News
(Also see our newsletter, Permanent Things.)
Fall Newsletter
The latest number of the Russell Kirk Center newsletter (Fall 2011) has just been posted. It features a profile of the new complete Kirk Bibliography, compiled by our archivist, Charles C. Brown. It also includes an interview with Márcia Xavier de Brito, who is translating many works of Kirk into Portuguese. You can download it, and past issues, here.
Passages: Meijer
We are deeply sorry to learn of the death of Fred Meijer. Meijer was a philanthropist par excellence and beloved by all in Michigan who knew him. Readers interested in his life and legacy may be interested to see Jim Person’s review of his biography published in the University Bookman last year.
Passages: Hoeflich
Annette Kirk and Jeffrey O. Nelson both contributed tributes to a memorial page for Mr. Charles H. Hoeflich (1914–2011), a long-time friend and financial supporter of the Kirk Center who died recently. The Kirk Center is deeply grateful for his support and commemorates a long and fruitful life.
Kirk Audio at ISI
We commend to your attention the John M. Olin Online Lecture Library at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which hosts several lectures about Russell Kirk and his influence by scholars including Ted McAlister, Michael P. Federici, W. Wesley McDonald, George H. Nash, Gleaves Whitney, and Allan C. Carlson. It also hosts more than twenty-five audio lectures by Russell Kirk.
Ghostly Kirk
In time for Halloween, “Ghostly Kirk,” a site that tracks the ghostly tales of Russell Kirk, is now on the web, courtesy of Jeff Pearce.
Russello around the web
Here’s a round-up of recent writings by Bookman editor Gerald Russello elsewhere on the Internet and in print. • At the Imaginative Conservative Russello responds to Claes Ryn’s argument that conservatives have failed the culture. • He reviews Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World in the October edition of Chronicles. • At the National Catholic Register he discusses a recent Colorado religious liberty case denying families access to funds for private education, based on an outdated reading of a bigoted “Blaine”-style amendment. • In The Wilson Quarterly, he reviews Why Trilling Matters.
McAllister on Kirk
The Imaginative Conservative blog has posted an excerpt and link to an essay by Pepperdine’s Ted McAllister on Kirk’s Conservative Mind that is worth a look: “What was then more readily an act of preservation has become today an act of recovery.”
Russello in the WSJ
Gerald Russello reviews Michael Toth’s book on founding father Oliver Ellsworth in the Wall Street Journal: “Uniting the Nation.”
Imaginative Conservative series and other items of note
A few items to call to your attention:
• Our friends at The Imaginative Conservative are running a series of posts on “books that make us human” that’s well worth a look. • They also ran an item recently on early work of Russell Kirk and his libertarian or merely anti-statist tendencies.
• James Poulos writes at the Daily Caller on “The horrible truth behind the war on the middle class.”
• A transcript of James Kalb interviewing the mathematician and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros on architecture and urbanism is available from the Philadelphia Society (PDF).
Updated Kirk Bibliography
A second edition of our archivist Charles C. Brown’s Russell Kirk: A Bibliography has been released by ISI Books, fully revised and updated. There is a kind review by James Heiser at The New American.
Russell Kirk on C-SPAN
We recently updated our video links with listings from two talks from Russell Kirk, including The Conservative Movement, Then & Now, a talk given for the Heritage Foundation in 1980.
Hiatus
Have you caught up on the recent articles from Gerald Russello? Debating the Constitution in City Journal, and Faith from the Hearth and Public Schools: Faith-Free Zones in the National Catholic Register.
A few links we recommend
• The New Atlantis has a great symposium on Place and Placelessness in America with several essays that are well worth your time.
• The Imaginative Conservative has a three-part series by John Willson on the historian Carlton Hayes (whom we covered in this 2010 essay).
• The blog “Paying Attention to the Sky” features an article by Brad Birzer on Christopher Dawson and the twentieth century Catholic literary revival and two articles on The Remarkable Christopher Dawson Influence and Dawson’s contributions.
Peter Stanlis, RIP
Dr. Peter J. Stanlis has died. He was a great friend of Russell Kirk and the Kirk Center and a great scholar. We have posted a remembrance of him by Senior Fellow Ian Crowe in the University Bookman.
In addition, we would like to call our readers’ attention to two videos from Dr. Stanlis on our companion site. The first features Dr. Stanlis speaking on Edmund Burke at a seminar at Piety Hill. In the other video, Dr. Stanlis is interviewed by Joseph Stuart about Russell Kirk. We also note this 2008 print interview where Dr. Stanlis speaks with James E. Person, Jr. in the Bookman about Burke and Robert Frost.
Video on the Influence of Russell Kirk in Europe
Karl von Habsburg spoke at the announcement in Prague in 2000 of the Czech translation of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. The video of his remarks is available here. Karl is the son of Otto von Habsburg, who died in July (we posted a memorial article by Denis Kitzinger here). Karl was a member of the European Parliament for ten years, and in the summer of 1984 he studied the thought of Edmund Burke under Russell Kirk in Mecosta. The full video of the Czech celebration—at which Annette Kirk, President of the Russell Kirk Center and Marco Respinti, Senior Fellow and Italian journalist, also spoke—can be seen here at our partner site.
Peter Stanlis, RIP
Peter Stanlis was a great friend to the Bookman and author of the Burke revival. May he rest in peace.
Duggan book
We congratulate Joseph Duggan on the release of his e-book Give Paz a Chance and the impending publication of The Zuckerberg Galaxy: A Primer for Negotiating the Media Maelstrom, portions of which first appeared in the University Bookman.
More on Otto von Habsburg
Bookman associate editor David Bonagura has written a piece for The Catholic Thing, “Otto von Habsburg: Monarch, Freedom Fighter, Catholic,” as the late Archduke was laid to rest with his ancestors.
Birzer on Kirk and Strauss
We direct your attention to a recent post on the Imaginative Conservative Blog where Brad Birzer has collected a few forgotten items from the Kirk Center archives and elsewhere on the relationship of Russell Kirk and Leo Strauss. It was more amicable than is generally recognized; in 1963 Kirk pronounced Strauss “on the side of the angels.” We look forward to further research in this area.
Spring Newsletter
The latest number of the Russell Kirk Center newsletter (Spring 2011) has just been posted. It features a profile of Ian Crowe, the new editor of Studies in Burke and His Times and an interview with W. Winston Elliott III. You can download it, and past issues, here.