Joshua Gibbs

Introductions Are Overrated

“More often than not, contextualization is just an easy way out. Rookie teachers spend too much time in Paradise Lost talking about John Milton because it is easier than talking about the book. Milton is the least interesting part of Paradise Lost, though, and that is because his poem is a complete success. So try teaching a bookContinue reading “Introductions Are Overrated”

Cannibals Only Terrify By Night

The King of Infinite Space is the latest episode of Proverbial. It is available now.

Against: Grist For The Mill

Quite often, “teaching students how to think” simply means “teaching students how to criticize.” Teaching students how to criticize will not “irrigate deserts,” as Lewis put it, which is why so many 18 year-old Christian critics/analysts are men without chests who summarily quit church as soon as they can.

A Matter Of (Autumnal) Taste

This one is marked collaborative, so after you get the mood, feel free to add to it. “Unfinished Sympathy” and “Before Today” were narrowly cut at the end because they are just too crisp. This one ought to be all sweaters, sick days, and space heaters.

Jane Austen’s Unusual Brilliance

I am teaching Pride & Prejudice this year for the first time since instituting catechisms in my classroom. Oddly enough, the book is entirely bereft of passages that might suit a catechism. Austen’s brilliance is real, but known only in slow accumulations. Despite her deep understanding of human nature, she is one of the leastContinue reading “Jane Austen’s Unusual Brilliance”

Let’s Direct A Critical Eye At Accreditation

“New humanities teachers are often given massive manuals (compiled by previous teachers to satisfy accreditation requirements) and told, ‘This is how to teach this class.’ The existence of such manuals is a comfort to administrators and a terror to everyone else. Why? For the same reason bureaucracy is always a terror to reasonable people.” -from StopContinue reading “Let’s Direct A Critical Eye At Accreditation”

This Is The Best Essay I Have Read In Three Years

Sam Kriss’s review of Dostoyevsky’s Demons is not perfect, but it embodies the sort of ambition and verve that inspires fellow essayists (and makes them a little jealous, if I am being honest).

Style (Sports)

There was no basketball player who photographed better than Shawn Kemp. More of his cards manifest beauty of form than any other player.

No, Better, Sort of Like A Dream

Camilla: Do you have an iPod I could have? Gibbs: I have something even better. Something unlike anything your classmates have ever seen.

Varieties Of Hypocrisy

There is a certain kind of fellow whose intellectual interest in some traditional theological position grows even as his own interest (or ability) in living out the implications of that theology decline. In fact, he believes his right to indulge the flesh is purchased by his vehement condemnation of the same indulgence.