Marybeth Baggett

Once upon a time, Paul Hunham,Played, in a command performance, by Paul Giamatti. the lead character of Alexander Payne’s recent film The Holdovers,The Holdovers is now available for streaming on Peacock. thought he could make a difference. That’s why he went into teaching in the first place. He felt a calling to prepare students for…

Some years back, I started an experiment of sorts by sharing a poem each day on Facebook.This post originally appeared in a slightly different form at MoralApologetics.com. Circa 2016, social media was becoming increasingly acrimonious, and I thought such a practice might be one way to shine a small but persistent light and beat back…

I teach literature today in no small part thanks to Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane’s realistic novella depicting the impoverished conditions of life in the Bowery at the turn of the twentieth century.This piece has been adapted from an address to the Sigma Tau Delta chapter of Liberty University, delivered March 10,…

This series is adapted from a chapter in Keith Loftin’s Rekindling an Old Light: The Virtue and Value of Christ-Shaped Liberal Arts Learning (High Bridge Books, 2022, published in conjunction with Moral Apologetics Press). Literature can give us ears to hear and sensitize our eyes to see goodness, truth, and beauty—in fact to effect union…

This series is adapted from a chapter in Keith Loftin’s Rekindling an Old Light: The Virtue and Value of Christ-Shaped Liberal Arts Learning (High Bridge Books, 2022, published in conjunction with Moral Apologetics Press). Why should Christians read literature from a broad array of writers and thinkers? As our last installment put it, “If literature…

This series is adapted from a chapter in Keith Loftin’s Rekindling an Old Light: The Virtue and Value of Christ-Shaped Liberal Arts Learning (High Bridge Books, 2022, published in conjunction with Moral Apologetics Press). Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” begins harmlessly enough—with townspeople from a rural community gathering in the picturesque public square on an idyllic…

My academic inspiration this summer came from an unlikely source: Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. I know, curveball, right? But I can explain. Two years ago, my husband David and I had just settled into our new home in Houston. We were both assuming new positions at a new school and, like everyone else, navigating the…

I earned my master’s degree as a single mother while working full time. It was as intense as it sounds. Once or twice a week for about two years, I’d leave work and immediately drive an hour east to my night classes at the closest state university. Afterward, I’d get home around 10:00, stay up…

Last semester I had the privilege to teach a detective fiction course for the first time. Spending sixteen weeks immersed in these delightfully creative stories alongside insightful, enthusiastic students was surely one of the highlights of my year. It’s hard to beat a syllabus that includes the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond…

Having worked in academia for the past two decades, I often take for granted the myriad opportunities it provides for substantive discussion and debate, ubiquitous reading suggestions casually tossed out in hallway conversations, and routinely scheduled lectures and workshops. Like most, I went into teaching as much for that milieu as for anything else this…

Here’s an open secret: professors do not go into teaching for the grading. Cliché, I know, but for most of us, grading is the necessary cost of doing what we love: leading lively discussions, preparing thought-provoking lectures, writing ground-breaking books or articles, and mentoring students. Grading, on the other hand, is just, well, grating—at least…