Mideast Region
Regional director: Jeanne Murray Walker, University of Delaware, jwalker@english.udel.edu
Mideast Region 2011 Conference
October 28-29, 2011
University of Dayton
The Deeds of Love in the Service of Peace
In Christian tradition love it is not an attitude, a relation, a feeling, or a condition sufficient unto itself. Love requires action, deeds. Sometimes, great deeds and other times, small ones, hidden from view, invisible but effective no less. No one can live a human life without love; it brings no shortage of joy and causes us no shortage of sufferings. Where there are humans, there is love. St. Paul places love at the highest of all forces of human action and agency. Love is the source of Jesus’ self-emptying on the cross. Christian tradition also promises a messiah who will bring peace, whose kingdom is the most peaceable. While this implies a kingdom ordered by love, Jesus is still the Prince of Peace and not the Prince of Love--at least in the prophet Isaiah.
For the Fall 2011 meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature we invite papers that address the relation of love and peace in literature, and we welcome proposals engaging a variety of perspectives, periods, critical approaches, and religious traditions. We also welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of the relationship between literature and Christianity. Proposals to read creative writing are invited as well.
To propose a paper, please submit a 250-word abstract. Proposals for creative readings should include a 250-word description of the work and a 3-page sample. All proposals should be sent by e-mail to molly.sexton@notes.udayton.edu by May 1, 2011.
Participants must be active members of the Conference on Christianity and Literature. They may join the CCL when registering or at the conference. Graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to participate. Undergraduates submitting proposals for contributions to student panels should identify themselves as such.
Featured speakers will be announced soon.
Consult the conference website for conference updates and download a copy of the call for papers.
2010 Regional Conference
Pilgrims in Place
Scholars at Grove City College in Grove City, Penn., in March 2010 to explore intersections between Christianity, literature, and notions of pilgrimage and place.the seeming tension between the necessary discipline of place that Wendell Berry writes about and the equally compelling disposition of Gabriel Marcel’s homo viator or Walker Percy’s castaway (among many others). More than 40 conference presenters were joined at various sessions by more than 300 students and community members, particularly for the plenary sessions led keynote speakers Steven Bouma Prediger, Professor of Religion at Hope College, and Farrell O'Gorman, Associate Professor of Catholic Studies and Literature at DePaul University. For more information, contact H. Collin Messer, English Department, Grove City College, 100 Campus Drive, Grove City, PA 16127 or hcmesser@gcc.edu.
2006 Regional Conference
About 50 people attended the Regional Conference at Cedarville University in Ohio in October. The theme was "Incarnation in the Classroom: Mentoring The Next Generation of Scholars, Teachers and Writers," and the featured guest speaker was Dr. Jeanne Murray Walker. For more information, ccontact the conference chair, Dr. Don Deardorff, deardord@cedarville.edu.