About Chad Chisholm

Basil Chad Chisholm is Professor of English and Media Communication at Southern Wesleyan University in South Carolina, where he specializes in the study of rhetoric, composition, and language. Dr. Chisholm has authored Images of America: Clinton 1940-1980, as well as many essays.

Joseph Priestly, School Lessons, and Liberty in Grammar

By |2020-01-18T11:12:13-06:00January 17th, 2020|Categories: Culture, Education, Language, Western Civilization, Writing|

I did not become an English professor because of my early public education—but despite it. The standards advocated in the public schools pose a danger to our English-speaking world, and losing our language, or our ability to remake it, is indistinguishable from the diminishment of our Western civilization. Like most American children who attended public [...]

Storytelling and How We Learn

By |2019-03-07T00:06:27-06:00March 6th, 2019|Categories: Civilization, Culture, Education|

Stories convey wisdom about ourselves, our culture, and human nature. The existence of Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman is more believable than the existence of a civilized people who have no need of poets or sages. Whatever I teach, I teach storytelling because it is an expression of human creativity that provides perspective. Stories help us [...]

Kind Hearts, Deadly Sins: How Movies Become Classics

By |2023-01-14T08:47:40-06:00January 18th, 2019|Categories: Culture, Evil, Film, Virtue|

The directors of the films "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "Se7en" make use of the seven deadly sins and the parallel order that opposes them, which are the seven holy virtues: chastity, diligence, temperance, kindness, humility, patience, and charity. Earlier in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets (Ealing Studios, 1949), as the protagonist Louis Mazzini [...]

Science, Faith, and English Professors

By |2022-05-20T14:23:57-05:00October 19th, 2018|Categories: Christian Humanism, Philosophy, Religion, Science|

While science and religion have differences that need reconciliation, you can regard the so-called ‘war’ between them as ‘fake.’ The history of science is entwined with our human search to discern a deeper understanding of our purpose within the universe.... Alan Honour begins his book Cave of Riches: The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls with how [...]

Rhetoric & the Art of Persuasion: Lessons from the Masters

By |2019-09-28T09:32:49-05:00May 5th, 2017|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Cicero, Education, Featured, Rhetoric|

The Roman teachers were acutely aware of the role of audience. In its classical sense, rhetoric means the use of language, whether in speech or tex, to persuade an audience… The word rhetoric is thrown about in mostly negative ways—accuse someone of employing rhetoric and you have implied a lack of sincerity or content (which [...]

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