The Conference on Christianity & Literature

Welcome to CCL

The Conference on Christianity and Literature is an interdisciplinary society dedicated to exploring the relationships between Christianity and literature. Organized formally in 1956, CCL is dedicated to both scholarly excellence and collegial exchange and includes hundreds of members from a variety of academic institutions and religious traditions from the United States, Canada, and more than a dozen other countries.

The Conference publishes a journal, Christianity and Literature, which appears quarterly. Each issue includes scholarly articles, book reviews, news items, and poetry.

CCL also has begun publishing a monograph series with Baylor University Press called Studies in Christianity and Literature. This series will publish peer-reviewed, scholarly manuscripts that explore the complex relationship between Christianity and literature and enhance the larger academic conversation about the role of religion in cultural life. The books to appear in the series will be sensitive to historical contexts, alert to theoretical implications, and informed by theological concerns. For more information, you can download the brochure here or see http://www.baylor.edu/baylorpress/splash.php. Inquiries should be directed to scl@baylor.edu.

Travel Grants

CCL will award grants to help cover travel expenses to scholars and writers and who are members of the Conference on Christianity and Literature and need financial support to help cover travel needed to support research and writing.  More details and applications on the Scholar Travel Grant Page.

CCL is also offering graduate-student members travel grants of up to $500 to meet travel expenses and registration fees for regional CCL meetings and the annual meeting of CCL at the MLA convention. More details are on the Graduate Student Grant page.

 

Modern Language Association

CCL is allied with the Modern Language Association and sponsors sessions each year at the annual MLA Convention. In addition, CCL is divided into seven regional organizations that host regular sessions on a wide variety of authors and themes.

Annual Awards

Each year the CCL awards citations for lifetime achievement, book of the year, and best article of the year in Christianity and LIterature. The society also sponsors a student writing contest of essays, poems, and stories that address matters of Christian thought, experience, and practice.

Membership

Membership in CCL includes a subscription to the journal and the opportunity to participate in activities sponsored by the conference as a whole as well as all regional organizations.

Questions to Tammy Ditmore (tammy.ditmore@pepperdine.edu)

In the Latest Issue of Christianity & Literature:


Night Reading

Franz Wright

Lights coming on
   in windows;
windows lit all
   night long
suddenly dark --

He seems to sleep,
   head nested
in crossed arms
on the desk,
   as he listens

to the first raindrops
striking the window,
the faint roar
   of aircraft just

vanishing with
   moonlit trail
past the horizon,
the underlined phrase.

      Summer 2009