Jeffrey Bilbro
Website Editor-in-Chief
Jeffrey Bilbro is a 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.
Articles by Jeffrey Bilbro
Jack Reading Group
Gracy Olmstead is organizing a reading group for people who want to read and discuss Marilynne Robinson’s new novel Jack. Tiffany Kriner, who wrote a review of the novel for…
Big Tech, History’s Arc, and Secession
“The Irony of the Google Antitrust Suit.” Franklin Foer writes that the government’s suit against Google is long overdue and marks the end of Big Tech’s unchallenged accumulation of power.…
Meritocracy, the Wingfeather Saga, and Civility
“What if Local and Diverse Is Better Than Networked and Global?” Damien Cave profiles Helena Norberg-Hodge and her work with Local Futures for the New York Times. “Our Fractured Communities: Piecing…
Humanity, Fraternity, and a Wisdom that is Woe
“Our Humanity Depends on the Things We Don’t Sell.” In a profound essay, Mary Harrington links such apparently disparate topics as strip-mining, prostitution, and enclosure to defend the ordinary work…
Liberal Arts, Institutions, and Truth
“The Forgotten Front Porch Is Making a Comeback.” Spike Carlsen notes a promising development: “Thanks to the pandemic, the front porch is enjoying a new golden age. Like their near…
Fly-Fishing, Patient Ambition, and Healing the Wounds
“The Market Made Me Do It: The Scandal of the Evangelical College.” Eric Miller draws on the example of the institution I’ve taught at—Spring Arbor University—to highlight the failure of…
From the Village Square to the Global Village—and Back?
At their best, local papers “help provide a common reality and touchstone, a sense of community and of place.”
Book Exhibit, Bison, and Homeschooling
“Notre Dame Press Virtual Book Exhibit.” Steve Wrinn and the University of Notre Dame Press are regulars at FPR conferences. Since we had to cancel this year’s main conference, the…
Affability, Simone Weil, and Cassiodorus
“Jason Peters Writes to Entertain his Friends and Exasperate his Enemies.” Bill Kauffman is the perfect reviewer for Jason’s new book. Read the review, then read the book: “Peters, the…
Infected Brand Ambassadors, Corporate Clergy, and Anarchy
“How to Save British Farming (and the Countryside).” This summer I read James Rebanks’s new book English Pastoral. My short take is that it’s excellent. My long take on Rebanks’s three…
Melville, G.D.P. Fetish, and Sheep Shearing
“The Things I Tell Myself When I’m Writing About Nature.” In this “not-too-serious and also quite serious list that is entirely non-prescriptive, and is absolutely not a set of instructions,”…
Salmon, American Chicken, and Scrutopia
“‘The Fish Rots from the Head’: How a Salmon Crisis Stoked Russian Protests.” Anton Troianovski traces the complex politics in an eastern Russian region where precipitous declines in salmon runs…