The Valor Symposium is a celebration of Valor Education’s work in the world. We know life is best enjoyed in the company of friends who together share in contemplation of the highest things. True celebrations and festivals are not to be understood simply as days without work but instead as days set aside for participating in the ars liberalis – “in the realm of activity that is meaningful in itself."

Dr. Daniel Coupland will deliver a keynote address, and seminar readings include selections from Vigen Guroian’s Tending the Heart of Virtue and “Beauty and the Beast,” from Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book.

About our Speaker

Dr. Daniel B. Coupland is dean of the Diana Davis Spencer Graduate School of Classical Education and a professor of education at Hillsdale College, and he formerly served as the dean of faculty at Hillsdale. He earned a B.A. in Spanish from Liberty University, an M.A. in Linguistics from Oakland University, and a Ph.D. in Education from Michigan State University. He began his career in education as a high school teacher. At Hillsdale College, he teaches courses on English grammar and classic children’s literature. In 2013, Dr. Coupland was named Hillsdale College’s “Professor of the Year.” In 2016, he was a Resident Scholar at the C. S. Lewis Study Centre in Oxford, England. In 2017, Dr. Coupland received the Emily Daugherty Award for Teaching Excellence. He is the former editor for the Journal of the Society for Classical Learning. He currently serves as an advisor to the Barney Charter School Initiative, and he sits on the advisory board for the Institute for Classical Education. His research focuses on classic children’s literature and English grammar instruction. He is a co-author of an English grammar curriculum titled Well-Ordered Language: The Curious Child’s Guide to Grammarpublished by Classical Academic Press.

The Valor Symposium is a celebration of Valor Education’s work in the world. We know life is best enjoyed in the company of friends who together share in contemplation of the highest things. True celebrations and festivals are not to be understood simply as days without work but instead as days set aside for participating in the ars liberalis – “in the realm of activity that is meaningful in itself."

Dr. James Matthew Wilson will deliver a keynote address titled “Tradition, Gratitude, and Poetry.” Seminar readings include T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and Josef Pieper’s Tradition.

About our Speaker

James Matthew Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas. The author of eleven books, his most recent collection of poems, The Strangeness of the Good (2020), won the poetry book of the year award from the Catholic Media Awards. The Dallas Institute of Humanities awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize, in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award. He serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, editor of Colosseum Books, and poetry editor of Modern Age magazine. His next book, Catholic Modernism and the Irish “Avant-Garde” will be published in 2023.