Papers (Published) by Sean C Hadley
The American Reformer, 2024
A brief look into the statistics surrounding college closures in 2024.
Pietas, 2023
American Letters faced an identity crisis during the twentieth century, stemming from George Sant... more American Letters faced an identity crisis during the twentieth century, stemming from George Santayana’s bifurcation between what he described as the Genteel and the Transcendental. An examination of criticism from America’s literary past suggests that the Genteel Tradition deserves a reassessment, as it continues to shape the landscape of American imaginations. By looking at the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt and Stuart P. Sherman, Santayana’s thesis finds a robust refutation. This essay seeks to demonstrate that Santayana’s assessment of the Genteel Tradition was founded on a misunderstanding, namely that the social power of literature must be separated from the morality of the culture. The flaw of the Genteel Tradition, in Santayana’s view, lay in its metaphysical regard for man; in other words, the Genteel Tradition allowed for too much humanism. This article will survey the Genteel authors who continue to defend the permanent things in order to challenge Santayana’s approach to American letters.
Thriving Schools Study, 2023
Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls, 2023
In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the pivotal moment of societal change comes when the Christ... more In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the pivotal moment of societal change comes when the Christian convert Enoch unmasks the village egwugwu. Everyone in the village knows the real identity of these ancestral identities, but the sacred nature of the mask holds power of the people to the extent that this “slaying” of the ancestral spirit threw the community into tumult. It was “as if the very soul of the tribe wept.” The masks of Achebe’s novel, and the rural life it represents, reveal something profound about identities, faces, and the concept of knowledge. To see the face is to know something, perhaps to even know something forbidden. Comics have long played with this idea in various forms. But at its core, the superhero mark has always allowed for the dual identities of the character to coexist. The mark enables the hero to be “ordinary, and yet extraordinary [and] by separating these two roles into two different identities, the mask preserves the purity of each.” This element of purity suggests more than a mundane sense of protection. The hero’s mask grants them a kind of transcendence, famously summarized in Batman Begins: “As a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.” For the character of Batman, the mask accomplishes a metaphysical goal, in addition to its practical and emotional facets. Does this sacred element then hold true for villains? This question is reflected in the supervillain Hush. Created by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, Hush is unlike any previous foes Batman has encountered. And for Hush, the mask and the face it hides take on a special significance.
Disney, Theology, and the Moral Imagination, 2023
Many of Disney’s animated features explore the tension of lived communities. The plot might even ... more Many of Disney’s animated features explore the tension of lived communities. The plot might even write itself ad nauseum: the scene opens on a young, impressionable character, this character’s previously held conventional ideas are challenged, someone from a competing community becomes involved, and the primary actor must make a choice regarding the kind of person they wish to be. What Disney explores, perhaps more than many other family-oriented studio, is the idea of blending these competing visions of the moral life while holding firmly onto the wisdom of the past. Though sometimes viewed as saccharin, oversimplifications of emotivism, certain Disney films actually suggest something far more complex, rooted in an older understanding of what it means to be “happy” or to be a “good citizen.” Consider The Three Caballeros (1944), Fantasia 2000 (1999), or Tangled (2010). These movies are not merely “feel good” entertainment; they suggest something about one’s roots, something metaphysical, that shapes the basics of all moral decision making. But of all such films, Disney’s Hercules (1997) and Moana (2016) embody the tension between the metaphysical and physical claims on the individual. These two movies do not simply uproot the old to replace it with the new, but rather the opposite; Hercules and Moana revive an older understanding in order to better serve their present circumstances. In fact, they employ the same process of how to evaluate competing moral claims as outlined in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. By rejecting mere emotivism, Hercules and Moana call others back towards an Aristotelian view of the good life, while adapting to the circumstances around them. In this way, these films find ways of restoring “intelligibility and rationality to our moral and social attitudes and commitments,” (After Virtue, 435). This essay will explore the process that these two characters go through, emphasizing the competing moral claims of the physical and metaphysical realities portrayed, and how the conclusions push the audience back towards Aristotle’s vision of the well-ordered, thoughtful, virtuous life.
VoegelinView, Sep 16, 2023
A short essay regarding Russell Kirk, political novels, and the postmodern imagination.
Touchstone Magazine, 2022
Once upon a time, nothing engaged a Christmas audience quite like a ghost story. In Washington Ir... more Once upon a time, nothing engaged a Christmas audience quite like a ghost story. In Washington Irving's "The Christmas Dinner," it is the parson who tells some of the best uncanny stories during the winter season. Russell Kirk, fond of this tradition though it had gone out of fashion in the twentieth century, wrote a defense of the practice. It is not mere didacticism nor an unhealthy obsession with the grotesque that makes the uncanny appropriate at Yuletide gatherings, he averred; ghost stories "can be an instrument for the recovery of the moral order" (Essential Russell Kirk, 182). The practice might actually be more valuable at Christmas than during the closing week of October, when the typical neighborhood is festooned with ghouls and goblins. Kirk understood this so well that he expended quite a bit of energy writing such stories. He makes his interest in the genre plain in his book, Enemies of the Permanent Things, where he writes, "Imagination, given time, does rule the world" (132). This may surprise those who more readily associate Kirk's name with National Review or the books he published about America and conservatism. Yet he does not say that public policy, political influence, or social causes rule the world, but that imagination does. Even so, what does that have to do with ghost stories?
The Imaginative Conservative, 2021
A good story is worth revisiting. Such beauty requires multiple attempts at comprehension. One mu... more A good story is worth revisiting. Such beauty requires multiple attempts at comprehension. One must keep coming back, keep expecting more, keep hoping for one more prolonged moment of imagination. And “The Great Gatsby” certainly deserves a re-read.
The Hemingway Review, 2021
Hemingway's distaste for H. L. Mencken has been well-documented. But the philosophical underpinni... more Hemingway's distaste for H. L. Mencken has been well-documented. But the philosophical underpinnings that separated the two authors has not. This essay considers the structure of The Sun Also Rises, and argues that behind the surface criticisms of Mencken, Hemingway invested in the long game, building into his first novel a refutation of Nietzsche, Mencken's hero. In this view, The Sun Also Rises tackles the "priest of the actual" through its literary treatment of returns, morals, and manhood. Hemingway's final word on his debate with Mencken finds its voice through the poetic structure of the pilgrimage of Jake Barnes.
American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time, 2020
American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time, 2020
American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time, 2020
An Unexpected Journal, 2020
Imaginative pictures help explore, in vivid ways, the dilemmas that Virtue Theory has attempted t... more Imaginative pictures help explore, in vivid ways, the dilemmas that Virtue Theory has attempted to wrestle. Building upon MacIntyre’s understanding of tradition, this paper will propose an understanding of narratives and their moral import on the culture writ large. This phenomenon will be examined through Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It is in such imagined realities that the traditions underwriting moral value explode onto the page, making their way into the mind of the reader. Reading fiction becomes an act of moral formation, giving flesh and bones to the “kinds of degeneration” to which the virtues have so often fallen prey.
Hemingway and Comics, 2020
With Robert Elder's extensive catalogue of Hemingway's depictions throughout comic book history, ... more With Robert Elder's extensive catalogue of Hemingway's depictions throughout comic book history, the stamp of Hemingway's persona on the popular culture throughout the 20 th Century seems obvious. But this same survey also reveals something striking: there have been no major adaptations of Hemingway's work in the graphic novel form. This paper seeks to understand why this is the case. F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce, to name but two of Hemingway's contemporaries, have had major adaptations of their work published in the graphic novel format. Is Joyce's Ulysses more appropriate for the genre than For Whom the Bell Tolls? Are the lessons of The Great Gatsby somehow more suited to visual representation than those found in The Sun Also Rises? Is the tragedy of Hemingway's work simply too complex for the comic book medium? Taking these questions seriously, an understanding of Hemingway in the comic world might be suggested. It is easier to represent the man of Hemingway, often given to grand exaggeration or caricature, than to represent the truths he wrote of in his novels. This essay will examine the two stories found in The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3, followed by a comparison with some of the other features from the same era. In short, a working theory for why Hemingway's novels have been left untouched by the comic world will be proposed, paying particular attention to the greater number of adaptations from his contemporaries works.
Humane Pursuits, 2014
Entry in the symposium on moral complexity in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Book Reviews by Sean C Hadley
A Southern Knickerbocker, 2024
A book review of Thomas, Evans, and Copan's Holy War in the Bible.
A Southern Knickerbocker, 2024
A book review of J. Philip Hyatt's commentary on Jeremiah.
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Papers (Published) by Sean C Hadley
Book Reviews by Sean C Hadley
Modern Language Association 2022 Convention | Washington, DC | January 6-9
Deadline for Submissions: March 19, 2021
Name of Organization: The Ernest Hemingway Society
Contact Email: sean.hadley@faulkner.edu
All Hem’s Literary Friends
Ernest Hemingway’s reputation as a writer is sometimes eclipsed in the popular mind by his relationships. And as James M. Hutchisson’s 2016 biography, Ernest Hemingway: A New Life, demonstrated, Hemingway’s relationships were complex and integral to his creative output. Over the decades, Hemingway’s relationship’s with key figures has been explored in-depth. William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos have each received book length treatments regarding their friendship with Papa Hemingway.
In 2014, at the International Hemingway Conference, the connections between Hemingway and Edith Wharton were explored at a roundtable session, and the result was an intellectually stimulating line of argument. In keeping with the spirit of such inquiry, this panel invites explorations of Hemingway’s relationships to some lesser-known authors as well as treatments on some of the less explored literary connections. What might be gained by putting Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien’s work? Might there be something of value in contrasting visions of American life in To Have and Have Not and Harry Sylvester’s Dayspring? Given Hemingway’s reading habits, there is much still to be mined in the literary connections between Hemingway and the great wealth of 20th Century authors.
Potential relationships to explore might include:
Catholic poets, such as Conrad Aiken, and religious aspects of Hemingway’s work
Novelists, such as J. F. Powers, and the novels of Hemingway
World War I participants, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, and Hemingway’s war experiences
Nature writers, such as John Hay, and the expressions of the natural in Hemingway
Realism in the works of Henry Lawson and literary references in Islands in the Stream
Textual analysis of Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway
Religious understatement in Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy
Please direct your 250–word proposal and a short professional bio to Sean Hadley (sean.hadley@faulkner.edu). The deadline for proposals is March 19, 2021. Papers are generally limited to 15 minutes, however shorter 10–minute presentations and longer 20–minute presentations will be considered dependent upon interest.
Additional details about the 2022 MLA Conference may be found online at:
mla.org/Convention
For more information about the Ernest Hemingway Society, please visit the Society’s website at:
https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/.
The Company You Keep: Reading, Writing, & Socializing in Religious Literature
Affiliate Group: Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature
Literature is rife with the concept of the “social,” whether it be through exclusion or connection. The Bible records letters sent, Church History preserves the ways in which communities gathered and encouraged one another regardless of distance, and Christian writers have invested heavily in understanding the topic of community and social structures. This panel welcomes submissions that address the topics of intimacy, community, or exile. We welcome papers exploring literary works that engage with Christianity (or religion broadly) on the idea of the “social.” Papers might consider one or more of the following:
• Definitions of community in the writings of A. J. Mojtabai
• Social networks, broadly conceived, in the writings of Walker Percy
• Letter writing between authors as a source for inspiration (i.e. the letters of Ernest Hemingway)
• News or gossip in relation to community connections (i.e. gossip in the works of William Faulkner or the importance of the news in James Fenimore Cooper’s writing)
• Exile and reconciliation in American Catholic fiction (i.e. J. F. Powers and Harry Sylvester)
• The nature and definition of exilic literature (or literary depictions of characters in exile)
• The question of authenticity in religious literature
• Ways that literary texts comfort the reader or challenge religious traditions
• The conventions and techniques of religious literature and their adaptation over time and distance
• How religious writers turn to other religious traditions for resources of community or inspiration
• The relationship between society and exile in religion
• Pedagogical approaches to religious literature
• The nature of communities built around the reading of good books
• Creative writing submissions addressing the panel theme are also welcome
Please send a 250-word proposal, a CV, and any A/V requests to Sean C. Hadley at sean.hadley@faulkner.edu. (For creative writing submissions, please submit the full work to be read and not an abstract). All abstracts or creative writing submissions are due May 31.