English Department

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and reared in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I’m a Virginian by right of gardening zone 7b at the foot of the Blue Ridge for seven years.

Piers Plowman manuscript study (textual criticism, codicology, paleography, history of the book), influence of the mendicant orders on medieval imaginative literature, scribal culture of the 14th and 15th centuries, humanities computing, sometimes called “digital humanities.”

ENG 101—Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, Dante. I teach the whole Divine Comedy because I have no intention of leaving students' souls in Hell right before Christmas break.

I especially enjoy seeing students who are “not good at English” discover that they, too, can manage the rigors and conventions of literary study and of a strong English prose style—especially because insightful reading, vigorous conversation and masterful writing are means of meditating on the soul of our civilization in the presence of the souls who have made it great. What could be a greater success than bringing someone into that presence by learning those skills?

The intellectually healthy mixture of study within one’s specialty with study in areas where one has much lesser expertise—and being able to teach openly what one actually believes and holds dear, rather than having to engage in a perpetual apologetic about even the most basic values. In this ethos, one can continue to grow intellectually and so remain fresh for one’s students year after year—to say nothing of remaining sympathetic with their struggles over new ideas.

Come here in order to become magnanimous men and women rather than to be safe. Hillsdale College educates for liberty, not for pusillanimity.

That they are socially gracious with people of all age groups and backgrounds. This makes it possible to have true intellectual friendships with them, rather than simply passing on a mass of information as though downloading a file from a server. Hillsdale is supremely human and humane in a way that hardly exists elsewhere. As a professor, one is not reduced to what might be sold on a CD, and the students learn from human example to come into active possession of the riches of their heritage.

pbart@hillsdale.edu