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Course Description


Instructor: Dan Zins, PhD
Arguably our most important environmental writer, Wendell Berry epitomizes the very best from both the conservative and radical traditions. Berry writes with uncommon wisdom and grace on a wide range of issues that matter--or should matter--to all citizens. His principled, prophetic witness challenges us to address the unacknowledged and interconnected forms of violence against our land and ecology, our fellow citizens and communities, our nation, and our increasingly beleaguered planet. Throughout his writing Berry suggests the kinds of changes in our thinking, lives, and polity required to begin atoning for these grave offenses, and what we can do to effectively heal our self-inflicted and often lethal wounds.

Please begin reading Berry’s book “The Way of Ignorance� for our first meeting.

Ecologist, caretaker, economist, farmer, citizen, activist, bad subject but exemplary neighbor, devout Christian (Southern Baptist), contrarian, doubter, truth seeker, justice seeker, patriot, prophet, peacemaker, ethicist, and superb writer, Wendell Berry in a 1990 piece in the AJC was called “A Thoreau for Our Times.� And indeed he still is.

I believe that anyone who reads Berry carefully and sympathetically will likely conclude about our contemporary Thoreau what novelist E.L. Doctorow once wrote of George Orwell: “He would not for any cause render anything less complex or paradoxical than it was.�

Although Berry also writes fiction and poetry, in this class I will focus on his essays, and, to a lesser extent, interviews.

The additional Berry sources I will be drawing upon in this course include:
- Citizenship Papers: Essays
- Home Economics
- What are People For?
- The Hidden Wound (on racism)
- Our Only World: Ten Essays
- The Long-Legged House
- Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays
- Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
- It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays
- The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
- Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teaching About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness
- Special issue of Christianity and Literature (Winter, 2007) on Wendell Berry
- Morris Allen Grubbs, ed., Conversations with Wendell Berry
- Jason Peters, ed., Wendell Berry: Life and Work
- Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope

I encourage you to peruse any of these additional Berry writings and share your insights with our class, which will feature a dialogue/discussion format.

Dan taught in the liberal arts department at Atlanta College of Art. He has his Ph.D. in American Studies
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