UPCOMING CONFERENCES

WEST

Literary Geographies – Space, Place, and Environments

Biola University

La Mirada, CA

April 7-9, 2022

 

“All theology is rooted in geography.”

—Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: an Exploration in Vocational Holiness

 

Eugene Peterson’s statement highlights how our spiritual lives are rooted in the material reality of our daily lives. Keeping in mind how Christ transforms not only individual hearts but also entire neighborhoods—and remaining attentive to how literature documents and shapes that transformation—we invite papers that address textual representations of space/place, environment, ecological endangerment, displacement, and rootedness. How do these ideas shape individual and communal identities? How do embodied experiences of being in particular places affect our orientation toward the world and understanding of human flourishing? What does it mean to cultivate a meaningful relationship to place? How does the discourse around immigration and citizenship help us think about the effects of displacement and emplacement? How do literary texts illuminate what our response should be toward the environmental crisis? And what does it mean to think of place and environment not merely as backdrops to our lives but as agents and interlocutors?

Potential topics / methods might include:

• Neighbors and neighborhoods (shared, communal or different identities)
• Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies
• Ecological footprints and the relationship between nature and culture
• Literary representations of disaster—fires, floods, earthquakes, drought
• Reflections on how Christian scholars occupy particular space(s) in the academy or elsewhere
• Literary representations of embodiment/embodied identities

 

Submission guidelines: The CCL committee invites individual proposals (abstracts 300–400 words), as well as panel proposals (3–4 presenters, 200-word panel rationale + abstracts 200 words per presenter). Pedagogy-oriented roundtables and other innovative presentations or workshops are welcome. Email your abstracts saved as a PDF to CCL2022@biola.edu by November 15, 2021. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance status by January 15, 2022. Undergraduate students must submit their entire paper for consideration; eligible undergraduate papers will be entered into the national CCL Undergraduate Writing Contest for a cash prize and publication on the CCL website. Graduate students and contingent faculty are encouraged to apply for the CCL Travel Grant. For more details on these undergraduate and graduate opportunities, visit https://www.christianityandliterature.com/Awards-and-Grants.

 

SOUTHEAST

Southeast CCL Conference

Topic: "Cancel Culture," Christianity, and Literature

Wingate University

Wingate, NC

October 21-23, 2021

Keynote Speaker: Dr. John D. Sykes, Jr., Wingate University

Call for Papers: This has been the year of pandemic-induced cancellations—from international travel to athletic tournaments to our own Spring 2020 SECCL. The year also witnessed civil unrest, galvanized by George Floyd’s death in police custody.  This scenario has fueled widespread social self-examination on the issue of racism.  One result has been the acceleration of a new censoriousness in matters political, cultural, and academic.  Statues have been pulled down, university buildings re-named, jobs lost and new positions created, curricula overhauled, and the literary canon sifted—all in the name of new moral reckoning. For this conference, we would like to invite papers that deal in theoretical and practical consequences of this movement for literary study, especially for that undertaken by Christian scholars and teachers.  How should we respond to what is often pejoratively called “cancellation”?  This can be broadly understood as encompassing not only the effect upon university curricula  and the literary canon but also the censorious impulse within literature, and the religious impulses bound up with it, such as awakening, iconoclasm, and scapegoating. Possible topics could include:

• Themes of heresy/scapegoating/iconoclasm/erasure in literature • The effect of “Cancel Culture” on the English curriculum/pedagogy • “Cancelled” works or works in danger of cancellation • Christianity’s relation to protest literature. Faith, literature, and • Race and other forms of identity • Critical Race Theory • Postcolonial Theory • Postmodernism

The SECCL is also open to other topics on the intersection of faith and literature. Please submit a 200-400 word proposal to SECCL2021@gmail.com by August 20, 2021. Proposals from undergraduate students are also welcome (undergraduates must submit an entire paper for consideration).

 

OTHER CONFERENCES

CFP for SAMLA 93, November 4-6, 2021, Atlanta, GA

The Company You Keep: Reading, Writing, & Socializing in Religious Literature

Affiliate Group: Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature

Literature is rife with the concept of the “social,” whether it be through exclusion or connection. The Bible records letters sent, Church History preserves the ways in which communities gathered and encouraged one another regardless of distance, and Christian writers have invested heavily in understanding the topic of community and social structures. This panel welcomes submissions that address the topics of intimacy, community, or exile. We welcome papers exploring literary works that engage with Christianity (or religion broadly) on the idea of the “social.” Papers might consider one or more of the following:

• Definitions of community in the writings of A. J. Mojtabai
• Social networks, broadly conceived, in the writings of Walker Percy
• Letter writing between authors as a source for inspiration (i.e. the letters of Ernest Hemingway)
• News or gossip in relation to community connections (i.e. gossip in the works of William Faulkner or the importance of the news in James Fenimore Cooper’s writing)
• Exile and reconciliation in American Catholic fiction (i.e. J. F. Powers and Harry Sylvester)
• The nature and definition of exilic literature (or literary depictions of characters in exile)
• The question of authenticity in religious literature
• Ways that literary texts comfort the reader or challenge religious traditions
• The conventions and techniques of religious literature and their adaptation over time and distance
• How religious writers turn to other religious traditions for resources of community or inspiration
• The relationship between society and exile in religion
• Pedagogical approaches to religious literature
• The nature of communities built around the reading of good books
• Creative writing submissions addressing the panel theme are also welcome

Please send a 250-word proposal, a CV, and any A/V requests to Sean C. Hadley at sean.hadley@faulkner.edu. (For creative writing submissions, please submit the full work to be read and not an abstract). All abstracts or creative writing submissions are due May 31.

 

REGIONAL CONFERENCES

Regional conferences afford members an opportunity to learn from one another and to build networks of support for their scholarly and professional endeavors. They also offer graduate students an opportunity to gain valuable experience presenting at conferences.

For the themes of past and recent regional conferences, please click on the regions below:

Western

Midwest

Southeast

Eastern

Southwest