The newly-announced CCA topics are making us seniors a little bit jealous.
I mean, we will always have the hugely controversial architecture seminar and the week of one-sided arguments for Abraham Lincoln’s sainthood — oh, don’t get us wrong, we still like Honest Abe as much as the next Hillsdale College Freedom Walk pilgrim — but we could use a little less hero-worship. Our CCA memories include lackluster singing performances, and who could forget Beyoncé-gate?
Next year’s topics, though, are on another plane.
A one-credit week-long seminar about epics from the Aeneid to Beowulf? Sounds fascinating. Learning about The Divine Comedy from premiere Dante scholar and translator Anthony Esolen? The special person in Moss Hall who planned that CCA, well, students are indebted to him.
The week of WWII-era films also sounds like a treat.
CCAs often become esoteric discussions of dry subjects, or polemics about conservative politics. For people outside Hillsdale, a week of conversations on the possibility of absolute aestheticism is a rare treat. For Hillsdale students, not so much.
We can commiserate with the administrative challenge of CCAs — how can a series of talks deepen the education of students and friends of the school? How can you dig deeply into a topic with two groups of audience members that have little in common besides physical proximity?
We’re not jealous of their job.
So to the members of the CCA office, thank you. Next year’s topics show a fresh perspective. They present an opportunity for a discussion that is less partisan and more poetic, less academic, and more artistic. They give us hope that there’s more to conservatism than politics, that our beliefs are as broad as literature and as deep as history, and that our college can bring this broad interest to students and guests of the school alike.
To the people in charge of next year’s CCAs, we who are about to graduate salute you.
