Imaginative Reading: Walking Into the Wardrobe 

Anderson University, Anderson, SC 
October 23-25, 2025

 In 2024, The Atlantic published a widely discussed article entitled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” in which author Rose Horowitz grapples with the fact that more and more college students, and adults in general, are reading less, either because they can’t perform the sustained reading that an entire volume requires or because other distractions are more appealing to them. And yet reading, particularly longer works, has many benefits: deepening empathy, strengthening neural pathways, and even lowering blood pressure. Many adult readers discovered their love of reading in childhood when they encountered imaginative worlds and characters through books. One of those enthralling novels that many discover their reading love through is C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of its publication, this conference welcomes papers relating to C.S. Lewis and The Inklings, as well as inquiries into the topics of imagination and reading. Some areas of inquiry could include, but are not limited to:

The Inklings

Where is reading seen in the Inklings’ work–in their personal papers and/or fiction? How does reading, or the imagination at work in the act of reading, enlighten or change the ways these works are read? What do the Inklings’ views (or any author’s views) on imagination tell us about their own acts of creation in writing? There have been works written about Lewis’ and Tolkien’s reading practices, but what about the other lesser-known Inklings?

Imagination

Is imagination only for certain types of people or age groups? How might the human imagination fit into a theological framework? Is imagination important (or even necessary) for spiritual formation? If children have the most familiarity with the imagination, how should we interpret Jesus’ message that unless “you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”? How does imagination fit into this call? Does imagination have a place in liturgy or in the corporate church setting? With many rediscovering the Ignatian practice of lectio divina, how does the spiritual application of imagination affect reading practices or vice versa?

Reading

Are there any ways to encourage students and adults to do “deep reading”? Can the novel form be rescued from extinction? Where does reading appear in novels, poems, plays, and short stories? How does the act of reading inform the characters or other elements of the genre? Does the popularity of “BookTok” hold any promise for the act of reading? How does positive social peer pressure encourage the act of reading? What about the lack of reading? Are there characters or themes that highlight a society or world without the act of reading? Is there a placement for reading? What does this replacement say about imagination, in turn? What is the connection that we have between reading and imagination? Can one be present and not the other?

Our speakers will include Dr. Austin Carty, author of The Pastor's Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry (Eerdmans); Dr. Rachel M. Roberts, co-author of Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age (Baker Academic); and our keynote speaker will be NY Times bestseller Patti Callahan Henry, author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis and Into the Wardrobe

“Growing Younger”: Literature and Childlike Faith

Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature

Covenant College

Lookout Mountain, GA

October 10-12, 2024

Keynote Speaker: Malcolm Guite (Poet and President of the George MacDonald Society)

To commemorate the bicentennial of George MacDonald—the nineteenth-century Scottish novelist, fantasist, theologian, and poet—this conference welcomes papers pertaining to his life, work, and legacy. More broadly, we invite papers that explore motifs of childlikeness, particularly as they relate to faith and imagination. MacDonald’s children’s stories, such as ThePrincess and the Goblin, The Golden Key, and The Light Princess, remain a favorite with fantasy readers of all ages, and MacDonald insists that he writes not “for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.” In fact, his interest in childlikeness pervades his creative and theological output, resurfacing in his realistic fiction, essays, and elsewhere. Human hearts, he recommends, “should always be growing younger.”

The child is a complexly evocative figure in scripture, literature, and culture. Christ exhorts his disciples to become like little children, and scripture abounds with imagery of God’s people as beloved, obedient, and dependent children. Conversely, Proverbs recommends strategies for curbing childish folly, and Paul encourages the Corinthians to put aside childish ways. While literature sometimes romanticizes childhood as a time of innocence, imagination, and endless potential, it also depicts the vulnerability, waywardness, and ignorance of children. Bildungsromane focus on the transition from childhood to adulthood as both a linear and a recursive process. Young Adult fiction enjoys popularity among adult readers, but suffers criticism from the literary elite. Narratives of secularization often characterize dissociation from religion as a cultural coming of age, while postsecularity might be construed as a return to former openness. Humans, it seems, wrestle with simultaneous desires for maturity and for childlikeness, and such internal conflict constitutes a suggestive analogue to the interplay between doubt and faith. Literature offers a medium for this wrestling, as well as imaginative alternatives to the false dichotomy between maturity and childlikeness.

After Disaster

Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature

Charleston Southern University

Charleston, SC

October 26-28, 2023

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Susan Felch, Professor Emerita, Calvin University

My [kitchen, syllabus] is a disaster. [Higher ed, the planet] faces impending disaster. [The responsible party of your choice] bungled the disaster response. We frequently invoke the word “disaster” to convey a sense of magnitude but also to imply events beyond our control. Questions of agency lie embedded in the word’s etymology—maybe it’s the stars’ fault—and yet we seem to believe that human response is possible and perhaps even imperative. Among the many possible responses to various disasters over the millennia, the literary offers the opportunity to slow down, to examine what has happened and what may be salvaged—and to develop and practice Christian virtues.