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
Italian Bears, Middle Age, and Rural Renewal
“Taking the High Road.” Nadya Williams issues a stirring call to root liberal education in a transcendent vision of what it means to be human: “what if the future of…
Flourishing, Paper, and Fake Meat
“Against Human Flourishing.” Paul Griffiths gently suggests that the paradigm of “flourishing” may be inadequate to ascribe meaning to our lives and efforts: “Damage, flourishing’s apparent opposite, may have contributions…
Farming Workshops, Music, and Apple Vision
“Growing, Fermenting, Canning, and Why?” The Maurin Academy is hosting a slate of discussions on home food production to get you ready for the growing season: “It’s time to plan…
Buffalo, Kitchens, and Control
“Red Dragonflies.” Steven Knepper offers a deeply informed consideration of Byung-Chul Han’s intellectual and spiritual trajectory. Knepper argues that Han’s emphasis on contemplation has much to offer: “The Church’s contemplative…
Bewilderment My Bow: A Review of Zero at the Bone
How are all these entries against despair? Insofar as metaphor is an act that creates meaning, it’s an act of hope: even intractable realities can be changed by placing them…
Taylor Swift, Foreign Policy, and Flannery O’Connor
“Swift Going.” It’s hard to describe this essay by Peter Bast. But you should definitely read it: “I’m still amazed that my folks allowed me to see the Grateful Dead…
AI, Bureaucratization, and NIMBYs
“Keep Your Money Close.” Jane Clark Scharl draws on the localist principle of subsidiarity to diagnose how online shopping leads to a scarcity of human interaction and to suggest some…
Alaska, Smartphones, and Realignment
“The Resurrection of the Bawdy.” J.C. Scharl ponders the strange, grotesque wisdom of Francois Rabelais: “there must be a reciprocal relationship between our high culture and our low. High culture…
Prudence, Sabotage, and Despair
I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off from putting together these Water Dippers. I plan to resume in the new year. “The Case for Left Conservatism.” Ashley Colby…
Salmon, Hope, and Climatism
“A Great Historian’s Inner History.” Jeff Reimer reviews Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind and describes the particular genius Brown has for imagining the lives of those far separated from…
Stagnation, War, and Tyranny
“Where Can You Go to Grad School Without Going to Grad School?” Cat Zhang describes how The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research strives to make intellectual community available for those…
Home, Thanksgiving, and Mania
“Home Is Where One Starts From.” J.C. Scharl praises art that comes from and in turn feeds a commitment to a particular place: “Art should touch our wills; it should…