Welcome to the Newsletter of the Donald and Louise Cowan Center and Archive

“Enjoyment is the true response to learning, an internal and reflective activity that, touching on a higher harmony outside the soul, resonates in the soul and effects its transformation” –Donald Cowan, Unbinding Prometheus

Both Don and Louise Cowan dedicated their lives to explorations of the nature of the soul, the imagination, and poetic form by focusing on the necessary interrelation of poetry, culture, and education. They believed that only through open discussions of ideas and texts by communities of students – and they saw themselves as lifelong students as well as teachers – could they discover the important truths and insights that would lead to changing one’s life, to finding one’s purpose, to creating good cities, and to embracing the common good.

Over the coming months we will be bringing you writing inspired by their thought and teachings.

For the Cowans, the sacred space of the classroom provided the best place to introduce and discuss the great questions of human existence and to consider possible answers. They took the utmost joy in sharing their own findings with students and listening to students’ insights and ideas. Those same bodies of students (graduate students, high school teachers and administrators, college professors, and interested adults outside the academy) are those whom we want to reach and engage in this larger endeavor. Only by awakening a passion for the study of the soul, the imagination, and poetic form among us all, the Cowans believed, could each person be spared the self-destruction of the modern world, fulfill the promise of his or her own life in a community, and contribute to the healing of communities.

We will be presenting our offerings in a variety of formats, each about once a month, in a revolving pattern:

• A full essay on an important topic by an invited author;

• Shorter essays by readers of the Newsletter, chosen from responses to calls for essays on special topics;

• Short documents culled from the Cowan Archive, articulating a particular concept or an ideal approach to a literary work;

• Retrospects: reflections on recent events held by the Cowan Center, along with links to recordings of them;

• Prospects: descriptions of upcoming events, with further information and preparatory readings listed.

These essays and documents will be presented on Substack, a different one each week, but available as needed, and saved monthly, for your needs. 

We will also be building a biography page, presenting the Cowans’ lives and including a few select documents—photos, syllabi, teaching notes. Readers are invited to send us any documents like these that they may have kept as friends or students of the Cowans.

By casting our net wide, and looking both forward and back, we hope to encourage the enthusiasm and dedication felt by those who knew and learned from Don and Louise and inspire those who are new to their ideas.

For the next six months, you will intermittently hear about the upcoming Catholic Imagination Conference, hosted by the Cowan Archive this Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at the University of Dallas. Mark your calendars and watch for announcements regarding registration!

We hope to see you back here each week. Bring your friends too!

Bainard Cowan 

Editor and Director of the Cowan Center and Archive