Each year, Wyoming Catholic College welcomes lecturers from the wider academic community to the town of Lander—distinguished men and women who contribute complementary perspectives across a wide range of disciplines. Each lecture will begin at 7:00pm, and will be followed by a brief Q&A period. As in past years, the entire Lecture Series is open to the General Public. This year’s lecturers (and the dates and locations of their presentations) are:

SEPTEMBER 1st
Jeremy Holmes, Wyoming Catholic College
Lander Community Center
Dr. Holmes’ earliest religious memories are of a little Presbyterian Church in Lonoke, Arkansas.  He didn’t know it, but his family was on a trek from church to church that would end in the Catholic Church.  As a teenager, when he awoke to the reality of God and grace and his own desperate need of both, he absorbed his father’s love of Scripture.  When he wasn’t practicing piano or rehearsing magic tricks, he pored over the Bible, scribbling endless notes in his paperback RSV.  After earning a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College, where he absorbed Catholic culture and met his wife, he set out to earn a doctoral degree in biblical studies.  He lived for two years in a medieval Carthusian monastery in Austria, and then for seven years in a shabby apartment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then for two years in the subtropical swamps of southwest Florida before finally finding his home in Lander, Wyoming.  He enjoys introducing students to the enchanted realm of Scripture and to God and grace, and his recent book, Cur Deus Verba, is available from Ignatius Press.  Dr. Holmes and his wife home school their eight children.

OCTOBER 13th
Joshua Craddock, James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding
Lander Valley High School Auditorium
Craddock is an affiliated scholar with the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. He graduated magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. He later clerked for the Honorable Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Prior to law school, Josh managed advocacy teams for non-profit organizations at the United Nations and participated in negotiations for the Sustainable Development Goals. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, National Review, First Things, Public Discourse, The Stream, and Providence Magazine. His academic writing has been published in various law reviews and research journals. He has spoken on hundreds of public platforms, including for many civic and charitable organizations.

NOVEMBER 18th
James Poulos, Executive Editor, The American Mind
The Inn at Lander
James Poulos is the Executive Editor of The American Mind, the Claremont Institute’s online publication devoted to driving the conversation about the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Dr. Poulos graduated from Duke University with distinction in Political Science and received his Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University. The author of The Art of Being Free (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), a study of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, he is also the contributing editor of American Affairs and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Digital Life. A frequent commentator on technology and the American character, his writing has been featured in publications from National Affairs to National Review and Foreign Affairs to Foreign Policy, and praised at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and many more. In his newest book, Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War, he assesses the unique challenges posed by digital technology to how we perceive ourselves and the world around us—including the spiritual realm. Dr. Poulos has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and delivered remarks before audiences at organizations and campuses across the country. He lives in Los Angeles.

MARCH 8th
James Matthew Wilson, University of St. Thomas, Houston
Lander Valley High School Auditorium
James Matthew Wilson is Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the Founding Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas, Houston.  An award-winning scholar of philosophical-theology and literature, he has authored dozens of essays, articles, and reviews on all manner of subjects secular and divine, and especially on those where we see the two in their intrinsic relation, as truth, goodness, beauty, and being disclose themselves in art and culture, in the political and intellectual life, in our quest for self knowledge and the contemplation of God.  His scholarly work especially focuses on the meeting of aesthetic and ontological form, where the craftsmanship of art-work discloses the truth about being. Wilson is a poet and critic of contemporary poetry, whose work appears regularly in such magazines and journals as First Things,  The Wall Street Journal​, The Hudson Review, Modern Age, The New Criterion, Dappled Things, Measure, The Weekly Standard, Front Porch Republic, The Raintown Review, National Review, and The American Conservative. He has published twelve books, including six books and chapbooks of poetry. Among his volumes are: The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA, 2017); the major critical study, The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (Wiseblood, 2015, Second Edition, 2022); and a monograph, The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (Wiseblood Books, 2014).  His most recent books include The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico, 2020), the poetic sequence, The River of the Immaculate Conception (Wiseblood, 2019), and Some Permanent Things ​(Wiseblood Books, Second Edition 2018).

APRIL 26th
Deal Hudson, Host, “Church and Culture Podcast,”Ave Maria Radio
Lander Community Center
Deal W. Hudson received his Ph.D from Emory University in 1979. He taught philosophy at Mercer University Atlanta,  Fordham University, and New York University, and chaired the American Academy of Liberal Education. Dr. Hudson published and edited Crisis Magazine for twelve years, and presently hosts ‘Church and Culture’ on the Ave Maria Radio Network. His books include How to Keep From Losing Your Mind: Educating Yourself Classical to Avoid Cultural Indoctrination (TAN Books, 2019); Onward Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster, 2007); An American Conversion: One Man’s Search for Beauty and Truth in a Time of Crisis (Crossroad Books, 2004); Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); Jacques Maritain: Philosopher and Friend, ed. (Mercer University Press, 1987).

As in past years, the entire Lecture Series is open to the General Public. Each lecture will begin at 7:00pm, and will be followed by a brief Q&A period.