By Timothy Troutner The 2014 film Calvary begins with a quotation (alas, of disputed authenticity) from St. Augustine. The text reads: “Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.” With this first image, writer and director John Michael McDonagh evokes the presence of death and the fragility of faith that will dominate the rest of … Continue reading Film Review: Calvary
By Sarah Schweizer It took three summers of living in the town small town of Montagnola, Switzerland, pointing German tourists toward his house at the end of every morning run, and one moment of sheer desperation for me to finally read a book by the German Modernist writer Hermann Hesse. Hesse, I discovered, had influenced the American beat poets in the mid-1900s and somehow avoided … Continue reading Book Review: Siddhartha
By Noah Weinrich Among the reunited friends and classmates returning to Hillsdale College this fall wanders a strange new social group: a swarm of wide-eyed, eager students commonly referred to as “freshmen.” They explore the campus, taking pictures in front of Ronald Reagan and Central Hall. An investigation into these newcomers has yielded several key statistics: 64% have expressed an intention to major in politics, … Continue reading Satire: Freshman Disorientation
(Greg Wolfe’s mission inspires a reading of Keats’ well-known poem) This essay is adapted from a paper originally written for Dr. Lorraine Eadie’s ENG 330: Restoration and Romantic British Literature. “Beauty is truth, truth, beauty.” In his lecture “Conservatism and the Arts: A Lover’s Quarrel,” [Hillsdale College, October 2014] Greg Wolfe argued that in order to conserve what is good, true, and beautiful, the form … Continue reading John Keats’ Vision for Art in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’
by Sean Kunath Should you use fountain pens? This may seem like a rather straight-forward question with an answer decidedly in the negative, but I hope to make the redeeming argument for this relic of a bygone era by demonstrating its superior functionality and formality. In the past, when I have extolled the virtues of the fountain pen to some one or other person, the … Continue reading Fountain Pens
by Andy Reuss Colonial Correspondent HILLSDALE COLLEGE, Kendall Hall (Hillsdale Spectator wire) — Recent studies at Hillsdale College have concluded that, contrary to popular belief, the Founding was in fact racist and sexist. “Yeah, it turns out that the Founding Fathers kind of hated white guys. After all, the entire project started because some rich W.A.S.P. was a jerk to the colonists,” said Dr. Claremont-Dallas, … Continue reading Satire: Careful research indicates that the intent of the founders was pretty racist
(How and why students should foster healthy town-gown relationships) By Micah Meadowcroft When junior Forester McClatchey, the Collegian’s cartoonist, sketched a bewildered college student faced with the improbable varieties and combinations of food available at the Hillsdale County Fair, what was a joke about artery-defying fried fair food became, for some, a cause for offense. A few Hillsdale natives took to Facebook to vent their … Continue reading Historic Hillsdale, Home of Hillsdale College
History has come a long way since the giant ants of Herodotus. Though history has abandoned the mythic, it can still suffer from poor interpretation and philosophy. Dr. Gamble is helping students explore different sorts of historical consciousness in a traditional Hillsdale course on The History and Philosophy of History. The Hillsdale Forum spoke with him about the genesis of the course, Whigs, John Lukacs, … Continue reading Interview with Dr. Richard Gamble
by Kirby Hartley Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction by Farrell O’Gorman (2007) Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, Louisiana Farrell O’Gorman’s study of the similarities between Walker Percy’s and Flannery O’Connor’s works pierces the banal to draw associations between the authors that significantly enrich interpretations of their fiction and nonfiction. The scholarly book is divided into four … Continue reading Book Review: Peculiar Crossroads
compiled by Wes Wright Hillsdale College greatly values its core, those classes that unite us and provide an introit into the liberal arts. With Russell Kirk we recognize the ability of the liberal arts to order one’s soul, to turn one’s attention to the higher things. Yet while we can speak of the liberal arts generally, it is often difficult for Hillsdale students to justify … Continue reading Interview With Dr. Jeffrey Lehman
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