Humanities Stream
Fri 17 March (11:00 am to 8:30 pm) and Sat 18 March (9:00 am to 4:00 pm)
Magdalen College, Oxford
Senior conveners: Simon Horobin (English, Magdalen College), Siân Grønlie (English, St Anne’s College)
Conveners: Sarah Miller (English, Hertford College), Adyan Sharda (History, Mansfield College), Jessica Shirvanian-Wolfe (History, Lady Margaret Hall)
What does it mean to be a follower of Christ in the world of academia and within the humanities in particular? How is our scholarship and creativity inspired by our faith in the Creator God? What are the implications of faith in Christ for assurance in our identity, motivation in our studies, and freedom as a scholar? How can we respond with intellectual humility to the challenges of academic life? Join us as we grapple with these questions, encourage one another in prayer, and share experiences of how our faith impacts our academic life as researchers, lecturers, colleagues, and writers.
**Please note our eligibility criteria: This event is for University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes postgraduates, postdocs, academic staff and DCM Alumni.
If you do not fit these criteria, please complete this form and we will review your request.
Registration is now CLOSED.
Friday 17th March
11:00 am Registration in Magdalen College’s Old Kitchen Bar with coffee & tea
11:30 am Two Mini Talks in conversation with one another
Making the past accessible to town and gown - Andrew Dunning (English, Jesus College)
Public engagement with research, seeking to make the past accessible and use it to change the perspective of both scholars and everyday people, is not a new problem. It can be traced in Oxford to before the creation of its university. We will explore the Augustinian canons at St Frideswide’s Priory in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; scholars who also engaged in pastoral care, such as Henry Octavius Coxe (1811–81), Bodley’s Librarian; and ‘impact’ activities of the modern university. In different ways, all these cases approach engagement with history as essential to human wellbeing.
Belief and Emotion in Religions of the Roman World - Susan Dunning, (Classics, Somerville)
It is debated whether or not Romans (and practitioners of other ancient Mediterranean religions) could ‘believe’ in or feel emotional connections with their gods. Some prefer to avoid such characterizations of Roman religious experiences as forms of ‘Judaeo-Christian’ bias, and prioritize the role of ritual. While attempts to avoid this kind of bias are often well-intentioned, I argue that the most accurate (and charitable) approaches to the study of ancient religions must allow for expressions of belief in and emotional engagement with the divine that overlap in many respects with those found in Christianity.
1:00 pm Lunch in the Old Kitchen Bar
2:00 pm Sharing of poetry and prose selections
For this session, we invite each participant to bring a work that has been a source of inspiration in your development as a Christian scholar. What has encouraged you -- or challenged and convicted you -- and what might challenge and encourage other followers of Christ in the academy? Be it visual (a painting) or audible (music) or textual, be it poetry or prose, fiction or nonfiction, a quote or a story, a personal note or Scripture, we look forward to hearing from your experience.
3:30 pm Coffee & tea in the Old Kitchen Bar
4:00 pm Writing, teaching and applying the history of religion when not writing church history' - Steven Gunn (History, Merton College)
This talk will reflect on two aspects of life as a Christian historian, though one who does not mainly research or teach the history of religion. One is how to write about and teach students about people in the past in a way consonant with Christian values. The other is how to use an academic historian’s understanding of the past to help church members learn from the history of the church.
The following events are held jointly with all streams at New College.
5:30 pm Prayer in Magdalen College Auditorium
6:00 pm Walking together from Magdalen College to New College
6:15 pm Drinks at the New College Bar
6:45 pm Dinner in the New College Dining Hall
Saturday 18th March
9:00 am Registration in Magdalen College’s Old Kitchen Bar with coffee & tea
9:15 am Prayer in Magdalen College Chapel
9:45 am C.S. Lewis and the Personal Opinion Fallacy - Jason Lepojarvi, C.S. Lewis Associate Professor of Theology & Literature, George Fox University, USA
Authors sometimes become targets of critics who mistake the views expressed by their characters, plots, or atmosphere for the views held by the authors themselves. This talk reflects on this particular form of literary misreading and its contribution to authorial self-censorship or other problems, which for this talk we will call “The Personal Opinion Fallacy”. It is related to what C. S. Lewis and E. M. M Tillyard called “The Personal Heresy,” but is distinct from both. I wish to position Lewis - or my argument about Lewis - as a potential, albeit partial, solution to this form of misreading.
11:15 am Coffee & tea in the Old Kitchen Bar
11:30 am Workshop and discussion of selected readings from The Great Divorce, led by Simon Horobin (English, Magdalen College) and Jason Lepojarvi (C.S. Lewis Associate Professor of Theology & Literature, George Fox University, USA)
Readings will be from The Great Divorce by CS Lewis, specifically the Preface and Chapter 9 beginning with the entry of George MacDonald and including a discussion of the afterlife. This book with these selections can be found on Solo and we invite participants to review these readings in advance and to bring their own copy with notes to the session.
1:00 pm Lunch in the Old Kitchen Bar
2:00 pm Panel-led discussion - Chaired by Simon Horobin (English, Magdalen College), featuring Joel Bell (Hebrew & Jewish Studies, Christ Church), Jason Lepojarvi, C.S. Lewis Associate Professor of Theology & Literature, George Fox University, USA), and Audrey Southgate (English, Merton College)
3:30 pm Coffee & tea in the Old Kitchen Bar
4:00 pm Closing