Christianity and Culture: The Interaction of Faith and Literature through the Ages

2015 Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton TX
October 1-3, 2015

2015 is a significant year for literature and Christianity because it is the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s publication of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), as well as the 50th anniversary of Eliot’s death (1965). His two essays “The Idea of a Christian Society” and “Notes towards the Definition of Culture,” published together as the book Christianity and Culture, have proven significant contributions to today’s understanding of the Christian’s role in society. Eliot’s voice cannot be ignored in discussions of culture, the arts, and the Christian’s relationship to them, and during the 2015 Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, we would seek to hear echoes of that voice in fresh and diverse ways.

The upcoming 2015 SWCCL will have as its theme the exploration of those intersections of Christianity and Culture in a broad sense, with special attention given, of course, to the literary arts. This conference invites those who seek to explore the role that Christianity has played in shaping the arts of Western culture in particular. The issues associated with the faith’s influence on literature and, conversely, literature’s influence on the faith are as old as the founding of the Church; they have also been fraught with controversy and debate. (How should Christians read literature, secular or sacred? What impact should Christians see to have in the arts?) Proposals for individual panel presentations, full panels, roundtable discussions, and poster sessions that address issues related to the conference theme are welcome. Possible ideas include:

• “The Idea of a Christian Society”
• “Notes towards the Definition of Culture”
• The Bible in Literature
• The Bible as Literature
• Secular Writers and Christian Readers
• Christian Writers and Secular Readers
• Christian Interpreters, “Christian” Interpretations
• Art and Cultural Transformation
• Story in an Age of Narrative Collapse
• Christians and “the Word”
• A “Christian” Aesthetic
• Creator, Creation, and Creativity
• Conversions – Literary and Otherwise
• Christianity and Counterculture
• Nonfiction and the Imagination
• Imagining One’s Life
• Poetics and Rhetoric
• Poetics versus Rhetoric
• Genre Theory
• Parable Studies
• Art and Contemplation
• Philosophy of Literature
• Creation and the Body
• Love, Beauty, and Judgment
• The Incarnation and the Imagination
• Sacramental Theology and the Imagination
• Literature and the Sermon
• Influential Christian Cultural Critics (e.g. Inklings & Sayers, Niebuhr, Newbigin, Ratzinger, Schmemann, Wojtyła)
• Christian Literary Criticism

Keynote Speakers:
Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey
Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Honors College Distinguished Senior Fellow, Director of Manuscript Research in Scripture and Tradition

David Lyle Jeffrey has been Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities at Baylor University since 2000. He is also Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Ottawa, and has been Guest Professor at Peking University (Beijing) since 1996 and Honorary Professor at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing) since 2005.

Dr. Jeffrey is known as a medievalist and as a scholar of biblical tradition in Western Literature and art. His books include A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (1992), The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (1975); Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (1984); English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley (1987; 1994; 2000); The Law of Love: English Spirituality in the Age of Wyclif (1988; 2001); People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (1996); Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (2003). He has edited William Cowper: Selected Poetry and Prose (2006) and co-authored The Bible and the University (2007). Most recently he has published Christianity and Literature: Philosophical Foundations and Critical Practice (IVP, 2011), co-authored by Gregory Maillet, and at press are The King James Bible and the World it Made (2011) and Luke: a Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, forthcoming).


Dr. Luke Ferreter
Associate Professor

Luke Ferretter wrote his PhD dissertation on postmodern literary theory and Christian theology at the University of St. Andrews. He has published Towards a Christian Literary Theory (Palgrave, 2003), Louis Althusser (Routledge, 2006), Sylvia Plath's Fiction: A Critical Study (2010) and The Glyph and the Gramophone: D. H. Lawrence's Religion (2013). His research interests include: Sylvia Plath; D. H. Lawrence; J. D. Salinger; Virginia Woolf; Zelda Fitzgerald; contemporary critical theory; postmodernism; 20th and 21st century women's writing; 20th and 21st century literature and theology; the Bible as literature. He welcomes applications for graduate study in any of these areas.

The deadline for proposal submissions is March 16th, 2015. Submit all proposals via the online system (link). We will work to respond to all submission by May 20th. If you have not heard back from us by that time, please contact us.
Early Online Registration is $85 per professional ($90 at the door) or $55 per graduate student ($60 at the door) and includes the Friday lunch and dinner meal. In addition, all registrants must be current members of Conference on Christianity and Literature. The individual membership rates are $35 per year or $60 for two years.

You have two options to register:

Register online now or register and pay in person at the conference (Subject to seating availability).

Individuals are responsible to reserve their own accommodations, though we have reserved a block of rooms at a local hotel to and from which we will provide shuttle service during the day. Please see the Hotel Information page for more information.

Please direct any questions to:
Toby F. Coley, PhD
2015 Conference Chair