Three Wilbur Fellows join us this summer.

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Dear
John,
I hope you celebrated a wonderful Fourth of July. Our programs at the Center are in full swing this summer, including our long running Wilbur Fellowship.

As you may know, the Wilbur Fellowship ([link removed]) provides students, scholars, and journalists the ideal conditions in which they can conduct research and writing projects while staying at the Kirk Center for a period of time, usually a trimester. Currently, there are three Wilbur Fellows and one intern in residence:
* Sean Hadley is a doctoral candidate at Faulkner University in literature with a background in Milton, Lewis, and Hemingway. He has been teaching a great books program at Trinitas Christian School in Pensacola for nearly a decade. During his Fellowship, Sean plans to work on his dissertation on early 20th century novelist Harry Sylvester, to complete an essay on James Fenimore Cooper’s humanism, and explore the permanent things through Kirk’s own fiction. Sean’s research was promptly put to the test when a group of high school students stopped by and he gave a talk for them about the moral imagination in Kirk’s fiction.
* Kieran Morgan is returning as a Fellow after completing an internship at the Center last summer. He is a 2021 graduate of Saint Joseph’s University in History and Secondary Education. A life-long resident of the Philadelphia area, he has pursued his passion in the history of the American Founding Fathers and will begin teaching American history at a public school in that area. He will be using his time to refine his knowledge of Kirk’s treatment of the Founding, as well as preparing for his course load this coming fall.
* Connor Daniels, who hails from South Carolina, first visited the Kirk Center as a member of the Collegiate Scholars Program at Hillsdale College, from which he graduated in 2021. For his honors thesis, Connor examined Kirk’s treatment of Gnosticism in the novel Lord of the Hollow Dark. He is revising the work for publication while in residence as a Wilbur Fellow. In addition, he is preparing for his first teaching position at Bloomfield Christian Schools..
* Alex Hu, an undergraduate majoring in the humanities at Yale University, is interning at the Kirk Center and studying the philosophical roots of conservatism. He is a student fellow with the William F. Buckley Jr. Program and a research intern with the Hudson Institute. While in residence, Alex seeks to evaluate the unique contributions of traditionalists to the fields of political theory and the humanities.

The Fellows will have the opportunity to attend the Center’s several in-person seminars during the summer in which they will present progress on their projects and receive feedback from the other Fellows. We all enjoy a meal and conversations long into the night after that.

I thought you might also be interested in our featured Classic Kirk essay ([link removed]) this month. We posted it after receiving a request from the dean of faculty at a classical school for a copy of Russell’s essay on “The Moral Imagination.” In it, Russell explains that by this phrase Edmund Burke signified the power of ethical perception that informs us concerning the dignity of human nature, sustained by the spirit of religion along with a whole system of manners, especially as it is expressed in poetry and art:

"The moral imagination aspires to the apprehending of right order in the soul and right order in the commonwealth. This moral imagination was the gift and the obsession of Plato and Vergil and Dante."

Through the Wilbur Fellows program, the Kirk Center seeks to assist young writers and teachers to better understand and form their own moral imaginations. They will have an incalculable influence on students for decades to come. Thank you for your encouragement of the Kirk Center’s programs which transmit to successive generations an appreciation for the moral imagination.

Best regards,

Annette Y. Kirk, President

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