Composed: Timeless Ways of Living

Relational Education: Love, Friendship, Attention and Return with Grant Holbrook

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if some of the most formative patterns in a life begin with simple obligations, reading the same book again, walking the dog each morning, showing up for students, or staying rooted in one place? Christine Perrin talks with teacher Grant Holbrook about the relationships and repeated practices that quietly shape a person over time. Their conversation moves through Augustine, the Psalms, friendship, beauty, teaching, and the connection between knowledge and love. Along the way, Grant considers why education is deeply relational, why older students need responsibilities to younger ones, and how good books can become lifelong companions. For parents and teachers wondering what habits truly help form a human being, this conversation offers a hopeful picture of a life shaped through attention, fidelity, and love.

Grant also shares practical patterns from his own life, including memorizing the Psalms while walking his dog, rereading great books under the helpful pressure of obligation, and taking time with former students who return, to walk, talk, and continue learning.

About the Guest
Grant Holbrook and his family live in Richmond, Virginia, where he is an upper school teacher at Veritas School. He spends most of his classroom time with the oldest students, teaching Rhetoric, Theology, and Biblical Hebrew to juniors and seniors. His graduate and doctoral work was in Old Testament, and his dissertation considered the poetry and ethics of the Hebrew acrostic Psalms. The works of Erik Varden, Bishop of Trondheim, and St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo propel much of his current reading and writing. The Holbrooks are members of Church Hill Presbyterian, atop the oldest and loveliest neighborhood in the city.

Guest Links
Chastity as the Power to Love: A Discussion as Parents and Teachers https://classicalu.com/courses/chastity-as-the-power-to-love-a-discussion-as-parents-and-teachers/

Connect with the Humanitas Institute
Humanitas Institute | https://humanitasinstitute.org
X | https://x.com/HIClassicalEd
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/humanitas_institute/
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@humanitas_institute
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

The Life An Education Makes with Elspeth Currie

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if the books you read at sixteen, the habits you formed in a classroom, or the things you learned simply because they were beautiful were never meant to “pay off” only in a career? Christine Perrin talks with historian Elspeth Currie about education as lifelong formation, and about the ways learning can shape motherhood, family culture, work, and our capacity for attention and enjoyment. Drawing on Currie’s research into educated women in Renaissance England, they explore why learning matters even when its effects cannot be measured, how good books and thoughtful teachers shape us over time, and why practices like reading aloud, Sabbath rest, community, and celebration can keep us from simply drifting through family life. It is a conversation that recognizes the good work that might already be unfolding in ordinary life.

About the Guest

Elspeth Currie is a PhD candidate in history at Boston College, where she studies women and Latin in Renaissance England. She holds a BA in History and Classical Studies from Gordon College and a MSt in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford. Prior to her doctorate, she taught Latin and history in a classical Christian school. She is the author and translator of To Marvel More: Holy Attention in the Incarnation Poems of Martha Marchina, a Christmas devotional on the Latin poetry of a seventeenth-century Italian woman. Elspeth and her family make their home on Boston’s North Shore.

Guest Links

Elspeth Currie at Boston College | https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/history/people/graduate-students/elspeth-currie.html

To Marvel More | https://a.co/d/0c9g6eJq

What the Seasons Can Teach Us About Work, Rest, and Raising Children with Kerry Hasler-Brooks

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if a flourishing family life depends less on doing more and more on recovering rhythms of work, rest, attention, and belonging? Christine Perrin talks with Dr. Kerry Hasler-Brooks about the life she and her family have built on a small Pennsylvania farm, where agricultural seasons make limits, dependence, and renewal impossible to ignore. Their conversation explores how parents can create room for boredom, Sabbath, reading, meaningful work, and life together, even without radically rearranging their circumstances. Kerry also reflects on technology, simplicity, literature, and the formative power of returning to the same places and texts over time. For families feeling crowded by schedules and competing demands, this conversation offers a hopeful vision of choosing what to value and making space to live accordingly.

Along the way, Kerry considers the sustaining power of literature, from Zora Neale Hurston to Emily Dickinson, and the way reading can help us attend more deeply to ourselves, one another, the natural world, and God. Her reflections suggest that formation often happens through ordinary practices repeated faithfully: walking the same ground, rereading a beloved poem, sharing work with children, welcoming others, and protecting stretches of time in which nothing has been planned.

About the Guest
Dr. Kerry Hasler-Brooks researches and teaches the literary history of American life, with a particular focus on race and gender, from Phyllis Wheatley to Marilynne Robinson, Sherwood Anderson to Zora Neale Hurston, Herman Melville to Toni Morrison. In her work, Dr. Hasler-Brooks pursues engaged pedagogy, literary reading as spiritual practice, and literary studies toward Christian vocation. She believes stories speak truth and can teach all of us to be the creative thinkers, engaged communicators, perceptive readers, and responsible writers the world needs. Kerry lives with her husband and two children on a small, sustainable farm in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where they toil together to produce organically-grown fruits, vegetables, and flowers for families in their CSA program, at local farmers markets, and through collaborations with local non-profit organizations.

Living Like a Human with Elizabeth Lynn

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What helps a child learn, a family flourish, or a community grow strong? Elizabeth Lynn suggests that the answer often begins with things that can seem almost invisible: order, repeated rhythms, presence, attention, and the willingness to delight in one another. In conversation with Christine Perrin, Elizabeth reflects on the “liturgy” of a classroom, the surprising gift of being known by name, and why beauty and rest depend on patterns that make room for genuine learning. She also considers the challenge many families know well: how to cultivate an inner life when the tempo of the world refuses to slow down. For Elizabeth, Scripture has become a lifelong anchor, calling her again and again toward humility, stillness, gratitude, and a life attentive to God and neighbor.

Their conversation offers parents and educators a hopeful picture of formation. The small practices of showing up, praying for people by name, making room for wonder, and refusing to let busyness dictate our deepest commitments can slowly shape the atmosphere of a home, classroom, and community. It is a vision closely aligned with the Humanitas Institute’s commitment to education as formation through relationship, beauty, truth, goodness, and wonder.

About the Guest
Elizabeth Lynn serves as the Upper School Dean at Covenant Christian Academy (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) and as an adjunct instructor in Christian Ethics at Messiah University. Elizabeth focused on Biblical studies in her undergraduate program and went on to earn a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA) and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. She and her husband, Paul, have been married for 32 years and have five children.

Instagram: Covenant Christian Academy Harrisburg
Facebook: Covenant Christian Academy

Leading with Wisdom: The Vision of a Classical Dean– Humanitas Institute Feature Film: https://humanitasinstitute.org/resources/videos/leading-with-wisdom-the-vision-of-a-classical-dean/

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

Humanitas Institute | https://humanitasinstitute.org
X | https://x.com/HIClassicalEd
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/humanitas_institute/
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@humanitas_institute
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

Beauty Is Not a Luxury with Nadezhda Gribkova

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What we attend to quietly shapes the people we become. In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Nadezhda Gribkova about beauty-first education, the patient work of looking, and the relationships that make genuine learning possible. Drawing on Dostoevsky, Rowan Williams, Jane Jacobs, sacred icons, and her own experiences as a student and teacher, Nadezhda explores why formation cannot be reduced to transferring information. Her own education, as a fifteen year old in a new country, significantly shaped her life. Her teachers, she explains, took her seriously by tackling difficult books in conversation and asking good questions toward the person she would be but was not yet. She offers simple practices for recovering attention, including memorizing poetry, observing art without rushing to interpret it, and returning to the patterns that remind us what is true. Their conversation invites parents and educators to consider how beauty can deepen family culture, strengthen human connection, and orient an ordinary life toward flourishing.

At the heart of the conversation is a hopeful claim: beautiful things are not luxuries reserved for experts. They are gifts that can ground us, enlarge our vision, and help us remember how to live.

About the Guest

Originally from Moscow, Russia, Nadezhda Gribkova is a PhD student in the Slavic Department at the University of Chicago. She holds a graduate degree in Art History from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studied modern and contemporary art. At UIC, she worked as a graduate lecturer before beginning her doctoral research at the University of Chicago.

Her current work focuses on the interrelation of ethics and aesthetics in Soviet art and literature, tracing the formal and philosophical influences of pre-revolutionary religious traditions on the development of Soviet cultural practices. She has published on Soviet Modernism, Eastern European Conceptual art, and crypto art.

She is currently working on two articles devoted respectively to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, examining the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic in their literary practices.

She is also the creator of the Poetics Through Russian Art YouTube channel, an ongoing project dedicated to Russian literature, art history, and the role of aesthetics in contemporary life.

Guest Links
Nadezhda Gribkova’s Official Website
https://www.nadezhdagribkova.com/
PORA: Poetics through Russian Art

https://m.youtube.com/@PORA_poeticsthroughrussianart

Connect with the Humanitas Institute
Humanitas Institute
https://humanitasinstitute.org
X
https://x.com/HIClassicalEd
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/humanitas_institute/
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@humanitas_institute

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

How Small Habits Fill a Life with Nadya Williams

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if the life you long for is formed one teaspoon at a time? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with classicist, writer, and homeschooling mother Nadya Williams about the small patterns that fill a life: reading aloud on the couch, gathering friends around books and snacks, welcoming children into imperfect homes, and writing in the margins of family life.

Together they explore motherhood, Christian human dignity, education, AI, and the hope of building a humane culture through local, faithful, ordinary practices. For mothers who feel stretched thin and are hungry for wisdom, this conversation offers a gentle invitation to begin with one small good thing.

About the Guest
Nadya Williams (PhD in Classics, Princeton University) is a homeschool mom, writer, and editor based in Ashland, Ohio, where she is Interim Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Ashland University. She is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023), Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024), and Christians Reading Classics (Zondervan Academic, 2025). She is Books Editor at Mere Orthodoxy, where she hosts the Christians Reading Classics Podcast. She is also a Contributor at Christianity Today, a Contributing Editor at Front Porch Republic and Providence Magazine, and Featured Author at Fairer Disputations. She and her husband Dan joyfully live and homeschool in Ashland, Ohio.

Substack | https://nadyawilliams.substack.com/ and https://badhomeschoolers.substack.com/
Website | https://www.nadyawilliams.com/
Writing at The Dispatch | https://thedispatch.com/author/nadya-williams/
Christians Reading Classics Podcast | https://mereorthodoxy.com/christians-reading-classics
X | https://x.com/NadyaWilliams81

Jesse Hake on the Living Patterns of Reading, Naming, and Belonging

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if the books we read aloud, the walks we take, and the names we learn for the world around us are not small extras, but central ways of forming a life? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Jesse Hake, Director of ClassicalU at Classical Academic Press, about reading as a family practice, literature as a companion in moral formation, and the quiet power of naming the places we inhabit. Their conversation moves from The Lord of the Rings and Dickens to creek stomping, wildflowers, classroom liturgies, and the simple discipline of calling one’s father. For parents and teachers seeking humane, practical ways to cultivate wisdom, attention, and delight, this episode offers a hopeful vision of education as shared life.

Jesse reminds us that classical education is not merely a curriculum or a set of ideas. It is a way of receiving the world with love and giving that love to others through conversation, memory, making, and place. Reading aloud, walking attentively, and creating beautiful things together become patterns that nourish families, classrooms, and communities.

About the Guest
Jesse Hake is director for the ClassicalU parent and teacher training platform at Classical Academic Press, where he has served since 2019. Before that, he was Principal for seven years at Logos Academy, a classical Christian school in downtown York, PA. Jesse holds a BA in history from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and a Master of Letters in history from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He has taught history, literature and theology at middle school, high school and college levels and currently teaches as an adjunct professor in the Messiah University honors program. He enjoys writing as well, with articles in The Christian Century, Front Porch Republic and his own essay newsletter at Copious Flowers. He lives with his wife and three children in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Guest Links
ClassicalU | https://classicalu.com/
Copious Flowers | https://copiousflowers.substack.com/
ClassicalU on Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/classicalupage
ClassicalU on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/classicalu/

Catherine Prescott on Seeing the Human Person

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What if learning to see another person clearly is one of the first steps toward wisdom? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with portrait painter Catherine Prescott about attention, beauty, vocation, and the dignity of the human person. Catherine’s life and work invite us into one of the central hopes of classical Christian education, to recover a way of seeing the world that is truthful, humane, and alive to goodness. Through stories of childhood, artistic formation, resistance to abstraction, conversion, motherhood, and the long labor of portrait painting, this conversation reminds parents, teachers, and students that education is not merely the transfer of information. It is the formation of vision, desire, patience, and love.

Catherine reflects on the mystery of interior life, the discipline of looking without reducing or invading, and the way darkness, honestly faced, can make us reach for the light. Her story offers a deeply human picture of what it means to compose a life around beauty, truth, family, work, and faith.

About the Guest
Catherine Prescott is a painter known for her expressive portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including twice in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, which also holds one of her paintings in its permanent collection. In 2018, she completed the official portrait of Governor Tom Corbett for the Pennsylvania State Capitol. Catherine has exhibited widely in museums and galleries and has received numerous honors from organizations such as the Portrait Society of America and the Salmagundi Club. She taught painting and drawing at Messiah College for twenty years and continues to teach in Gordon College’s Orvieto, Italy program. She lives and works in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Guest Links:
Catherine Prescott Paintings | https://www.prescottpaintings.com/
Catherine Prescott Bio | https://www.prescottpaintings.com/bio

Connect with the Humanitas Institute:
Humanitas Institute | https://humanitasinstitute.org
X | https://x.com/HIClassicalEd
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/humanitas_institute/
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@humanitas_institute
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

Theology of the Body and the Shape of a Life with Alicia Coyle

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does the body reveal about vocation and our search for communion? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Alicia Coyle about Theology of the Body, motherhood, feminine formation, chastity, education, and the slow work of composing a life around gift rather than competition. Their conversation moves from John Paul II and Edith Stein to Little Women, Aristotle, Mary at Cana, and the daily patterns of homeschooling, prayer, reading, and family life. For parents seeking a wiser way through cultural confusion, Alicia offers a thoughtful vision of embodiment as something neither limiting nor abstract, but deeply human, practical, and full of invitation.

Together, Christine and Alicia consider how ideas become incarnate through teachers, friendships, families, and habits. They ask what it means to see the body as meaningful, how women and men can offer distinct gifts without rivalry, and why formation begins not with rules alone, but with anthropology, wonder, and the truth of the person made in the image of God.

About the Guest
Alicia Coyle is a wife and a mother of four young girls. She currently homeschools. She did her undergraduate in philosophy and theology at the Templeton Honors College, and especially enjoyed thinking about Theology of the Body and the many related topics. She has taught in the classical education world and received her Masters in Theology from the Augustine Institute.

Growing Up Classical: Literature, Wisdom, and the Questions We Carry

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does it mean to grow up classical, and how can the great books help form a young person’s moral imagination? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Olivia Reardon, a graduating senior at Messiah University, about literature, ethical formation, and the classical Christian classroom. Drawing from Olivia’s senior honors thesis and her upcoming ClassicalU course, Journeying with the Great Books: Ethical Formation in the Classical Christian Classroom, the conversation explores how stories give students language for their deepest questions, offer “handholds” for living in a broken world, and invite readers to return again and again as they grow in wisdom.

Together, Christine and Olivia reflect on reading as a relational and formative act, one that happens best in a community of trust, conversation, and shared attention. Olivia offers the images of mirrors, windows, and doors as a way of understanding how books help students see themselves, encounter others, and enter experiences beyond their own. The conversation also considers the breadth of the Great Conversation, not as a narrow inheritance for a few, but as a living tradition shaped by many voices and offered for the formation of all.

About the Guest
Olivia Reardon earned her B.A. in English with a concentration in literature and minors in Education and Dance from Messiah University in 2026. Olivia grew up in Maryland with her parents and four siblings where she received a Classical, Christian education first through a homeschool co-op and then at a full-time private school. Olivia now teaches Upper School Rhetoric and Literature at Rockbridge Academy, a Classical, Christian School in Crownsville, Maryland. When Olivia is not teaching, she reads abundantly (some of her favorite authors are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, C. S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, and Kazuo Ishiguro), teaches dance at a local studio, and enjoys the beach, trying new ice cream flavors, and competition with friends and family.

Guest Links
Messiah University Honors Program | https://www.messiah.edu/honors-program/
Reardon’s ClassicalU Course releases Jun 9, 2026 | https://classicalu.com/course-finder

The Harmony of the Parts: on Beauty, Place, and Belonging

Humanitas Institute — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does beauty have to do with the spaces where we learn, teach, worship, and gather? In this shared bonus episode of Composed and Forged, Christine Perrin speaks with Brian Williams about Templeton Hall, the home of the Templeton Honors College, and the deep work of making a place that feels whole, hospitable, and human. Their conversation moves from architecture and furniture to poetry, asking how beauty forms us before we can fully explain what it has done. This is an episode about attention, creation, community, and the grace of places that help us breathe more deeply and live more faithfully.

Brian reflects on the making of Templeton Hall at Eastern University as an act of stewardship, one that honors the old while creating room for students and faculty to dwell together in the pursuit of the true, the good, the beautiful. Christine and Brian consider why beauty is not a luxury, why material places matter to Christian formation, and how the experience of a beautiful space can awaken desire for God. The episode closes fittingly with Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” a poem of praise for the dappled, particular, and creaturely world.

References and Links
Templeton Honors College | https://templeton.eastern.edu/
Templeton Hall | https://templeton.eastern.edu/life-community/templeton-hall
Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building | https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028
Gregory Wolfe, Beauty Will Save the World | https://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Will-Save-World-Ideological/dp/1610171004
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot | https://www.amazon.com/Idiot-Penguin-Classics-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/dp/014044792X
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy | https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Joy-Shape-Early-Life/dp/0062565435
Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove | https://angelicopress.com/products/the-descent-of-the-dove?srsltid=AfmBOop0_4ZZscz8U6o_ldEPhSYpkPOBsrJotPNumtbWjmzkJWtypzrJ
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty” | https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

Living Inside Language with Annie Kantar Ben-Hillel

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 25 May 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does it mean to compose a life through Sabbath rest, faithful work, and the patient practice of language? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Annie Kantar Ben-Hillel, a poet, translator, teacher, and director of the English program at Shalem College in Jerusalem, about the patterns that have shaped her life as a mother, writer, citizen, and friend. Their conversation moves from a childhood formed by trust and moral responsibility, to the weekly reset of Shabbat, to the strange and beautiful labor of translating the Book of Job. Along the way, Annie reflects on Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic, friendship across fracture, and the need to remain questioning without becoming cynical.

The conversation also touches on Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Little Virtues,” Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, the Ethics of the Fathers, and the enduring hope that virtues can persist even in periods of historical grief and uncertainty.

About the Guest
Annie Kantar Ben-Hillel is a teacher, translator and poet who lives in Jerusalem and works at Shalem College. She has translated the Book of Job, among other poetry, and understands the way we live and befriend people inside of language. She describes the habits of language acquisition and its yield along with many other patterns that have shaped her life as a mother, writer, and citizen.

Guest Links
Kantar’s full-length collection of poems, Means To Be Lucky | https://www.poets-traitors.com/means-to-be-lucky
Translation from the Hebrew of With This Night, The final collection of poetry that Leah Goldberg published in her lifetime | https://bookshop.org/p/books/with-this-night-leah-goldberg/b76aceb9230cbea9
Translation of the Book of Job as part of Koren Publishers’ new translation of the Hebrew bible | https://korenpub.co.il/en/products/the-english-koren-tanakh-large-size-magerman-edition

Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

James LaGrand on Making a Home for Books, Beauty, and Belonging

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 11 May 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does it mean to build a culture of intellectual friendship, one shaped by books, music, meals, memory, and shared attention? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with historian and colleague, James LaGrand, about the habits that form students and teachers into a genuine community of learning. Their conversation moves from violin lessons and hymns to Augustine, Dante, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln, Tyehimba Jess, and the Sunday dinner table. Together they consider education not merely as competence or achievement, but as the patient formation of persons who can receive beauty, honor the past, and seek the good in company with others.

LaGrand describes his work in Messiah University’s Honors Program as the building and protecting of a culture, rather than the management of a program. Through seminars, shared meals, walks, tea, concerts, trips to Gettysburg, and the reading of great texts aloud, he invites students into patterns of attention that join the life of the mind to friendship and delight. The episode closes with a tribute to Tyehimba Jess’s Olio, and with the quiet image of a grandmother’s Sabbath table as a pattern for a life of hospitality and care.

About the Guest
James LaGrand is an American historian and the Director of the Honors Program and Professor of American History at Messiah University. He has published a monograph with University of Illinois Press and essays in Quillette, Public Discourse, Patheos, The Federalist, History News Network, The Cresset, and Pennsylvania History, among other publications. He has spent his seven-year tenure as director practicing the example of his grandmother and mother in setting the table in order to draw students and faculty together for conversation about books and life that build relationships.

Guest Links
Messiah University Honors Program| https://www.messiah.edu/honors-program/
Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75 | https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p072963
The Black Intellectual Tradition and the Great Conversation | https://classicalu.com/course/f1d74d43-befa-4030-8fbc-185947a9617c

Mentioned in the Episode

Olio by Tyehimba Jess | https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/olio
Tyehimba Jess | https://www.tyehimbajess.net/books.html

Fighting for the Real: Jeanne Schindler on Presence, Technology, and the Life We Share

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What does it take to remain fully human in an age of distraction? In this conversation, Christine Perrin speaks with Dr. Jeanne Schindler about attention, technology, homeschooling, civic life, and the quiet disciplines that help us fight for what is real. Together they consider how modern devices flatten experience, weaken our sense of place, and make presence harder to practice, while also pointing toward a better way, one rooted in community life, embodied friendship, serious thought, and shared public spaces. This is a conversation about recovering the habits that make a human life deep, relational, and truly lived.

Drawing from her own intellectual formation, Dr. Schindler reflects on childhood influences, her shift from history to political theory, her decision to leave tenure and devote herself more fully to home and family, and the rewards of lifelong learning through homeschooling. She and Christine also explore AI, the limits of technology, the strain placed on civic discourse, and why restlessness should not always be medicated by screens, but instead received as a summons to seek truth, communion, and a richer form of life.

About the Guest
Dr. Jeanne Schindler is a Fellow of the John Paul II Institute. Until 2013 she was an associate professor at Villanova University. Dr. Schindler’s intellectual interests are interdisciplinary, integrating philosophy, theology, and political science. She has lectured and published in a variety of areas, including Catholic social thought and democratic theory. She edited Christianity and Civil Society: Catholic and Neo-Calvinist Perspectives (2008) and co-edited with her husband, D.C. Schindler, A Robert Spaemann Reader (Oxford University Press, 2015). Dr. Schindler is a homeschooling mother of three children.

Guest Links & Resources
The Postman Pledge
James Howard Kunstler TED Talk
Amusing Ourselves to Death
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan
The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet

Patterns That Make Us Alive: Timothy Patitsas on Beauty, Learning, and Home

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0700

What makes a place, a school, or a daily life feel truly human? In this conversation, Christine Perrin and Timothy Patitsas explore beauty first living, the “quality without a name” described by Christopher Alexander, and the patterns that help people feel at home, at ease, and fully alive. Together they consider paper routes, classrooms, liturgical seasons, friendship, motherhood, teaching, and the built world, asking how living patterns form the soul and why beauty is not an ornament to life but one of its deepest truths. This episode is an invitation to notice the forms of life that nourish wonder, awaken desire for the good, and help us belong more deeply to the world.

Their conversation moves from childhood memory to architecture, pedagogy, eros, ritual, and community. Along the way, Timothy reflects on the difference between potent information and quality information, the role of stories in shaping desire, and the kinds of educational practices that help students encounter truth not only analytically, but with their whole persons.

About the Guest

Timothy Patitsas is Assistant Professor of Ethics at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary in Boston, Massachusetts. Between 2007 and 2019 he directed the annual seminary pilgrimage to Constantinople, Mount Athos, Greece, and the Holy Land. In 2019 he published The Ethics of Beauty, which has sold more than eight thousand copies. In 2023 he co-directed and co-produced “Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos,” a documentary short which became an official selection at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.

More from our Guest

Hellenic College Holy Cross | Timothy Patitsas, PhD
The Ethics of Beauty
Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos
Hellenic College Holy Cross on Instagram

The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

HumanitasInstitute.org
X | https://x.com/HIClassicalEd
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/humanitas_institute/
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@humanitas_institute
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588606585070
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@TheHumanitasInstitute

Motherhood and the Dignity of Dependence

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Composed, Leah Libresco reflects on her journey from atheism to Catholicism and the deeper vision of human flourishing that emerged through that conversion. Drawing on stories from her life and work, including the patient rhythms of sourdough baking, Libresco explores how the patterns and habits of ordinary life can form us in attentiveness, responsibility, and care for others. Throughout the conversation, she challenges modern assumptions about autonomy, arguing instead for the dignity of dependence and the goodness of our embodied lives. Touching on questions of community, feminism, and human identity, Libresco invites listeners to consider how embracing our limits and our need for one another may be the very path toward a richer and more humane way of living.

Leah reflects on feminism, motherhood, masculine vocation, risk, and the meaning crisis of our age, making the case that real flourishing grows not from autonomy, but from ties of love, duty, and mutual care. She also offers practical wisdom for building communities where people can give and receive help with honesty and grace.

About the Guest

Leah Libresco is the author of three books, most recently The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. This book argues that women’s equality with men doesn’t depend on their interchangeability with men. Leah has been writing on these themes for some time on her Substack, Other Feminisms.

Leah currently works in family policy in Washington D.C. Previously, she worked as a news writer for FiveThirtyEight and in campus ministry at Princeton. Leah lives in Maryland with her husband and children

Guest Links

Leah Libresco Website
The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto
Other Feminisms
“Needing Help Is Normal” at Christianity Today

Humanitas Institute Links

Humanitas Institute
X
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Learning to See: Attention as Participation

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Lynette Hull invites us into a conversation about art, faith, and the quiet transformation that can happen when the two meet. With warmth and wisdom, she reflects on creativity as a spiritual practice and on the ways beauty can draw us deeper into meaning and connection. It’s a thoughtful and inspiring exchange that will leave you curious to see the world, and perhaps your own creative life, a little differently.

Lynette’s work with iconography opens a rich window onto questions of sacred art, spiritual formation, and the role of beauty in everyday life. This episode offers an inviting starting point for listeners interested in faith, imagination, and the practices that shape how we see.

About the Guest

Lynette Hull holds a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College and was raised in an active Bible Presbyterian family as the granddaughter of an internationally known radio preacher. Married and the mother of three, she homeschooled her children through eighth grade before beginning her formal study of iconography in 2004 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey, and converting to Holy Orthodoxy in 2009. From 2009 to 2017, she studied weekly with master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev. In 2015, she commissioned a collection of 45 icons from teachers and advanced students of the Prosopon School, later exhibited at the Icon Museum & Study Center in Clinton, Massachusetts. During the COVID years, she created a mobile icon museum to bring sacred art into churches and public spaces, and she currently serves on the board of the Icon Museum & Study Center while teaching catechism at her church in Virginia Beach.

Guest Links

Lynette Hull Website
Wrestling with Angels softcover
Wrestling with Angels: Icons from the Prosopon School of Iconology and Iconography at The Icon Museum and Study Center
Video Gallery
Video Tour of Icon Museum
Re-creation of the Icon: Lynette Hull at TEDxCapeMay 2012 - Recreation and Re-creation

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

Humanitas Institute
X
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Bearing Life, Bearing one Another

Humanitas Institute — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:00:00 -0800

In this thoughtful episode, Christine sits down with writer and educator Agnes Howard for a rich conversation about motherhood, community, and what it means to share in the human experience. Together, they reflect on the deeper significance of pregnancy, the cultural pressures surrounding work and family life, and the beauty of living in meaningful connection with others. With warmth and insight, Howard invites listeners to reconsider familiar assumptions and to see everyday life as something both communal and deeply significant.

This conversation will resonate with listeners interested in family life, cultural criticism, embodied experience, and the ways ordinary responsibilities can reveal deeper truths about what it means to be human.

About the Guest

Agnes Howard is an American Historian, mother, teacher, and writer. She is author of Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human (Eerdmans, 2020) and the forthcoming, Disoriented: Embodied Life in Strange Times (Cascade, 2026). Here and on a Substack called Momcare she discusses the culture of maternity and family life.

Guest Links

Showing: What Pregnancy Tells Us about Being Human
Creativity Calls for More than a Room of One's Own
Is Potty Training What You Will Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life
Opting Out of Mother's Day
Not Going Back: Motherhood in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

Humanitas Institute
X
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Mothering in the Midst of Others Who Enlarge Us

Humanitas Institute — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:38:42 -0800

What does it mean to build a school and a life shaped by community, conviction, and daily rhythms of grace? In this episode, Madeleine Hewitt, Assistant Head of School at Claritas Classical Christian Academy, shares her journey through education, motherhood, and mentorship, and how each has shaped the other. She reflects on the challenges of idealism, the power of guiding principles, and the formative role of liturgy in everyday life. Madeleine closes by reading Gerard Manley Hopkins beautifully, capturing the wonder and weight of it all.

This conversation will resonate with listeners who care about classical education, family life, spiritual formation, and the steady practices that give shape to a meaningful life. Madeleine offers a thoughtful picture of how conviction and community can sustain both a household and a school.

About the Guest

Madeleine Hewitt is a wife, mother, teacher, administrator, and home educator. She is a graduate of The Templeton Honors College and has earned her Masters Degree in Classical Teaching through the same college. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband and four young children. They are members of St. Philips Orthodox Church and are a part of a newly-founded mission parish along with a number of other young Orthodox families. She homeschools her children as well as teaches and administrates at a local university-model classical academy.

Guest Links

As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Mother and Child Looking at the Virgin and Child by Reginald Bottomley

Connect with the Humanitas Institute

Humanitas Institute
X
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Living Patterns and How We Learn Them

Humanitas Institute — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:17:22 -0800

Emily Maeda, mother of seven, grandmother of two, describes the living patterns in her life, passed down from her own mother, that have helped her in raising her children, starting a school, and designing gardens for now and for posterity.

The Opening Question

Humanitas Institute — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:08:18 -0800

In the inaugural episode of the Forged and Composed podcasts, our hosts come together for a conversation about what it means to “forge” and “compose” a life marked by beauty, order, and purpose. Their dialogue explores human flourishing, focal practices, and the formative power of beauty, art, and community. Drawing on personal experience, they reflect on hospitality, generosity, nature, and the role of exemplars in shaping lives marked by meaning and fulfillment. Join us at the beginning.