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 use in your own thinking.
One of the things we’ll focus on this semester is the importance and power of form. As you’ll see from our reading list, we’ll be reading poetry, essays, short stories, and novels. One of the questions that fascinates me is how Berry uses these different forms to convey different aspects of his vision. What is the value of these different forms? As you’ll discover, form is intricately connected with virtue, so we’ll explore the connections between form and virtue throughout the semester. By studying the ways in which Berry uses different literary forms to shape his readers in different virtues, I hope that you will learn to attend to form in other contexts as well.
Grading Breakdown:
- 15 Pre-class Reflections (30%)
- Scholarly Essay Review and Presentation (20%)
- Poetry Memorization Final (20%)
- 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: Collected and New Sabbath Poems. ISBN: 1619024365
- A Continuous Harmony. ISBN: 978-1619020009
- The Hidden Wound. ISBN: 1582434867
- Andy Catlett: Early Travels. ISBN: 1593761643
- A Place in Time. ISBN: 978-1619021884
- Three Short Novels. ISBN: 1582431787
- Hannah Coulter. ISBN: 1593760787
- Jayber Crow. ISBN: 978-1582431604
Course Calendar:
We’ll meet in HAL 110 on MWF from 2:00-2:50. This schedule is subject to change.
Week 1
- Monday 1/17: Introduction; read “Think Little” (also found in Continuous Harmony) before class
- Wednesday 1/19: This Day 1-71
- Friday 1/21: This Day 72-139
Week 2
- Monday 1/24: This Day 140-215; 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.
- Wednesday 1/26: no class
- Friday 1/28: This Day 216-282; Pynn, Tom. “Wendell Berry’s Metaphysics of Sabbath.” The University of Mississippi Studies in English 11 (1993): 171–80.
Week 3
- Monday 1/31: This Day 283-342
- Wednesday 2/2: This Day 343-397
- Friday 2/4: “A Native Hill“
Week 4
- Monday 2/7: “Two Economies” and “The Work of Local Culture“; Filipiak, Jeffrey. “The Work of Local Culture: Wendell Berry and Communities as the Source of Farming Knowledge.” Agricultural History 85, no. 2 (2011): 174–94. https://doi.org/10.3098/ah.2011.85.2.174.
- Wednesday 2/9: “Regional Motive” (in CH); “Agrarian Standard“; “Still Standing“; Vernon, Zackary. “The Problematic History and Recent Cultural Reappropriation of Southern Agrarianism.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 21, no. 2 (2014): 337–52.
- Friday 2/11: “Discipline and Hope” in CH 86-130
Week 5
- Monday 2/14: “Discipline and Hope” in CH 131-168
- Wednesday 2/16: “Imagination in Place” (11); “American Imagination and the Civil War” (21); Intro to Art of Loading Brush (13)
- Friday 2/18: no class; read Hidden Wound 1-64
Week 6
- Monday 2/21: Hidden Wound 65-139; Berry’s conversation with bell hooks in hooks, bell. Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York: Routledge, 2008.
- Wednesday 2/23: “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” (24); “The Gift of Good Land” (14); 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
- Friday 2/25: no class
Spring Break
- Fun reading for Spring Break: “In Defense of Literacy” in CH, “Health is Membership“
Week 7
- Monday 3/7: “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community” (56)
- Wednesday 3/9: “Pray Without Ceasing“
- Friday 3/11: “Fidelity“
Ciceronian Society Conference 3/11-3/12
Week 8
- Monday 3/14: “A Burden” and “Misery”
- Wednesday 3/16: “Andy Catlett: Early Education” and “Drouth” and “Not a Tear”
- Friday 3/18: “A New Day” and “Mike”; Baker, Jack R. “Remembering the Past Rightly: Elegy and Ubi Sunt Tradition in Wendell Berry’s Fiction.” In Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, edited by Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro. Eugene, OR: Front Porch Republic Books, 2018.
Look & See at Bilbro home: 1 pm on Sunday the 20th.
Week 9
- Monday 3/21: “A Place in Time”
- Wednesday 3/22: Hannah Coulter 1-58
- Friday 3/24: Hannah Coulter 59-110
Matt Wheeler concert 3/27 at 4 pm at Center Presbyterian Church (free registration here)
Week 10
- Monday 3/28: Hannah Coulter 111-156; Fritz O’s chapter
- Wednesday 3/30: Hannah Coulter 157-end
- Friday 4/1: Andy Catlett: Early Travels 1-68
Week 11
- Monday 4/4: Andy Catlett: Early Travels 68-140; 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.
- Wednesday 4/6: A World Lost 225-276
- Friday 4/8: no class; IFF conference. Read “A Desirable Woman” in preparation for Jayber Crow
Week 12
- Monday 4/11: A World Lost 276-326
- Wednesday 4/13: Remembering 119-168; 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.
- Friday 4/15: Good Friday
Week 13
- Monday 4/18: Easter Monday
- Wednesday 4/20: Remembering 169-222; Donnelly, Phillip. “Biblical Convocation in Wendell Berry’s Remembering.” Christianity and Literature 56, no. 2 (2007): 275–96.
- Friday 4/22: “Dismemberment“; “The Branch Way of Doing“
Week 14
- Monday 4/25: Jayber Crow 3-74
- Wednesday 4/27: Jayber Crow 75-132; Eads, Martha Greene. “Suffering Unto Salvation in Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow.” http://thecresset.org/2011/Michaelmas/Eads_M2011.html.
- Friday 4/29: Jayber Crow 133-206
Week 15
- Monday 5/2: Jayber Crow 207-282; 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.
- Wednesday 5/4: Jayber Crow 283-363
Final will be on Tuesday, 5/10 from 8:00-10:00 am.