About Mark Malvasi

Mark Malvasi is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and Professor of History at Randolph-Macon College, where he teaches "The Idea and Problem of Slavery." Dr. Malvasi is the author of The Unregenerate South: The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson, Slavery in the Western Hemisphere Circa 1500-1888, and Dark Fields: Poems and an Essay.

Religion & Celebrity: The Search for Meaning in the 1920s

By |2024-02-18T16:12:15-06:00February 18th, 2024|Categories: History, Religion, Science|

By the early decades of the twentieth century, at the very moment when physicists were dismantling formerly irrefutable truths about nature and the universe, science had become the foundation of the American faith in stability, order, and progress. Darwinian science had confirmed that the advent of the United States marked the apex of human evolution. [...]

“Napoleon,” the Movie: A Reflection

By |2024-01-29T19:22:35-06:00January 29th, 2024|Categories: Film, History, Mark Malvasi, Senior Contributors|

Ridley Scott’s film is a vast oversimplification of a complex historical reality. Therein lies the danger. Like a mind-altering drug, the film provides a convenient shortcut that saves the audience the time and trouble of thinking for themselves. Filmgoers, of course, need not become experts in Napoleonic history. But Scott might have done more to [...]

Politics, Slavery, and the Civil War

By |2024-01-18T15:20:38-06:00January 18th, 2024|Categories: Civil War, Mark Malvasi, Politics, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

No episode in the American past is more susceptible to such manipulation—manipulation rather than debate—than the Civil War. On the historical question permit me to be blunt and unequivocal. There can be no doubt that slavery was central to all that divided the northern and the southern states, and that slavery was ultimately responsible for [...]

“The Empire of Liberty:” Thomas Jefferson & the Future of the American Republic

By |2023-11-21T16:31:42-06:00November 21st, 2023|Categories: American Republic, History, Mark Malvasi, Senior Contributors, Thomas Jefferson|

The irony of Jefferson's conception of a republican future for the United States was that the establishment and maintenance of a simple, peaceful, agrarian republic required an aggressive foreign policy that virtually ensured conflict with other peoples and nations. I. Like most of his contemporaries, Thomas Jefferson believed that republican government was, at best, fragile [...]

A Message From Rome

By |2023-10-15T13:40:08-05:00October 15th, 2023|Categories: History, Mark Malvasi, Rome, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Was the fall of Rome suicide or murder? Did the Germanic tribes walk over a corpse or did they contribute to its demise? I. Continuing for more than 200 years, from approximately 27 B.C. to A.D. 180, the Pax Romana was among the most stable, prosperous, and peaceful periods in history—certainly in the history of [...]

Romano Guardini & “The End of the Modern World”

By |2023-08-25T20:55:06-05:00August 25th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Mark Malvasi, Modernity, Romano Guardini, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Nearly seventy years after the publication of Romano Guardini's "The End of the Modern World," the rot has advanced too far to entertain any serious prospect of restoring a Christian social order in which, as Guardini insisted, “faith will maintain itself against animosity and danger” and “man’s obedience to God will assert itself with a [...]

The Kornilov Affair

By |2023-07-04T17:24:41-05:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, Mark Malvasi, Russia, Senior Contributors, Ukraine|

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, the the head of the Wagner Group, advanced on Moscow when the government refused to address his criticisms of the war effort in Ukraine. There is an obscure episode in Russian history that provides a revealing, albeit imperfect, analogue to this recent event: the so-called Kornilov Affair of 1917. For twenty-four [...]

Politics, Violence, & the Future of America

By |2023-06-19T17:12:29-05:00June 19th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, Civilization, Mark Malvasi, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Propelled by delusions and united by hatred, growing numbers of Americans believe that political violence is justified, necessary, and even at times desirable. If we no longer can, or care to, adhere to the dictates of civility and reason, then we will have surrendered control of our destiny and will become the authors of our [...]

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a Fable of Modern America

By |2023-05-16T14:02:40-05:00May 16th, 2023|Categories: Books, Economics, Fiction, History, Mark Malvasi, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Literary scholars have long interpreted “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a fable of populism, but it is more than that: It is a celebration of consumer culture as the the very meaning of America, this bright and shining land where men and women are happy to deceive themselves into believing a fairy tale, which, [...]

My Favorite Protest Music

By |2023-04-17T20:21:27-05:00April 17th, 2023|Categories: Mark Malvasi, Music, Senior Contributors|

The Modern Jazz Quartet rebelled against convention. To the extent that it was possible to do so, they came to live musically and socially in a world of their own making. That act of independence and creativity, at once defiant and healing, was the substance of their protest. I. One afternoon a few weeks ago, [...]

History & the New Humanism

By |2023-03-07T08:14:48-06:00March 6th, 2023|Categories: History, Humanism and Conservatism|

Historical consciousness and the attendant self-knowledge show what man has become, what he has made of himself, not only through his deeds but also, and more importantly, through the contemplation of what he has been. Together these insights potentially constitute the foundation of a new humanism, encouraging us to turn backward and inward rather than [...]

Choosing Southernness, Choosing My Father’s Way

By |2023-07-31T23:58:42-05:00February 12th, 2023|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, Mark Malvasi, South, Timeless Essays, Tradition|

Southern ways are held up to ridicule, and Southern virtues are out of fashion. But because Southerners think, believe, live and act within an inheritance, they enjoy a sense of confidence, faith and stability that may prove an invaluable asset as the foundations of our society begin to collapse. Late in August 1965, a young [...]

Southern Life, Agrarian Vision: The Apprenticeship of Andrew Lytle

By |2023-01-17T16:25:33-06:00January 17th, 2023|Categories: Agrarianism, Andrew Lytle, History, Literature, Mark Malvasi, Senior Contributors, South, Southern Agrarians, Timeless Essays|

The South, Andrew Lytle feared, had been poor and virtuous for too long and now found the temptations of industry and commerce too alluring to resist. Material prosperity weakened family, community, and tradition and deprived rural southern life of its vitality, rendering it both tumultuous and desolate. Born in Mufreesboro, Tennessee on the day after [...]

Classicism and Christianity: An Irrepressible Conflict?

By |2022-09-06T12:40:47-05:00September 5th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Mark Malvasi, Philosophy, Rome, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

In the Late Roman Empire, when classical civilization had fallen into decadence and decay, Christianity proved a dynamic and creative force. Amid the deterioration of political authority, the stagnation of economic life, and the decline of learning, a new civilization was emerging. I. As confidence in reason and the expectation of finding happiness in this [...]

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