2006 Summer School: The American Agrarian Tradition

To many, the word agrarian conjures up a vision of nostalgic Southern poets lamenting the good old days down on the old plantation. In fact, the agrarian tradition has little to do with nostalgia and much to do with the cold hard facts of political and economic life. At the very heart of every republic stands the farmer who owns his land and defends his liberty in time of war. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both agrarians in the true sense, and so were such ancient writers as Hesiod, Cato, and Vergil.

Faculty

• Thomas Fleming (bio)
• James Patrick (bio)
• Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem. (bio)
• Tom Landess
• Fr. Ian Boyd, C.S.B.
• Scott P. Richert
• Aaron D. Wolf

Reading List

• Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia
• John Taylor’s Arator
• Vergil’s Georgics and First Eclogue
• Hesiod’s Works and Days
• Fr. Vincent McNabb’s The Church and the Land
• Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State
• G.K. Chesterton’s The Outline of Sanity and What’s Wrong With the World
• I’ll Take My Stand
• Who Owns America?
• Flee to the Fields: The Founding Papers of the Catholic Land Movement
• William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold"

Location

Lectures

• The Rockford Institute
  928 N. Main St.
  Rockford, IL 61103