Wendell Berry

Course Objectives

This class is an opportunity to internalize one author’s language and perspective. By close study of Berry’s writings, you will gain another person to think with—meaning both another mind to think along side of and in conversation with, and also another mind to depend on in your own thinking.

This semester is a particularly apt time to be studying Berry at Grove City College because our spring Christian Writers Conference will focus on Berry’s writings. Scholars from around the country will be gathering here in February to discuss Berry, and I trust you’ll be well prepared to engage in those conversations. In keeping with the conference theme (and my current book project on AI, which I hope will be an extended meditation on Berry’s 2001 line, “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines”), our readings will focus on technology, community, and language. We’ll get a taste of all three genres in which Berry writes and ponder why he has become such an icon in American letters.

Grading Breakdown:

• 10 Pre-class Reflections (30%)
• Scholarly Essay Review and Presentation (20%)
• Conference Report (10%)
• Poetry Memorization Final (10%)
• Final essay and presentation (30%)

Course Grading Scale: A 100-93; A- 92-90; B+ 89-87; B 86-83; B- 82-80; . . . F 59-0.

Required Texts:

• This Day. ISBN: 978-1619024366
• The Unsettling of America. ISBN: 978-161902599
• Remembering. ISBN: 978-1582434155
• Standing by Words. ISBN: 978-1582437453
• Hannah Coulter. ISBN: 978-159376078
• Jayber Crow. ISBN: 978-1582431604
• A World Lost. ISBN: 978-1582434186
• Life is a Miracle. ISBN: 978-1582431413
• Andy Catlett: Early Travels. ISBN: 978-1593761363

Course Calendar:

Course meets TT 12:30-1:45 in HAL 307. This schedule is subject to change.

Week 1

• Tuesday 1/14: Introduction. FYI
• Thursday 1/16: “A Native Hill”; No class (Covenant)

Week 2

• Tuesday 1/21: Unsettling of America, 1-54, and “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
  • Deneen, Patrick J. “Wendell Berry and the Alternative Tradition in American Political Thought.” In Wendell Berry: Life and Work, edited by Jason Peters, 300–315. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010.
• Thursday 1/23: Unsettling of America, 55-145, and “The Mad Farmer Revolution”
  • Dreher, Rod. “Wendell Berry: A Latter-Day St. Benedict.” In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, edited by Mark Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter, 275–87. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2011.

Week 3

• Tuesday 1/28: Unsettling of America, 146-234, and “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer”
  • Peters, Jason. “Wendell Berry’s Vindication of the Flesh.” Christianity and Literature 56, no. 2 (2007): 317–32.
• Thursday 1/30: “Gift of Good Land,” “Think Little,” and “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer,” and “The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer”
  • Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love. Culture of the Land: A Series in the New Agrarianism. Lexington, KY: The UP of Kentucky, 2011. chapter 3

Week 4

• Tuesday 2/4: “Jonquil for Mary Penn,” “The Wild Birds” and “A Place in Time” (Alternate version of “A Place in Time” without the missing page…)(I initially had “Where Did They Go?” here, but you don’t need to read that one. Sorry for the mistake.)
  • Horton, Matthew R. “‘Remembering’ the Wayward: Wendell Berry’s ‘The Wild Birds’, the Possibilities of Membership, and the Short-Story Cycle Genre.” South Atlantic Review 69, no. 2 (January 1, 2004): 25–53.
• Thursday 2/6: Standing by Words, 1-63, and This Day 1979
  • Nossaman, Lucas. “The Wisdom of ‘The Farm’: Sabbath Theology and Wendell Berry’s Pastoralism.” Renascence 70, no. 1 (Winter 2018): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.5840/renascence20187012.

Week 5

• Tuesday 2/11: Standing by Words, 64-105, and This Day 1980-1981
  • Harvey, Andrew J. “Curriculum and Culture According to Wendell Berry.” In Faith, Freedom, and Higher Education: Historical Analysis and Contemporary Reflections, edited by P. C. Kemeny, 149–64. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013.
• Thursday 2/13: Standing by Words, 106-207
  • Castellano, Katey. “Romantic Conservatism in Burke, Wordsworth, and Wendell Berry.” SubStance 40, no. 2 (2011): 73–91.

Week 6

• Tuesday 2/18: “Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer” and “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”
• Thursday 2/20: Remembering, 1-49, and This Day 1982-1986 (for an interesting re-enactment of Andy’s walk through San Francisco, see this essay)
  • Olmstead, Gracy. “‘The End of All Our Exploring’: Homecoming and Membership in Remembering.” In Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, 153–71. Eugene, OR: Front Porch Republic Books, 2018.

Wendell Berry conference, 21-22

Week 7

• Tuesday 2/25: Remembering, 50-103, and “Dismemberment”
  • Donnelly, Phillip. “Biblical Convocation in Wendell Berry’s Remembering.” Christianity and Literature 56, no. 2 (2007): 275–96.
• Thursday 2/27: “Pray Without Ceasing” (for a song based on this story, see James McMurtry’s “Decent Man“)

Spring Break

Week 8

• Tuesday 3/11: A World Lost 1-54, and This Day 1987-1990
  • Gustafson, H. S. “Sacramental Spirituality in the Brothers Karamazov and Wendell Berry’s Port William Characters.” Literature and Theology 27, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 345–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frs034.
• Thursday 3/13: A World Lost 55-104, and This Day 1990-1994
  • Goodrich, Janet. “Introduction” and “The Autobiographer” in The Unforeseen Self in the Works of Wendell Berry. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2001.

Week 9

• Tuesday 3/18: Life is a Miracle, 1-89
• Thursday 3/20: Life is a Miracle, 89-153, and This Day 1995

Week 10

• Tuesday 3/25: “Health is Membership,” “Going to Work,” “Twelve Paragraphs on Biotechnology”, “The Whole Horse,” and “Is Life a Miracle?”
  • Stegall, Caleb. “First They Came for the Horses: Wendell Berry and a Technology of Wholeness.” In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, edited by Mark Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter, 89-105 . Wilmington: ISI Books, 2011.
• Thursday 3/27: Jayber Crow, 1-74, and This Day 1996-1999
  • Peterson, Andrew. “How the Barber of Port William Changed my Life.” In Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, 185-?. Eugene, OR: Front Porch Republic Books, 2018.

Week 11

• Tuesday 4/1: Jayber Crow, 75-150, and This Day 2000-2003
  • Eads, Martha Greene. “Suffering Unto Salvation in Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow,” 2011. http://thecresset.org/2011/Michaelmas/Eads_M2011.html.
• Thursday 4/3: Jayber Crow, 151-215; No class (Dallas)

Week 12

• Tuesday 4/8: Jayber Crow, 216-297, and This Day 2004-2006
  • Esolen, Anthony. “If Dante Were a Kentucky Barber.” In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, edited by Mark Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter, 255–74. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2011.
• Thursday 4/10: Jayber Crow, 298-363, and This Day 2007-2008
  • Reardon, Sarah, and Jeffrey Bilbro. “Incarnation and Imagination in Jayber Crow: Wendell Berry’s Divine Comedy.” Christianity & Literature 73, no. 1 (2024): 119-137.

Week 13

• Tuesday 4/15: Andy Catlett: Early Travels, 1-140
  • Miller, Eric. “Kentucky River Journal.” In Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, 139-152. Eugene, OR: Front Porch Republic Books, 2018.
  • Before leaving for Easter Break, bring a one paragraph paper proposal (for your final essay) to my office to discuss it with me.
• Thursday 4/17: Easter Break, no class. But if you are interested, you can read “Introduction to The Art of Loading Brush”

Week 14

• Tuesday 4/22: Hannah Coulter, 1-72, and This Day 2009-2010
  • Mannon, Ethan. “Leisure and Technology in Port William: Wendell Berry’s Revelatory Fiction.” Mississippi Quarterly 67, no. 2 (2014): 171–92.
• Thursday 4/24: Hannah Coulter, 73-145, and This Day 2011
  • Stanford, Thomas W. III. “Membership and Its Privileges: The Vision of Family and Community in the Fiction of Wendell Berry.” Logos 14, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 118–30.

Week 15

• Tuesday 4/29: Hannah Coulter, 146-186, and This Day 2012-2013 (Counts as a Thursday for reflection purposes)
  • Pierce, Ingrid. “Dreaming in Port William: Foreknowledge, Consolation, and Medieval Dream Vision Literature.” In Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro, 21–36. Eugene, OR: Front Porch Republic Books, 2018.

Final Exam

Final will be on Monday, 5/5 from 8:00-10:00 am.