Houston Fall Conference Academic Roundtable
C.S. Lewis Foundation
“The Forge of Friendship: Tolkien, Lewis, and the Creative Impulse”
Dates: November 8-10, 2013
The Academic Roundtable at the C.S. Lewis Foundation Houston Fall Conference, November 8-10, 2013, will be a community of interdisciplinary scholarly engagement and discussion within the broader context of the Conference theme, The Forge of Friendship: Tolkien, Lewis, and the Creative Impulse.
Each Roundtable will consist of scholars from various fields who will meet in breakout sessions during the Conference. Depending upon the number of participants in the Academic Roundtable, more than one Roundtable group will be formed to meet during the breakout session times.
Each particular Roundtable group will be limited to twelve scholars, where each participant will read his or her paper to the Roundtable for discussion and feedback during the sessions. All papers, limited to a 20-minute presentation time, shall be scholarly in nature with the author’s unique thesis clearly set within the context of existing scholarship on the subject matter.
After each presentation there will be a brief time of discussion prompted by the other members of the Roundtable. Each member of the Roundtable is expected to participate in each session and fully engage in the discussion.
The theme of the conference points to the unique power of friendship to incubate and nurture creativity that shapes and re-shapes culture. This is the second of three events planned by the C.S. Lewis Foundation to celebrate the life and legacy of C.S. Lewis in the 50th anniversary year of his death.
This conference will highlight the community of relationships initiated through the friendship of Lewis and Tolkien that encouraged a significant body of work in many fields of study. Papers that explore the writings of the Inklings, the nature of friendship and creativity, the relationship between imagination and reason, the importance of culture-making, the human as a “sub-creator” made in the Image of God, and related topics will be welcome for submission. Academics from every discipline are invited to participate.
Each participant must submit a 300 word abstract of their proposal by August 1, 2013. After a peer review of the abstracts, acceptance notices will be given by September 1, 2013. Arrangements necessary for attendance at the Conference can be made by visiting the C.S. Lewis Foundation website: www.cslewis.org.
Contact: Scott B. Key, Ph.D., Dir. Academic Roundtable, C.S. Lewis Foundation
roundtable@cslewis.org | www.cslewis.org/roundtable
Please Note: the Academic Roundtable begins on Friday morning, November 8th, and takes place before the main conference begins that evening.
It runs concurrent with the other Early Arrival Track Sessions – the Inklings 101 Track and the Writers Track.
There is a separate registration package for attending the Academic Roundtable that includes tuition for the Main Conference. For more details, see our Registration page.