “about…
The Green Knight: David Lowery’s Culturally Resonant Palimpsest of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Green Knight is a subversive film that recommends the culturally decaying virtues of generosity, courtesy, fellowship, chastity, and piety. It is a true myth worth telling.
Hillbilly Grace on a Five-Acre Farm in Lincoln, Arkansas: A Review of Minari
Minari is haunted by O’Connor, as Chung explores the theme of misfits and “hard to find” good men (and women) that jolt our senses toward who we truly are, including…
From God’s Dark Materials, Comes Jack’s Dark Arts
The longing created in the reader to want to know Jack is not easily articulated. It is difficult to admit that though we love happy endings, we are inexplicably drawn…
Awakening to Virtue: Confessions of a Well-Read, Unlucky Good Girl
Both Prior and Gibbs agree that ultimately virtue orients us toward one end, to “love God and enjoy Him forever.” Loving God is difficult; it too requires our attention in…
The Domestic Arts: Finding a Quiet Dignity in the Mundane
As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.
Graced Grit: A Hymn-laced Eulogy to True Grit Author Charles Portis
U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn and Mattie bring a type of vigilante justice to Tom Chaney, and we are glad, but Portis doesn’t allow us to be easy about…
Haunted by Grace, a little East of Eden: A Literary Apologetic
Like the Macleans, we are listening for those inaudible, but not imperceptible, words underneath the rocks in the river that runs through our own lives.
Mud: Our Alma-Pater
If the institutions that oversee our slow twelve-to-eighteen-year process of education are called our alma-mater (nourishing mother), why can’t the dirt-filled, dung-laden places that convey agrarian lessons taught over 20…