This study examines Wendell Berry’s cultural critique to identify implications for American education. It explores three themes in Berry’s fiction: land and place, community, and character, and considers Berry’s observations about education in his non-fiction and interviews. The health of natural resources is a fundamental value for Berry who believes that human beings have a moral obligation to be stewards of the Earth. Practicing stewardship enables the creation of valuable places. A vital connection links the health of the natural world and human community. Healthy communities are radically inclusive, work for a sustainable future, and care for those with special needs. Community “members” exemplify qualities of character, knowledge of the community, good work, and neighborliness, all essential for responsible stewardship. The study assesses Berry’s claims that: (1) formal schooling often lacks vibrant association with the local community; (2) our reliance on discrete academic disciplines fosters over-specialization and academic isolation; and (3) the standard for education should be revamped to focus on the health of the community rather than job preparation. American education often serves economic and political agendas that ignore the well-being of natural resources and human communities. In spite of our daunting challenges, Berry maintains hope and charts constructive steps forward. Students learn best, he believes, through apprenticeship and mentoring. The study concludes that with substantive changes education can play a major role in enabling students to grasp the needs of a healthy, life-supporting planet and to develop the skills, values, and disciplines of responsible community members. Replacing corporate-dominated, technology-driven, and shortsighted attitudes and behaviors with restorative practices and values requires commitment from all of society’s sectors, and perhaps especially from our schools, colleges, and universities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1955. / Typescript. Vita. Title from PDF title page (viewed Nov. 6, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-288). Online version of the print original.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1955. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-288).

Small-scale, conservation-based agrarianism provides a model for sustainable human habitation within heterogeneous landscapes. Thoreau's Transcendentalism and the historical roots of American Agrarianism are explored as influences for wilderness preservation and the New Agrarian movement. Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means overlooking the ecological and socio-economic environment where people live. Middle landscapes between nature and culture, or between wilderness and cities, can either increase or reduce ecological and social functioning within the landscape matrix. Managing middle landscapes by agrarian principles helps move both nature and culture towards ecological, economic, and social sustainability. This thesis ends with a discussion of agrarian themes, such as supporting decentralized local economies and increasing community connectivity, applied in urban, rural, and wilderness landscapes.

In this rather apt description of Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee, two important characteristics of the man stand out: his personal traits and energy and his strength of conviction in fighting for the principles in which he believed. Willkie cannot be regarded a politician in the usual sense; he was a businessman who, because of his convictions, waged a personal war against Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal - a war conducted outside the realm of partisan politics. His successes in the fight with the administration brough Willkie a measure of recognition and aroused the interest of certain Republicans who held similar opinions of the New Deal; his personality and continued expression of his nomination. It is the purpose of this study to analyze the conditions which enabled Willkie to rise from comparative obscurity to become the 1940 G.O.P. standard bearer, presenting in the analysis the Republican campaigns for the nomination, the G.O.P. convention, and the influence of Roosevelt's third term decision and the European war on the selection of the party’s nominee.

Although Wendell Berry’s first book, a novel, appeared in 1960, he did not gain significant national attention until the publication of his nonfiction manifesto, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, in 1977. Since its publication, Berry has moved increasingly toward the prose of persuasion as he continues to sharpen his argument in support of a practical, continuous harmony between the human economy and Nature. His canon as a whole – the poems, essays, and novels – is an ongoing and thorough exploration of man’s use of and relationship to the land. Arguing that the health of a culture is linked to the health of its land, Berry focuses on agriculture, particularly the growing conflict between traditional farming (which espouses a harmonious cyclic vision) and modern agribusiness (which espouses a discordant linear vision). As a traditional farmer wedded to the land, Berry derives his ideas and images largely from his practical experiences and form his devotion to careful and responsible land stewardship. He also, in his nonfiction, turns to several agricultural (as well as a few literary) writers of the past and present to lend support to his arguments. Berry’s strong sense of Nature’s cycle is the basis for his imagery of departures and returns. As a crucial part of the cycle, death is prerequisite to life, and Berry shows the importance of understanding “that the land we live on and the lives we live are the gifts of death” (Home Economics 62). The power of Nature’s cycle is at once destructive and restorative; Berry teaches that by allying our human economy more with natural cyclic processes rather than with man-made linear – and ultimately destructive – ones, we and future generations can live with hope and assurance through the possibility of renewal. Traditional farming has taught Berry the concepts which inform his poems and essays (as well as his novels and short stories, which merit a separate study beyond the scope of this paper.) For example, he has learned, and continues to learn, the importance of understanding and acknowledging the primal, and ruling, character of a “place”; of looking to Nature for guidance, instruction, and justice; and of allying farming practices to Nature’s “Wheel” of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. This cycle and related motifs unify and connect his central themes, particularly death as a means of renewal. In Berry’s view, one of the cruxes in the agricultural crisis is that, whereas traditional farming seeks a natural balance between growth and decay, industrial farming, because of its pull toward mass production, stresses growth only (a linear inclination), which wears out the land and leads inevitably to infertility. Tracing our modern crisis to our past and to our present character and culture, Berry shows the ramifications of our abuse of Nature’s “gifts.”

Many poets write about the earth or even about God using the language of nature. And many poets and contemporary authors concern themselves with the state of the environment. However, the poetry of Wendell Berry, James Still, Li-Young Lee, Mary Oliver, and Charles Wright seems to engage different kinds of questions about how humans creatively respond to the earth. Collectively, their responses seem influenced by their connections with Christianity rather than any specific ecological agenda. In all of their poetry lies a sensibility about how humans should interact with the earth. All five of the poets seem to acknowledge humanity’s place on the earth as important without elevating humanity as the most important organism on the earth. Their work presupposes the existence of God or creator and because of this, engages the questions of being human in light of that Creator rather than as creators of their own environment or as the architecture of imagination. Their work offers an important insight into how we might live in harmony with all environments—agricultural, rural, wild or urban. Their work also suggests a connection between the Christian concept of worship, and a way of living that takes responsibility for human actions within creation. Their poetry recognizes the earth’s value as well as God’s presence and results in praise of both the beauty of creation and Creator.

The propose of this thesis was to develop an adaptive reuse proposal for the Wendell L. Willkie High School in Elwood, Indiana. The building, an excellent example of Richardsonain Romanesque Style Architecture, has been vacant since 1973. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places because of its architectural and historical significance, the building merits the attention to develop an appropriate renovation scheme.The proposal includes: the building’s history; a written and photographic description of the existing conditions; the adaptive reuse proposal consisting of text, architectural drawings and the related cost estimates; a series of case studies on similar projects; and the economic incentives associated with historic preservation.The proposal renovation is designed to comply with local building odes and State and Federal standards for rehabilitation. It is hoped that this study will emphasize the value and potential of this magnificent architectural and historical landmark by showing that preservation is a practical and economical alternative in today’s building industry. / Department of Architecture

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1953. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [382]-390).