Episodes
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
An Invitation to "The Brothers Karamazov" with Prof. Adam Cooper
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
In his 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky explores questions of good and evil, alienation and belonging, the existence of God and the nature of morality.
As scholar and author Kenneth Boa writes in his four-volume A Taste of the Classics, “The Brothers Karamazov is a remarkable work that explores the whole human range of behavior, from the depths of depravity to the heights of exultation and from the meanness of the human spirit to the great nobility of which it is capable.”
This semester, Wyoming Catholic College seniors have been reading “The Brothers K” under the capable tutelage of Prof. Adam Cooper. I asked Prof. Cooper what attracts him to the novel.
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Can Science Fiction Be the Epic of Our Times? with Dr. Frederick Turner
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
It makes no sense at first: a band of heroes,
Led by an old man with a bolo tie,
Who saved a world that was not worth saving.
There’s nothing for it then but to explain.
Perhaps for most of you it’s history,
But there’s a right way and a wrong way
To tell a story, and this on is epic.
Thus begins Fredrick Turner’s modern science fiction epic, Apocalypse. It’s the third sci-fi epic he has written and like Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Dante before him, he has written them in verse.
Dr. Turner is a poet, a cultural critic, a playwright, a philosopher of science, an interdisciplinary scholar, an aesthetician, an essayist and a translator, as well as the author of 28 books, including Natural Classicism: Essays on Literature and Science; Rebirth of Value: Meditations on Beauty, Ecology, Religion and Education; and Epic: Form, Content, and History.
Dr. Turner, now retired Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Texas Dallas, delivered a lecture here at Wyoming Catholic College. While he was in Lander, Dr. Turner was kind enough to join us for a podcast interview.
Dr. Turner's lecture can be found here.
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Dante: "The Infinite Beauty of the World" with Dr. Jason Baxter
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
In his Divine Comedy, writes Wyoming Catholic College professor Dr. Jason Baxter, Dante “intentionally gathered creatures, places, landscapes, and practices from across the world and types of encyclopedic texts and then filled his book with their imagines; and, second, the poet consistently and insistently constructs moment in which we—along with the pilgrim—must take it all in at a glance, as if we are viewing the whole imago mundi from above.”
That quotation from Dr. Baxter comes from his new scholarly book, The Infinite Beauty of the World: Dante’s Encyclopedia and the Names of God published in time for the commemoration of Dante Alighiri’s death in 1321. And certainly anyone who has read the Commedia is well acquainted with the whirl of images and ideas contained in every Canto.
In this edition of The After-Dinner Scholar, Dr. Baxter discusses his new scholarly book as well as making Dante accessible to non-scholars.
Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
Wyoming Catholic College is pleased to announce that we will host another session of The Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. Adult learners will gather from across the country here in Lander from Sunday, June 6 to Friday, June 11 to discuss “Shakespeare’s Rome.”
We’ll dig into three of Shakespeare’s plays: “Coriolanus,” reflecting on the early years of the Roman Republic, followed by “Julius Caesar” and “Antony and Cleopatra” focusing on the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire
What can we learn about: Rome and Shakespeare’s England? Rome and America? Rome and Christianity? Honor, eros, and that most Roman of virtues, piety? How can these plays inform our lives as individuals, as citizens, and as Catholic Christians?
This week's guest is Wyoming Catholic College president, Dr. Glenn Arbery, one of the professors at the Wyoming School.
For more information about The Wyoming School of Catholic Thought or to register visit the college website: wyomingcatholic.edu/wsct.
Tuesday Dec 08, 2020
Tuesday Dec 08, 2020
While there are many novels in our era and prior to our era that have unhappy endings, novelist Jane Austen did not write any of them. Austen’s novels end, for the good characters, just as we would hope. “I am the happiest creature in the world,” writes Elizabeth Bennett about her engagement near the end of Pride and Prejudice. “Perhaps other people have said so before,” she goes on, “but not one with such justice.” How marvelous. Or is it?
Beginning on Thursday, January 14, Dr. Tiffany Schubert will be teaching a free six-week distance learning class entitled “‘This Holiday of Spirits’: Jane Austen, Courtly Love, and Happy Endings.” This podcast conversation with Dr. Schubert will give you a taste of what's to come.
Visit our website for more information on this free course and to sign up.
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
Carpe Diem: The Poetry of Horace with Prof. Eugene Hamilton
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
In 1959 Oxford University Press published a 200-page book containing 451 translations (half of them in English) of a single 16-line Latin poem, Ad Pyrrham or “The Ode to Pyrrha.” The poet—now nearly forgotten—was perhaps the most influential poet of all time. His name: Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace.
For 2,000 years Horace was admired as possibly the greatest poet in history. And then Latin—especially advanced Latin—became a thing of the past and few were able to read his grammatically complex works. Today, of course, poetry itself has become passé.
But at Wyoming Catholic College, Latin is a required subject and poems are read, studied, and memorized. Latinist Eugene Hamilton has been helping a group of students work there way through a selection of Horace’s Odes.
Tuesday Oct 27, 2020
Hospitality in Homer's "Odyssey" with Prof. Adam Cooper
Tuesday Oct 27, 2020
Tuesday Oct 27, 2020
In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus, struggling to get home from Calypso’s island, is shipwrecked. Naked, destitute, looking for all the world like a vagabond, he is nonetheless welcomed by Alkinoos, king of the Phaiakians. Alkinoos and his people treat him like a king, take his story to heart, and transport him to his home Ithaka with a vast trove of gifts. That is, they treated him with hospitality.
These days we think of hospitality in much less grandiose terms. There’s hospitality hour after church: donuts, coffee, and small talk. We might offer hospitality as a meal or a night or two in our spare bedroom, but only for those we know—or relatives of those we know. For everyone else, there’s "the hospitality industry" to provide rooms, beds, and meals.
Thus Odysseus’ adventures and misadventures provide a whole new perspective on how we treat guests, even those who are strangers to us.
Prof. Adam Cooper is new to Wyoming Catholic College this year and is in the midst of teaching The Odyssey to our freshmen, drawing their attention to this major theme in the poem: hospitality.
Tuesday Sep 22, 2020
The Founding of Rome and the Question of Honor with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Sep 22, 2020
Tuesday Sep 22, 2020
It’s a word we don’t hear very often these days, but one that was of utmost importance to our ancestors—actual and figurative. In fact, they couldn’t live without it. The word is “honor.”
Ancient Romans practiced a timocratic—that is, an honor-loving—way of life. The Roman historian Livy in particular highlights the great deeds done for the honor of the city and for personal honor as well as the heinous and dishonorable crimes of, for example, the early kings of Rome—crimes that led to their downfall and exile.
Wyoming Catholic College sophomores have been reading Livy with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos. In this interview, Dr. Papadopoulos begins by responding to one of his own paper prompts.
Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
In the Epilogue to his book The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, C. S. Lewis wrote, “I have made no serious effort to hide the fact that the old [Medieval] Model [of the universe] delights me as I believe it delighted our ancestors. Few constructions of the imagination seem to me to have combined splendour, sobriety, and coherence in the same degree. It is possible that some readers have long been itching to remind me that it had a serious defect; it was not true.”
Last week the annual Wyoming School of Catholic Thought was held here in Lander. The topic was “Beauty is Truth: Science and the Catholic Imagination.” Our readings in science and in literature considered this question of how we see the world, how we image it even before we think about it.
That began with a look at Medieval science and cosmology. The group read and discussed chapter 5 and the Epilogue from Lewis’ The Discarded Image guided by Dr. Tiffany Schubert who offered this introduction to the topic.
Tuesday Jul 28, 2020
"Learning in War-Time" and in Every Other Time with Dr. Jason Baxter
Tuesday Jul 28, 2020
Tuesday Jul 28, 2020
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On September 3, Great Britain declared war on Germany. On September 29, the Feast of St. Michael in the Anglican Church, the term began at Oxford University. Studies? Classes? Learning? In War-Time?
Academics at Wyoming Catholic College focuses on the great books of the liberal arts tradition—a tradition stretching back beyond the founding of Oxford in 1096. And Oxford in 1939 was still almost exclusively the liberal arts. What was the point of reading Homer, Herodotus, and Dante, studying Euclid, perfecting an understanding of Latin and Greek with a war going on?
On Sunday, October 22, 1939 at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Oxford, literary scholar and Oxford do C. S. Lewis stepped into the pulpit to answer that question? His sermon “Learning in War-Time” has become something of a classic and Dr. Jason Baxter studied that sermon earlier this month with high school students who attended Wyoming Catholic College’s PEAK Program.