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Joseph Bottum | |
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| Born | Joseph Henry Bottum IV Vermillion, South Dakota, U.S. |
| Education | Georgetown University(BA),Boston College(PhD) |
| Known for | Author editor professor |
Joseph Bottum is an American author and intellectual, best known for his writings about literature, American religion, andneoconservative politics. Noting references to his poems,[1] short stories,[2] scholarly work,[3] literary criticism,[4] and many other forms of public commentary, reviewerMary Eberstadt wrote inNational Review in 2014 that “his name would be mandatory on any objective short list of public intellectuals” in the United States.[5] Coverage of his work includes profiles inThe New York Times,[6]South Dakota Magazine,[7] andThe Washington Times.[8] In 2017, Bottum took a position at Dakota State University inMadison, South Dakota.
Born inVermillion, South Dakota, Bottum was brought up in the state capital ofPierre and laterSalt Lake City, Utah, where he attendedJudge Memorial Catholic High School.[9] Bottum graduated fromGeorgetown University with a B.A. and in 1993 received a Ph.D. in medieval philosophy fromBoston College. Bottum was assistant professor of medieval philosophy atLoyola University Maryland from 1993 to 1994, before joining the journalFirst Things in New York City as associate editor from 1995 to 1997.[10]
His relatives include great-great-grandfatherHenry C. Bottum (19th-century Wisconsin legislator), great-great-grandfatherDarius S. Smith (19th-century South Dakota legislator), great-grandfatherJoseph H. Bottum (1890s and 1900s South Dakota legislator), great-uncle and namesakeJoseph H. Bottum (the 1960s South Dakota senator), cousinRoddy Bottum (keyboardist for the rock band Faith No More), and cousinF. Russell Hittinger[11] (the Catholic philosopher).
He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1997, hired byWilliam Kristol to be literary editor of the neoconservative political magazine, theWeekly Standard,[12] while also serving as Poetry Editor ofFirst Things from 1998 to 2004.[13] In 2004, the founder ofFirst Things,Richard John Neuhaus, brought him back to New York as the new editor ofFirst Things.[14] Forced out in 2010 after controversy about the future and the funding of the magazine[15] following the death of Neuhaus, Bottum moved to his family's summer house in the Black Hills of South Dakota.[16]
Bottum andDakota State University announced on May 31, 2017, that he would be taking a new post as the director of the CLASSICS Institute and begin working in the field of cyber-ethics.[17] The CLASSICS Institute is an acronym which stands for Collaborations for Liberty and Security Strategies for Integrity in a Cyber-enabled Society.[18][19]
After returning to South Dakota, he produced his Kindle SingleDakota Christmas, which reached #1 on the Amazon e-book bestseller list,[20] and he published such print books as the examination of song lyrics as poetry inThe Second Spring (2011), the childhood memoirThe Christmas Plains (2012), and the sociological study of American religion inAn Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (2014), together with the e-book collection of selected essays,Pulp & Prejudice. His Kindle Singles for Amazon include sports Singles onTim Tebow andR. A. Dickey (The Summer of 43, named by Amazon to its Kindle Singles' list of 2012's “10 Best Books of the Year”),[21] and Bottum's annual Christmas fiction.[22]
Bottum's essays, poems, reviews, and short stories have appeared inThe Wall Street Journal,The Washington Post,USA Today,The Times of London, and other newspapers;Forbes,Newsweek,Commentary, and other magazines; theInternational Philosophical Quarterly,U.S. Catholic Historian, and other scholarly journals. His work has been anthologized inBest Spiritual Writing 2010,Best Catholic Writing 2007,Best Christian Writing 2004,The Conservative Poets,Why I Turned Right, and other collections.[23] Among his most widely discussed essays are “The Soundtracking of America”[24] inThe Atlantic, “Christians and Postmoderns,”[25] inFirst Things, and “The Myth of the Catholic Voter”[26] in theWeekly Standard.
Bottum's 2013 essay “The Things We Share”[27] in the Catholic journalCommonweal, urging acceptance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriage, was covered by a pair of articles inThe New York Times[28] and by many other publications. Widely cited and attacked, it led to the ostracizing of Bottum in some conservative and religious circles.[29] Other controversial positions Bottum has taken include his opposition to the death penalty,[30] his defense ofPope Pius XII,[31] and his rejection of abortion. According toEdmund Waldstein, Bottom understands his own conservative philosophy as a "working out of the insight into the evil of abortion".[32]
Bottum's 2014 bookAn Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America argues that members of the nation's elite class are the spiritual heirs ofMainline Protestantism, and that this class has triumphed over Catholics and Evangelicals in the culture wars.[33] Reviewing the book forThe American Interest, the columnistDavid Goldman wrote, “Joseph Bottum may be America's best writer on religion.”[34] InThe Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty compared the book to work byJames Burnham,Daniel Bell, andChristopher Lasch, suggesting “with the publication ofAn Anxious Age, I wonder if these earlier thinkers haven't all been surpassed.”[35]
Bottum was a contributing editor to theWeekly Standard[36] and served as distinguished visiting professor atHouston Baptist University in 2014.[37] In an article attacking him for his stance on same-sex marriage,National Review nonetheless wrote, “Bottum is the poetic voice of modern Catholic intellectual life. His work . . . shaped the minds of a generation.”[38]He has read hisNew Formalist poetry onC-SPAN,[39] done commentary for NBC'sMeet the Press[40] and thePBS Newshour,[41] and appeared on many other television and radio programs.
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