College of Arts and Humanities
English, Communication, Great Texts, and Modern Languages
Louis Markos, PhD
- Professor of English
- Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities
- Scholar-in-Residence
Education
- MA and PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
- BA in English and History from Colgate University (Hamilton, NY)
Courses Taught
- Romantic Poetry and Prose
- Victorian Poetry and Prose
- C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien
- Mythology and Epic
- Film and Art
Teaching Focus
While at the University of Michigan, he specialized in British Romantic Poetry (his dissertation was on Wordsworth), Literary Theory, and the Classics.
Publications
Dr. Markos, who is an authority on C. S. Lewis, apologetics, and ancient Greece and Rome and who lectures widely for classical Christian and classical charter schools and conferences, is the author of twenty-six books, including From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith, The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes, My Life in Film: How the Movies Shaped My Soul, Ancient Voices: An Insider’s Look at the Early Church, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis, Literature: A Student’s Guide, C. S. Lewis for Beginners, J. R. R. Tolkien for Beginners, Heaven & Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition, Apologetics for the 21st Century, Atheism on Trial, Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis, The Eye of the Beholder: How to See the World like a Romantic Poet, Pressing Forward: Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Victorian Age, Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis can Train us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World, three Worldview Guides to the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, and The Dreaming Stone and In the Shadow of Troy, children’s novels in which his kids become part of Greek Mythology and the epics of Homer. In 2025, IVP will publish his Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education and From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith.
All his books are available at his Amazon author page
To view some of his lectures, visit his YouTube channel at Louis Markos – YouTube
To read some of his online essays, visit these sites:
Additional Information
Although a devoted professor who works closely with his students, Dr. Markos is dedicated to the concept of the professor as public educator. He firmly believes that knowledge must not be walled up in the academy, but must be freely and enthusiastically disseminated to all those “who have ears to hear.” As a specifically Christian professor he also adheres to a second goal: to fuse into a single stream the humanist strivings of Athens and the Christian truths of Jerusalem. Believing that “all truth is God’s truth,” Dr. Markos seeks to measure all human knowledge against the touchstone of orthodox Christian doctrine (the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection). Believing further that Christianity is not the only truth but the only COMPLETE truth, he seeks to discover in the cultures, mythologies, religions and philosophies of the ancient (and modern) world intimations and foreshadowings of the greater truths revealed in Christ and the Bible. In pursuing this goal, his three principle mentors have been Plato, Dante, and C. S. Lewis, his central vision has been that of the Magi (whose pagan wisdom proved a partial guide to encountering the Christ child), and his core biblical passage Paul’s address to the Areopagus at Athens (Acts 17).