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
Liberal Arts, Chaos Gardens, and Ralph Meatyard
“Christians Need the Liberal Arts Now More Than Ever.” John Fea argues that the value of a liberal arts education has been made particularly apparent by the coronavirus: A nurse…
Elegy and Plenitude, Decline and Hope
We’ve been getting reports that the new issue of Local Culture is finally arriving in mailboxes. If your copy hasn’t yet come, there’s now a light at the end of the dark…
Wendell Berry and Zoom
While the futurists and transhumanists and purveyors of educational technologies would have us voluntarily cut off our arms so we can enjoy their fancy new prostheses, our priority should be…
Decadence, Hope, and Eavan Boland
“Sources for Rebuilding.” Anthony Barr reviews Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build and puts it in conversation with a variety of other voices that also celebrate those quotidian but essential virtues of…
Tinned Fruit, Globalization Gravy Train, and Sigrid Undset
“Regeneration.” Plough Quarterly is publishing a special digital issue over the next several weeks with responses from a very promising lineup of authors. One excellent place to start is with Bill McKibben’s contribution.…
Local Culture Update, Bookshop, and Dvořák in Iowa
A quick update for subscribers to Local Culture: the printing was delayed a bit by COVID-19-related causes. However, our printer was deemed “essential,” (I’m sure because of their efforts in…
Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jimmy Dorrell
“Dorothy Day’s Radical Faith.” Casey Cep takes the recent discussions regarding Dorothy Day’s potential sainthood as an occasion to consider her rich and bracing legacy. Keep an eye out for…
Pandemics, Power, and Holy Week
On Good Friday, Pilate and nearly everyone else thought that he was in control. He wasn’t. And on this Good Friday, Pilate’s heirs have much less power than they think…
Food Sovereignty, Ed McClanahan, and Quarantine Notebook
“Beyond Originalism.” Adrian Vermeule is causing a stir with his conservative critique of originalism in the Atlantic. In its place, he advocates ”common-good constitutionalism.” I’m not sure the courts are the…
Local Food Systems, Good Stories, and Grassland 2.0
Many of the essays being published right now respond to the coronavirus, and while I’ll link to a few of these below, they all suffer from our fundamental ignorance of…
Wendell Berry’s Distractions, Productive Households, and Factory Farming
“Wendell Berry: The Poet of Place.” Silas House corresponds with Berry about the work of faithful dwelling and writing: I think my work also has benefited from distractions. There are…
Limits, Fantasy, and Pandemics
“To Live and Love with a Dying World.” This conversation between Tim DeChristopher and Wendell Berry is quite good. Berry is a wily old fox, repeatedly refusing to be baited…