Dr. John Schmalzbauer, the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University, will give the spring lecture in the semiannual lecture series organized and hosted by the Johnson Library and Museum (JLM) in Osceola, Missouri.

The lecture will be given at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, 2023 at the Johnson Library and Museum located at 220 Main Street in Osceola, overlooking the Osage River. Thomas Moore Johnson, a neoplatonic scholar and thinker, and the founder of JLM in the 19th century, was known as “The Sage of the Osage.” A meal will be available at 6:00 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public. 

The MSU Libraries has several enduring ties with JLM. We have cleaned and cataloged some of their rare books, scanned and transcribed the two card catalogs, and provide supporting services to scholars who need to access the collection. Tom Peters, Dean of Library Services at MSU, serves on the JLM Board, and he is the editor of the JLM annual publication. 

Here is a description of the upcoming lecture: 

Grassroots Philosophers of the Heartland: Athens in the Midwest

Professor John Schmalzbauer

Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies

Department of Religious Studies 

Missouri State University

The rural and small-town Midwest has often been depicted as an anti-intellectual backwater, yet grassroots philosophy discussion groups flourished in Midwestern towns such as Jacksonville and Quincy, Illinois, as well as Osceola, Missouri. Far from a backwater, local intellectuals and community groups engaged with national figures like Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson, including Osceola’s “Sage of the Osage,” Thomas Moore Johnson. This lecture will draw on recent works, including Jon Lauck’s The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900, as well as Paul Anderson’s classic Platonism in the Midwest.