In today's episode, Grace welcomes Dr. Daniel McInerney to think about some big questions: what is the relationship between beauty and art? Art and imitation? This conversation ranges from Aristotle to Austen in its exploration of literary, visual, and dramatic art. Daniel McInerny is associate professor and chair of the philosophy department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Daniel is the author of Beauty & Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts. He is also a novel...
May 13, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 16
Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today marks the final episode in the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Today we read Little Gidding as poet and editor Lisa Ampleman joins Grace for a thoughtful conversation. Lisa Ampleman is the author of a chapbook and three full-length books of poetry, most recently Mom in Space (2024) and Romances (2020), both with LSU Press. Her work has appeared recently on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and in journals including 32 Poems, Colo...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 5Ep. 15
Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today marks the third episode in the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Today we read The Dry Salvages as poet and editor Andy Patton joins Grace for a lively discussion. Andy Patton is the creator of the Darkling Psalter , a collection of creative renditions of the Psalms. He holds an M.A. in theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the Director of Content for the Rabbit Room and is a former staff member at L'Abri Fe...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 5Ep. 14
Lent is a time of repentance, reflection, and reconciliation. These are actions that happen in time, facilitated by memory and love. So even though we, as followers of Christ, repent, reflect, and reconcile year-round, one hopes, we set aside a time to especially do so, to be as intentional as we can, to pay special attention to our blessed limitations as creatures of God. It is easy to let these things go. This is what Lent is for. It so happens that these themes—love, memory, time, attention, ...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent 2025. And today begins the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Lent is a time of repentance, reflection, and reconciliation. These are actions that happen in time, facilitated by memory and love. So even though we, as followers of Christ, repent, reflect, and reconcile year-round, one hopes, we set aside a time to especially do so, to be as intentional as we can, to pay special attention to ou...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 31
Zwingli is one of those names that floats around the ether--but in comparison to his more famous reforming counterparts, like Luther or Calvin, he doesn't get brought up much. Grace welcomes author and professor Stephen Eccher to discuss this radical reformer and his sixteenth-century impact. Stephen Brett Eccher is Associate Professor of Church History and Reformation Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he has taught since 2012. His academi...
Feb 19, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 11
In this episode Grace welcomes editor, writer, and reader Susannah Black Roberts to discuss one of their mutual favorites: the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope. George Eliot loved him. Henry James hated him. What are we to think of this wordy man? Susannah Black Roberts is senior editor at Plough. She is a native Manhattanite. She and her husband, the theologian Alastair Roberts, split their time between Manhattan and the West Midlands of the UK. Support Old Books with Grace by donating towar...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Welcome to this week's episode in the Advent 2024 series, each featuring a sermon from the past. Last week we longed for the Second Coming of Jesus with Sojourner Truth, this week we long for Jesus's mercy in our hearts right now, with the seventeenth-century Anglican cleric and metaphysical poet, John Donne, in portions of a sermon preached on Christmas Day, 1624. Support Old Books with Grace by giving money for books & hosting fees....
Dec 18, 2024•25 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Welcome to this week’s episode in the Advent 2024 series, each featuring a sermon from the past. Last week we longed for the historical arrival of the Christ Child with Bernard of Clairvaux. Today, we long for Jesus’s Second Coming with the nineteenth-century preacher, activist, and prophet, Sojourner Truth. Read Sojourner Truth’s narrative of her life. Support Old Books with Grace....
Dec 11, 2024•14 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Welcome to the first Advent episode of 2024 in Old Books with Grace! In this series, Grace introduces a thinker and a sermon of the past. Each week will focus on one of the advents, comings, arrivals of Jesus Christ: the first, historical coming in Bethlehem; the second coming in the Last Judgment; the present advent of His presence in our hearts. This week is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on flowers and honey in Isaiah, on Christ the Bee. Purchase Grace's book, Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholdin...
Dec 04, 2024•14 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Today Grace welcomes Dr. Erin Risch Zoutendam to talk about how medieval and early modern people were reading and encountering scripture. Highlights include Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Julian of Norwich! Erin Risch Zoutendam received her PhD from Duke University. Her research examines how late medieval and early modern biblical hermeneutics shaped Christian conceptions of mystical contemplation. She currently teaches at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
Nov 13, 2024•48 min•Season 5Ep. 6
In this episode, Grace welcomes historical fiction writer Amy Mantravadi to discuss the Reformers, just in time for Reformation Day! As a medievalist, Grace always has some complex feelings for Martin Luther and company, but Amy brings knowledge and enthusiasm to this conversation about these fascinating sixteenth-century folk, as well as the role of historical fiction in our learning, in our discussion of her new fiction of the Reformation, Broken Bonds. Amy Mantravadi lives in Dayton, Ohio wit...
Oct 30, 2024•50 min•Season 5Ep. 5
In today’s episode, Grace welcomes her friend, Shannon K. Evans, to chat about that fascinating group of people that the church today often calls the mystics. They consider the spirituality of women like St. Teresa of Avila, Margery Kempe, St. Catherine of Siena, and more and what they offer the present-day lovers of God. Shannon K. Evans is the author of The Mystics Would Like a Word, Feminist Prayers for My Daughter, and Rewilding Motherhood. She serves as the spirituality and culture editor a...
Oct 16, 2024•42 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Today, Grace chats with Dr. Thomas M. Ward about the challenging Scottish philosopher and theologian, Blessed John Duns Scotus. He is also the very unfair origin of the word “dunce”! This is ironic when thinking about one of the most complex, subtle scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages. Thomas M. Ward is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He specializes in the history of philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages. Ward is the author of After Stoicism: Las...
Oct 02, 2024•57 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Today, Grace chats with Dr. Lynn Cohick on that enigmatic, fascinating, challenging apostle: St. Paul. Lynn H. Cohick (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Director of the Houston Theological Seminary at Houston Christian University. She was Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and taught at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Nairobi, Kenya. She serves as President of the Institute for Biblical Research. Her books include The...
Sep 19, 2024•46 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Old Books with Grace is baaaaack for a fifth season! Grace welcomes Haley Stewart for the first episode of this season, on women novelists of the Catholic imagination--including Rumer Godden, Sigrid Undset, and Toni Morrison. If you're like Grace, get ready to dramatically expand your fiction TBR list. Haley Stewart is the Editor of Word on Fire Votive and the host of The Votive Podcast. She is the award-winning author of The Grace of Enough, Jane Austen's Genius Guide to Life, and The Sister Se...
Sep 04, 2024•52 min•Season 5Ep. 1
In this last episode of season four, Grace welcomes Dr. Lanta Davis to talk about spiritual formation in the beholding of the art of the past. Lanta Davis is Professor of Humanities and Literature for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. She’s written on literature, art, and history for Smithsonian Magazine, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Parabola, and Plough. Support Old Books with Grace and keep it ad-free at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gracehamman...
May 15, 2024•43 min•Season 4Ep. 18
Today Grace welcomes Laura Fabrycky to discuss the fascinating, stirring, challenging life and context of theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as Laura's own transformative experience as a guide at Bonhoeffer's Haus in Berlin. Laura M. Fabrycky is a writer, poet, and mother of three. She wrote Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer . Laura is also a PhD student in systematic theology at ETF Leuven. Her family’s diplomatic postings include D...
May 01, 2024•42 min•Season 4Ep. 17
As a forever English major, Grace loves figurative language. So she was delighted to welcome Dr. Joy Clarkson for this episode on the power of metaphor and her recent book, You are a Tree. Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy and host of popular podcast, Speaking with Joy. She is the books editor for Plough Quarterly and a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College London. Joy completed her PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, where she researched how...
Apr 17, 2024•38 min•Season 4Ep. 16
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and tran...
Mar 29, 2024•12 min•Season 4Ep. 15
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and tran...
Mar 13, 2024•12 min•Season 4Ep. 14
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and tran...
Feb 28, 2024•16 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Welcome to this year's Old Books with Grace Lent Series. This year's series is on penitential poetry. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on need, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. Such poetry is part of an ancient tradition, dating back to the Psalms themselves. Today's poem is "Desire," by Thomas Traherne. You can read along below, or listen as I read: For giving me Desire, An Eager Thirst, a burning Ardent fire, A virgin Infant Flame, A Lo...
Feb 14, 2024•16 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson joins Grace on this episode to discuss her new book, Why Do the Heathen Rage? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress. How does O'Connor's last novel, left unfinished at her death, fit in with the rest of her work? How does one even begin to reconstruct a fragmented manuscript? Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God. She is a S...
Feb 07, 2024•46 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Grace welcomes Nadya Williams, professor and author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church. What do the early Christians--and not just the martyrs and great leaders, but the ordinary folk--have to teach us today in their witness, writings, and historical record? Nadya Williams (PhD, Classics and Program in the Ancient World, Princeton University) is a military historian of the Greco-Roman world and the co-editor of Civilians and Warfare in World History. She is Book Review Editor at Current,...
Jan 24, 2024•42 min•Season 4Ep. 10
This year’s Advent series is about the poetry of the Holy Family, the center of Advent and Christmas. Today, we arrive to worship at the manger, brother and sister to the ass and the ox looking lovingly and with great confusion into the unusual bundle resting in the hay. Welcome to the final episode of Advent 2023, on Baby Jesus and love, alongside Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Crashaw.
Dec 20, 2023•12 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Welcome to the second episode in the 2023 Advent series of Old Books with Grace. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. In this episode, Grace meditates upon Joseph, doubt, and faith alongside three greats: W.H. Auden, George MacDonald, and Madeleine L’Engle.
Dec 13, 2023•13 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Welcome to the first episode in the Advent series for 2023. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. Today, Grace Hamman meditates upon Mary and the stretching, longing virtue of hope alongside a fourteenth-century Middle English poem full of Marian imagery. Poems from this episode: Heyl, leuedy, se-steorre bryht Marye, mayde mylde and fre Grace's book: Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Ch...
Dec 06, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Today, Burl Horniachek chats with Grace about pre-nineteenth-century Christian poetry from other parts of the world that he collected in a lovely volume from Cascade Books called To Heaven’s Rim . From early Syrian poets like Romanos the Melodist to seventeenth-century Chinese artist Wu Li, the selection of Christian poetry is wide and fascinating! Burl Horniachek is a Canadian high school teacher, poet, translator and editor. He was born in Saskatoon and grew up near Edmonton. He studied Ancien...
Nov 22, 2023•42 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Calling all Louisa May Alcott fans! In this episode, Grace chats with Americanist scholar LuElla D’Amico about children’s literature and the work of Louisa May Alcott in particular... including hard-hitting questions like "Should Laurie have ended up with Jo?!" (there is disagreement on the answer). Dr. LuElla D'Amico is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of the Incarnate Word. Her primary research interests lie in girlho...
Nov 08, 2023•51 min•Season 4Ep. 5
