Wendell Berry’s Virtues of Renewal: Teaching the Forms that Sustain Life and Community

Learn how to teach Wendell Berry’s virtues of renewal within your classrooms in this course with professor Jeffrey Bilbro of Grove City College. This course applies Dr. Bilbro’s book Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms for classroom teachers. These virtues of renewal are alternatives to the dominant virtues of our “industrial economy” that values specialization, competition, and techniques over the virtues of attention, gratitude, humility, hope, memory, fidelity, and convocation. Wendell Berry’s literary forms can model and foster these virtues that will enable teachers and students to tend to the health of their places and communities. A classical liberal arts education should prioritize developing these sustaining virtues alongside of the particular skills needed for different vocations. Seeing and experiencing such forms of life within literature and the classroom prepares students to make their knowledge and work serve the common good, rather than just individual self-interest. Learn more about the course in this ClassicalU podcast episode as Dr. Bilbro talks about the creation of this course.

Jeffrey Bilbro is an Associate Professor of English at Grove City College and editor-in-chief at the Front Porch Republic. He received his B.A. in Writing/Literature (2007) from George Fox University and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature (2012) from Baylor University. Bilbro is the author of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms and many other books, articles, and poetry.