Southwest Region
Regional director: Evan Jay Getz, Houston Baptist University (egetz@hbu.edu)
2013 Southwestern Regional Conference
'Love that Moves the Sun and Other Stars': Exploring the Virtues in Literature
Houston Baptist University, Houston, Texas
September 20-21, 2013
Proposals:
We welcome both individual paper abstracts and session proposals relevant to the conference theme. Please send paper abstracts (no more than 200 words) and/or session proposals by April 1, 2013 to the Conference Chair, Dr. Holly Ordway, at hordway@hbu.edu.
Description of Conference:
From the classical period to today, the virtues have served as a means of self-examination, a guide for self-reflection, a pattern for living a good life, and an inspiration for literary composition. For Christians, the virtues have the added dimension of being rooted in the revelation of God's character. This re-orientation of the understanding of virtue means that pursuing virtue can be a spiritual discipline as well as a form of witness.
Literature provides a powerful means of reflecting on what virtue is, how the expression of particular virtues shapes actions and character, and what a virtuous life looks like in various times, places, and cultures.
This conference invites papers that consider literary approaches to one or more of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and the cardinal virtues (justice, wisdom, temperance, and courage). Possible sub-topics include:
The representation in literature of specific virtues and/or their corresponding vicesParticular virtues considered in both non-Christian and Christian literatureRealistic, allegorical, symbolic, and mythopoeic approaches to presenting the virtues in literatureHow literature can 'embody' virtue (or vice)Considerations of Aristotelian, Thomistic, or Platonic representations of virtue as expressed in literary worksVirtues as represented in Biblical literatureVirtue as a topic for literary apologeticsOriginal poetryAnd other papers dealing with the conference theme
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Michael Ward: "'Pilate Was Merciful Till It Became Risky': C.S. Lewis on the Role of Courage in Every Virtue"
Senior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University
Co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis; author, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis
Please direct any questions to:
Dr. Holly Ordway, Conference Chair: hordway@hbu.edu
Dr. Evan Getz, egetz@hbu.edu
We hope that you will join us!
2012 Southwestern Regional Conference
The 2012 Southwestern Regional Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature was held October 5-6 at Oklahoma Christian University in cooperation with Oklahoma Baptist University. The theme of the conference was "Theatrum Mundi: Faith, Representation, and Multiculturalism."
The keynote speaker was Tony Award-winning playwright, David Henry Hwang , who delivered the 8th annual McBride Lecture for Faith & Literature. Mr. Hwang also appeared, along with members of the editorial board of the journal Ecumenica, on a panel addressing issues of faith in contemporary drama.
Call for Papers: Shakespeare's famous proclamation that "All the World's a Stage" is just one among numerous Renaissance assertions of the Theatrum Mundi. In his 1612 Apology for Actors, Thomas Heywood, for instance, argues that
... the world a Theater present,
As by the roundnesse it appears most fit,
Built with starre-galleries of hye ascent,
In which Jehove does as spectator sit.
This metaphor gave thinkers in the early modern period and beyond both a means of defending the sacramental value of the stage itself—and of representation more broadly—and a means of conceptualizing God's relationship to his creation as its author, director, and primary spectator. As we consider this metaphor today, we might consider the implications of the Theatrum Mundi concept for the expanded stage of a global society. Is all the world a stage?
2010 Regional Conference
More than 65 people attended the Southwest 2010 Regional conference, "Christian Literary Values and the Changing Print Culture," which was held in conjunction with the 6th annual McBride Lecture for Faith & Literature at Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City. Sixty-two presentations were made at the conference, which was held Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2010. Dana Gioia delivered the conference plenary lecture on "Literacy, Literature, and the Individual: Transforming the Quality of Personal Character."
Papers exploring the Christian Literary Scholarship of Ralph C. Wood were presented in plenary sessions by eight of his former students now teaching at universities around the country. A reception was held in his honor, and he received commemorative plaques both from his students and from SWCCL.
For more information, contact the Program Chair: Merle Gatewood, Department of Language and Literature, Oklahoma Christian University, Box 11000, Oklahoma City, OK 73136-1100, merle.gatewood@oc.edu.
2009 Regional Conference
Phillip Donnelly of Baylor University was the keynote speaker at the 2009 meeting, which was titled "From Lesser Lights to Greater: Grace and Literary Traditions." The conference was held October 1-3 at Houston Baptist University.
2008 Regional Conference
Gregory Wolfe provided the keynote address to at the 2008 Southwest Regional conference, which met October 2-3 at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Almost 100 people attended the meeting, and dozens of papers were delivered on various aspects of the conference theme, "Christianity and the Things of This World."
The 2007 Regional Conference
titled "Alarming Necessities": Taste, Reading, and Theology, met September 28-29, 2007, in Arlington, Texas. The conference was hosted by Dallas Baptist University and featured keynote speakers Steven Prickett and Frank Burch Brown.
The 2006 Regional Conference
met Sept. 28-30 concurrently with Inscription: A Conference on the Christian Teaching of Writing, Rhetoric, and Literature, at Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas. Speakers included Jill Baumgaertner, David Jeffrey, and David Naugle.
2005 Regional Conference
The Southwest CCL Region held its 2005 meeting at the University of Texas, Brownsville. The keynote speaker was Ruben Martinez, author of The Other Side, Crossing Over, and The New Americans.