About The Bradford Institute
SCHOLARSHIP. LEADERSHIP. CONVERSATION.
Who Is M.E. Bradford?
M.E. Bradford (1934-1993), was arguably the most influential scholar of Southern history, Southern politics, and Southern literature who worked during the second half of the 20th Century.
A longtime professor of English at the University of Dallas, Bradford almost single-handedly restored a traditionally agrarian and Southern perspective on American political and literary history during a time when many believed the South’s seat at the table of national discourse had been lost and/or forgotten. Perhaps the most prominent student of the most prominent Vanderbilt Agrarian, Donald Davidson, Bradford pioneered a path and voice for Southern conservative values within the context of a hostile American culture determined to crush any remaining vestiges of traditional American life. The author of several books and essays, Bradford’s work continues to influence how we understand the significance of the South, its history, people, ideas, and cultural distinctiveness.
DR. ALAN HARRELSON
I’m Alan Harrelson, founder and president of the Bradford Institute. I started reading Bradford as a teenager, as well as the writers and thinkers who influenced his work, the Southern Agrarians, Richard Weaver, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, John Taylor, etc.
I finished a History PhD by writing a dissertation on the history of Southern agrarian thought in the 20th Century. Bradford is a major part of that story. A sense of place, history, rootedness, is crucial to any real understanding of Southern history and culture. I founded the Bradford Institute to better explain, in public discourse with other scholars and writers, why such things must continue to matter within the context of our ultra-modern, deracinated American society. I think there’s a need for that message. I believe stories about and from the South continue to offer answers to questions about what it means to be an American, and what it means to be human, a creature of limited ability entirely reliant on a limitless Creator.
