Today I presented at the 2021 Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature. It was great to see old friends and hear some in-progress work. I invariably started grouping the papers I heard into the categories of the covenantal model. You can find the summaries of ten papers below.
TRANSCENDENCE
- A paper on Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers argued that the agnostic representation of a rapture event captures our secular age’s relationship to the transcendent.
- A paper on Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book argued that prayer functions as a way to make a discarnate and transcendent God present.
HIERARCHY
- A paper on Fyodor Dostoevsky argued that the Russian novelist’s preoccupation with icons primarily focused on helping us see the imago Dei in every human being.
- A paper on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight emphasized Mary, the Mother of God, who functions as the knight’s valiant spiritual defender.
ETHICS
- A paper on Wordsworth’s “Salisbury Plain” argued that through an intertextual connection to Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Wordsworth outlines a way of adequately sympathizing and making oneself vulnerable.
- A paper on three science fiction authers argued that accountability was essential to avoiding the traps of post-colonial encounters.
SANCTIONS
- The keynote was on cancel culture and argued that a proper view of the human (i.e., a Christian perspective) helps prevent the impulse to criticize and demonize others.
- A paper on Milton’s “Nativity Ode” argued that Christ’s coming began to disenchant the world and break the spell of evil magic.
- A paper on To Kill a Mockingbird argued that interpersonal forgiveness is the proper way to mend communities, but that unresolvable evil persists.
SUCCESSION
- A paper on Doomsday Book argued that the bells in the book call us to festival time rather than empty time.
- A paper on two other works by Connie Willis argued that sacramental spaces help do more than help us remember; they make meaning come alive.
Experiments in Criticism 