Western Region
Regional director: Emily Griesinger, Azusa Pacific University (EGriesinger@apu.edu)
West 2010 Regional Conference
“Thicker than Water?”: The Family in Literature and Culture
March 25-27, 2010
California Baptist University, Riverside, CA
“You don’t choose your family,” says Desmond Tutu. “They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.” Indeed, one of the primary metaphors for the church is as the family of Christ; the use of such terms as “Father,” Son,” “bride” and “children of God” permeate the New Testament. Writers from Sidney to Dostoevsky to C. S. Lewis have made the family a central element of their fiction, and metaphors for the family often manifest in pop culture. Politicians run on “family values” platforms, and “family-friendly” films often seek endorsements from religious communities, but is the concept of family still relevant in a post-modern, post-Christian world? Is our family a gift, a “haven in a heartless world” (attributed to Christopher Lasch), or has that concept become outdated or limited?
The 2010 Western regional conference welcomes proposals for panels, roundtable, or individual twenty-minute presentations that address the shifting definitions and nature of “family” in the context of Christianity, literature, technology/society, etc. Please send 350-word proposals by January 10, 2010, to cclwestregion@gmail.com or by regular post (CCL 2010, c/o Modern Languages and Literature Department, California Baptist University, 8432 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92504; Attn: Laura Veltman).
Please click here for a detailed Call for Papers. A website including registration information for potential attendees is pending. Please visit our Facebook page (Conference on Christianity and Literature - West Region), as well.
2009 West Regional CCL Conference
"Speaking Truth to Power: The Literature of Assent and Dissent"
This conference was held April 16-18 at George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. Papers and speakers examined the interface between literary studies and Christianity.
Almost 100 people, including about 30 undergraduate students, attended the 2008 conference at Biola University from May 15-17. Participants came from around the globe, including attendees or speakers from England, Japan, and Canada. Scott Cairns, Mark Knight, and Lauren Winner served as featured speakers at the event. Faculty artists from Biola's Art Department prefaced each keynote address with art related to the themes of the conference, adding a multidisciplinary air to the proceedings. The paper panels, ranging in topic from contemporary film to the inherent pitfalls of biographical writing to the role of devotion in George Herbert's poetry, were well attended and well received. The 2009 Western Regional meeting will convene at George Fox University from April 17-19 with the theme, "Speaking Truth to Power: The Literature of Assent and Dissent." Marc MalandraWest Region 2008 CCL Conference
"Fire and Ice: Literary Paradox and the Search for Truth"2007 Western Regional Conference
Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred and the Sublime
Trinity Western University, Langley, British Columbia,
May 10-12, 2007
The conference was successful in terms of attracting six engaging and intellectually rigorous keynote speakers (David Lyle Jeffrey, Richard Kearney, Jens Zimmermann, Maxine Hancock, Lynn Szabo, and Erica Grimm-Vance), of securing 92 other very good speakers from forty-five different institutions, and of ensuring thta almost all of the panels were very well attended. Many of the panels had an audience of 25, and no panel had fewer than seven audience members. Ninety-seven percent of participants who responded to the post-conference survey indicated they had a very good overall experience at the conference; 84% felt that the quality of the papers presented was superior, and 97% felt that the keynote speakers significantly contributed to the value of their experience of the conference and its theme.
The 2008 Western Regional conference will be held at Biola University.
Holly Faith Nelson
Jennifere Doede
Lynn Szabo
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Questions to Tammy Ditmore (tammy.ditmore@pepperdine.edu)