UPCOMING CONFERENCES

SOUTHWEST

"Solemn Geographies & Sacred Places: The Literature of Holy Location"

 5-7 October 2017 Dallas, Texas

 Abilene Christianity University-Dallas Campus 

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kevin J. Gardner, Baylor University

Kevin J. Gardner is chair of the Department of English at Baylor University and author of Building Jerusalem: Elegies on Parish Churches (Bloomsbury 2016)

Gaston Bachelard in his classic The Poetics of Space remarked that “the space we love is unwilling to remain permanently enclosed.” Instead, beloved places and locations are “felicitous space’ and ‘eulogized space” because “all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of time.” This is especially true of sacred places: churches, chapels, abbeys, hermitages, martyrs’ graves, family altars, fountains, monuments, and natural locations. As Bachelard realized, poems, stories, and essays are some of the universal ways that we experience such places and give words to our faith, doubt, love, fear, and mystery. In particular, the literature of Christianity, both by its believers and its skeptics, offers a rich and multi-faceted response to how we participate in holy places and how they give themselves to us in turn. Suggested areas of interest include:

• Literature about Christian churches and other holy places

• How literary works and other art forms respond to sacred places

• Inter-religious literary comparisons regarding locations of faith

• The natural world as sacred space and place

As always, SWCCL is open to other proposals concerning the relationship of Christianity and literature. Send abstracts (400-500 words) via email to Dr. Amanda Himes, at ahimes@jbu.edu. Or mail to Dr. Amanda Himes, John Brown University, 2000 W. University St., Siloam Springs AR 72761.

Submission deadline: Friday, July 7, 2017.

 

WEST

West Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature

May 11-13, 2017

Point Loma Nazarene University

San Diego, CA

Keynote Speakers:

Catherine Kapikian is the founder and director emerita of The Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. The author of Art in the Service of the Sacred, Professor Kapikian will address the interrelationship between theology and the arts. A skilled visual artist, Kapikian will also explore the relationship between literature and the visual arts. More information about her work can be found at www.catherinekapikian.com.

Diane Glancy is a noted playwright, poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Of Cherokee, German, and English descent, Glancy is noted for her work exploring the boundaries between racial and ethnic identities as well as the boundaries between Christian faith and Native American beliefs. A long-time faculty member at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, Glancy has also been a visiting professor at Kenyon College and Azusa Pacific University. She has been invited to both give a public reading and offer theological reflections on her work.

Like many other Christian colleges, Point Loma Nazarene University exists on the boundary of higher education in the United States. Committed to educating students for places of employment and service in the culture of the United States and other modern nation-states, the college is also committed to forming Christian disciples. Teaching in the humanities in this context presents both great challenges and amazing opportunities. Literature is at times embraced and at other times marginalized by both of the university projects—it is sometimes seen as an unneeded luxury for students preparing for employment and a challenge (or even a detriment) to Christian formation. Conference organizers invite projects that explore living and teaching on this border. In addition, Point Loma sits geographically in a large metropolitan city near the border of the United States and Mexico, so conference organizers also invite papers and panels that explore the crossing of borders between national traditions in the humanities, between the sacred and the secular, between sharply proscribed gender roles and greater gender openness, and between traditional disciplines. In the spirit of Christian communion and intellectual dialogue, this conference invites papers, panels, creative presentations, and roundtable discussions regarding the exploration of boundaries and the crossing of borders in all manners. We welcome proposals from a variety of perspectives including, but not limited to, literature, creative writing, faith communities, film, visual arts, philosophy, popular culture, and pedagogy and practice.

POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE ● Exploring the boundary between the sacred and the secular in literature ● Crossing the border between face-to-face pedagogy and on-line teaching in the humanities ● Crossing boundaries in religious traditions (in reading or teaching literature) ● Exploring boundaries between the classroom and service learning, between literature and Christian formation ● Issues related to teaching works in translation ● Reading literature and the Bible in translation ● Crossing the borders between genres ● Adaptation from print to film ● When writers travel—crossing the borders between national traditions in literature ● Exploring gender boundaries ● Christian scholars and queer theory ● Teaching across racial boundaries

E-mail your 250 word abstracts and session proposals by March 1, 2017 to Dr. Karl Martin at WesternCCL@pointloma.edu. Undergraduate students must submit their entire paper for consideration. Graduate students are encouraged to apply for a CCL travel grant; for more details, click here.

 

REGIONAL CONFERENCES

Regional conferences have been at the heart of the Conference on Christianity and Literature from the beginning. Those scholarly conferences offer a window into the rich diversity of current scholarship on Christianity and literature. 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 an excellent opportunity for graduate students to gain valuable experience in presenting their research and writing.

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

Western

Midwest

Southeast

Eastern

Southwest