Conferences and Announcements
Check here to find news and announcements relating to CCL and CCL members. Also listed here will be information about conferences, calls for papers, and other happenings that may be of interest to anyone exploring various themes in Christianity and literature
Midwest 2009 Regional Conference
The City
September 24-26, 2009
Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL
Keynote Speakers: Andrew Delbanco and Anne Winters
The Midwest regional meeting will explore a wide variety of approaches to the intersections between Christianity, literature, and the city. This three-day conference will include keynote addresses by Andrew Delbanco and Anne Winters, traditional panels, at least two undergraduate student panels with faculty moderators, poetry readings, art exhibitions, and associated excursions into Chicago. Proposals for panels, roundtables, or individual twenty-minute presentations are invited on the following or related
topics:
• City/Suburb/Exurb
• The _______ City: The Classical City, The Biblical City, The Secular City, The Global City, The Apocalyptic City, The Visual City
• Pilgrimage and the City
• Religion in Literature of Chicago
• The City in Christian History
• Urban Utopias/Dystopias
• Stereotypes of the City
• Urbanization and (Im)migration
• 9/11
• Pedagogy of the City and Literature
Send 250-word abstracts to Tiffany Eberle Kriner, English Department, Wheaton College, 501 College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187 or tiffany.e.kriner@wheaton.edu. The deadline for submissions has been extended to June 15, 2009.
For more information, visit the conference website at: http://www.wheaton.edu/english/activities/conf.htm.
Southwest 2009 Regional Conference
From Lesser Lights to Greater: Grace and Literary Traditions
October 1-3, 2009
Houston Baptist University, Houston, Texas
Keynote Speaker: Phillip Donnelly, Baylor University
James 1:17 states, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights." Since antiquity Christians have affirmed that God is the source of language, that he invests language with meaning, and that language may convey prevenient grace. At the same time, Christians have also been keenly aware that, as a result of the Fall, language can conceal God's grace. Within language there arises a tension between revealing and concealing, which has formed and informed much of literature and its study. This conference aims to explore the implications of this tension as reflected in the literature and literary theory of Christian and non-Christian writers.
We invite papers that comment upon the relationship between literature, language, and God's grace, which may include the following sub-topics:
• Christianity, literature, and nature
• The iconic or iconoclastic in literature
• Sacramentalism and the written word
• Christianity and the Trivium-Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric
• Christianity and literary hermeneutics
• The Bible as literature
• Realist and representational literature
• The plenty or poverty of language
• Literary outworkings of cataphatic and apophatic theology
• Other topics related to literature, language, and grace
Inquiries are welcomed at any time. Abstracts should be submitted online by August 1, 2009 to www.hbu.edu/ccl. Download the Call for Papers here. To register or get more information about the conference, see www.hbu.edu/ccl or contact Dr. Evan Getz at egetz@hbu.edu.
Symposium on Faith and Culture
"Secularization & Revival: The Fate of Religion in Modern Intellectual History"
October 8-10, 2009
Baylor University, Waco, Texas
Sponsored by the Institute for Faith and Learning
The question of faith's place in modern intellectual life never has seemed more pressing in academia or popular culture. While specialists have abandoned simplistic versions of the "secularization thesis," which predicted that religion would crumble inexorably under the weight of advancing science and reason, best-selling atheistic critics still lament religion's influence, deny its philosophical viability, and predict its ultimate demise. Meanwhile, scholars have demonstrated the surging strength of both Christianity and Islam in non-western parts of the world, and the persistent religiosity in the United States. Accordingly, this symposium will consider religion's place in modern thought and culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.
We invite papers that explore the intellectual tensions between the revival and decline of faith, not only in the Anglo-American West, but around the world. Featured speakers include: David Bebbington (Stirling/Baylor); Michael J. Buckley (Santa Clara); José Casanova (Georgetown); Jean Bethke Elshtain (U. Chicago Divinity School); Paul Fiddes (Oxford); Barry Harvey (Baylor); Philip Jenkins (Penn State); Susan Juster (Michigan); George Marsden (Notre Dame); C. John Sommerville (U. Florida); Rodney Stark (Baylor); and Frank Turner (Yale).
Proposals for papers are due by June 15, 2009. See more details of the conference and the call for papers and a list of invited speakers at http://www.baylor.edu/ifl/index.php?id=60689.
Travel Grants
CCL has begun offering 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. These grants will be awarded for 2010; applications are due by September 1, 2009. 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.
Northeast Regional 2010 Conference
Christianity and the Detective Story
March 5-7, 2010
Pace University, New York, NY
Featured Speaker: Ralph McInerny
The Northeast regional conference has been rescheduled for March 2010. Ralph McInerny, author of the Father Dowling Mysteries, will be the featured speaker.
Proposals of 1-3 pages for papers on the topic of "Christianity and the Detective Story" or any topic related to Christianity and literature are due by September 1, 2009. Send proposals to Dr. Walter Raubicheck, Chair/English at Pace University, 41 Park Row, New York, NY 10038 or by email to wraubicheck@pace.edu.
Sublimity and Epiphany: Religious Narratives in Romantic Poetry
Christian Scholars' Conference 2009
The Power of Narrative
June 25-27, 2009
Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN
This panel aims to go beyond the biographies, and beyond M.H. Abrams' epiphanic structures in Natural Supernaturalism, toward embedded narratives of religious experience or biblical faith in Romantic poems. The 29th annual Christian Scholars' Conference is organized around the theme "The Power of Narrative." Plenary speakers Billy Collins (US Poet Laureate, 2001-2003), Marilynne Robinson (Pulitzer Prize Winner, 2005), Hubert G. Locke, and Barbara Brown Taylor will stimulate dialogue on the intersection of faith, academics, and narrative's captivating quality. Paper and Panel sessions highlight the conference, bringing together fellow academics for collaboration and dialogue. For more information about the conference, see csc.lipscomb.edu/page.asp?SID=194&Page=5331.
ATLASerials Collection
The Conference on Christianity and Literature and The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) are pleased to announce Christianity and Literature was recently added to ATLASerials® (ATLAS®), an online collection of religion and theology journals.
Available through the database are full-text versions of three issues of Volume 22 (1973) of Christianity and Literature and most issues from Volume 34 (1984/1985) to the present. More issues will be posted in the future.
"We welcome Christianity and Literature, a preeminent journal in its field, to the ATLAS collection. ATLAS users will benefit richly from its scholarly approach to the interactions between literature and historic Christianity," commented Gregg Taylor, ATLA's Database Manager of Acquisitions and Bibliographic Control.
ATLAS is an online collection of more than 120 major religion and theology journals selected by leading religion scholars and theologians. Users can read articles or research the history of a topic from as early as 1924 to the present. The ATLAS project is supported by a major grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. To request a trial or to learn more, visit http://www.atla.com/.
CCL MLA 2009
"Faith and Fable in Geoffrey Hill's Poetry"
December 27-30
MLA Convention, Philadelphia, PA
Abstracts are invited for a roundtable addressing the interactions between religious belief, religious doubt, and the imagination in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill. Papers will be distributed to all respondents in advance of the roundtable. Contact Emily Merriman, San Francisco State University, estm@sfsu.edu for more information.
International Thomas Merton Society
Bearing Witness to the Light:
Merton's Challenge to a Fragmented World
June 11-14, 2009
Nazareth College
Rochester, New York
The Eleventh General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society will focus particularly on the ways in which Merton serves as a model of creative interreligious dialogue and witnesses to its importance in building a world in which the dignity of every person is respected and nurtured. For more information, direct questions to merton2009@bellarmine.edu; or by mail at ITMS 2009, Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, 2001 Newburg Road, Louisville, KY 40205.
T. S. Eliot International Summer School
June 27-July 4, 2009
London
This unique summer opportunity is hosted by the Institute of English Studies of the University of London; Ronald Schuchard of Emory University will be the director,while Wim Van Mierlo of the Institute of English Studies will be the executive director.
Students will hear two lectures each weekday morning on all aspects of Eliot's life and work and then choose from a variety of afternoon seminars for a week-long, in-depth study under the guidance of a seminar leader. Participating in the school will be distinguished scholars of T.S. Eliot and Modern Literature, including Jewel Spears Brooker (Eckerd College), Robert Crawford (University of St Andrews), Anthony Cuda (University of North Carolina-Greensboro), Denis Donoghue (New York University), Jennifer Formichelli (Boston University), Lyndall Gordon (University of Oxford), John Haffenden (University of Sheffield), Jason Harding (University of Durham), Sir Frank Kermode (University of Cambridge), and Christopher Ricks (Boston University).
For more information and for an application, see the website, http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/TSE/index.htm.
2009 Summer Seminar Opportunity
Professing Literature: Christian Engagement
with Today's Literary Studies
July 6-10, 2009
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI
Featuring: Susan VanZanten Gallagher, Seattle Pacific University
and Roger W. Lundin, Wheaton College
This workshop will focus on the issues facing Christians who desire to practice faithful teaching and scholarship during a time of significant soul-searching in literary studies. It continues the series sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities to prepare faculty who teach at CCCU member institutions develop Christian perspectives on their disciplines.
For more information and application requirements, visit www.calvin.edu/scs/.
Information about all CCL regional organizations
Questions to Tammy Ditmore (tammy.ditmore@pepperdine.edu)