Events
Upcoming Events
Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023
The 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Inklings Institute of Canada. Join Drs. Monika Hilder, Stephen Dunning, and Laura Van Dyke.
TWU Library Glass Room or join on-line:
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Past Events
Tuesday, March 21, 2023.
“Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born to be King.” Join us as Professor Jan Lermitte leads us in a table-read performance of the Lenten play “The Man of Sorrows.”
TWU Library Glass Room or join on-line:
7 – 8:30 p.m
Thursday, February 16, 2023.
“Charles Williams and the Theology of Romantic Love.” Drs. Laura Van Dyke and Stephen Dunning.
TWU Library Glass Room or join on-line:
7 – 8:30 p.m
Thursday, January 19, 2023.
“Chesterton’s Philosophy of Being in Wonder.” Matthew Steem,
TWU Library Glass Room & on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m
“The Symbolic Geography of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.” Richard Angelo Bergen.
TWU Library Glass Room & on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m
Wednesday, October 19, 2022.
“C. S Lewis: Nordic Myth and Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung.” Ron Dart.
TWU Library Glass Room & on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m
Saturday, October 1, 2022.
“Grand Opening of The Dr. Hans and Colleen Kouwenberg C.S. Lewis and Friends Collections Reading Room.”
President Mark Husbands, Provost Todd Martin, Librarian Darcy Gullacher, Colleen Kouwenberg, co-directors Stephen Dunning and Monika Hilder, Scholarship Winners Jonathan Daley and Bret Van Den Brink
TWU Norma Alloway Library
1 p.m.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022.
“Let’s Talk Fairy Tales & Happily Ever After.” Monika Hilder, Book Launch for Letters to Annie. TWU Library Glass Room & on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m.
May 10, 2022
Christianity & Literature Study Group, ACCUTE, Congress May 2022, Virtual Format.
The Inklings and Philology
Organizer: Greg Maillet (Crandall)
Chair: Katherine Quinsey (Windsor)
James Doelman (Brescia), “A ‘fey mood’ and a ‘forlorn hope’ in The Lord of the Rings.”
Greg Maillet (Crandall), “Fayryȝe or Fay-Magic: What Tolkien Learned from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
Brenton Dickieson (UPEI), “The Underlying Thought of Old Solar in C.S. Lewis’ Ransom Cycle.”
Old Solar and Old Trees: Revisioning History
Chair: Tina Trigg (The King’s)
Monika Hilder (Trinity Western), “Verbicide or Human Flourishing: C. S. Lewis’s Philology as a Key to Veritas, Libertas, Humanitas..”
Monday, March 21, 2022.
Inklings Institute of Canada with Gender Studies Institute: Book Launch: “Tolkien, Heroism, & Politics” with Dr. Jonathan Nauman and “Louise Imogen Guiney’s Connections with Tolkien on the New Epoch” with Dr. Holly Faith Nelson.
TWU Library Glass Room & on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m.
“Roger Lancelyn Green: Orphaned Inkling.”
Ron Dart. TWU, on-line.
7 – 8:30 p.m. Monday, November 15, 2021.
“Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘The Other Six Deadly Sins.’” Professor Jan Lermitte.
TWU Fosmark Graduate Collegium and on-line attendance.
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Thursday, October 21, 2021.
“Media and Myth: The Inklings and the Digital World.” Kevin Schut.
TWU Norma Alloway Library and on-line attendance.
7 – 8:30 p.m.
May 27-29, 2021
Christianity & Literature Study Group, ACCUTE, Congress 2021, Virtual Format.
Environmental Relations / Narratives of Nature
Katharine Bubel, Laura Van Dyke (Trinity Western), “The Liminal Land of Glome in Lewis’s Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.”
The Inklings: Inner Relations
Monika Hilder (Trinity Western), “Darwin or Ptolemy? Asking Mr. C. S. Lewis About the Divided Human Consciousness.”
Brett Roscoe (The King’s), “The Fear of the Lord in C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Brenton Dickieson (UPEI), “The Personal Heresy and C.S. Lewis’ Autoethnographic Instinct: An Invitation to Intimacy in Literature and Theology.”
Monday March 8, 2021.
“Under the Moon’s Healing Influence: Women's Health in George MacDonald's Fairy Tales and Short Stories.” University of British Columbia PhD student Ariel Little with commentator University of Victoria Professor Dr. Lisa Surridge. On the occasion of International Women’s Day. TWU Digital Coffee House.
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Monday, November 9, 2020.
“Celebrating Creative Writing in Community.” Monika Hilder; Readings of original work from Aurora Sarchet, and Bret Van Den Brink. Digital Coffee House, TWU.
Thursday, January 30, 2020.
“Dorothy L. Sayers on Work: ‘The Thing One Lives to Do.’" Join us for an evening with Professor Jan Lermitte. TWU Fosmark Graduate Collegium
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Thursday, November 14, 2019.
"Creative Writing and the Soul Story." Join us for an evening with Fantasy Author Jonathan Fehr. TWU Fosmark Graduate Collegium
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, September 13, 2019.
Join us for an evening with Malcolm Guite: Poet-singer, Scholar & Anglican Priest—“The Word Made Fresh: Art, Faith, and a Flourishing Culture.” TWU Fosmark Graduate Collegium
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Monday, September 23, 2019
“C.S. Lewis and the Jewish Imagination.” Dr. Andrew Barron, Director of Jews for Jesus Canada, will present his thought-provoking research showing Lewis’ influence in the personal journeys of Jewish people who became followers of Jesus. TWU Fosmark Graduate Collegium,
7 – 8:30 p.m.
March 7, 2019
“The Perilous Lot of the Christian Artist.” Dr. Stephen Dunning, TWU. Fosmark Graduate Collegium,
7 – 8:30 p.m.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
“’Are Women Human?’: Dorothy L. Sayers.” Jointly sponsored with Gender Studies Institute, TWU. Professor Jan Lermitte, TWU. Fosmark Graduate Collegium,
7 – 8:30 p.m.
November 13, 2018
Inklings Institute of Canada, “George Grant: Canada’s C.S. Lewis.” Professor Ron Dart
7 - 8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018:
"Inklings Institute of Canada: Book Night: The Tao of Right and Wrong: Rediscovering Humanity’s Moral Foundations." UBC emeritus professor Dr. Dennis Danielson & TWU’s Dr. Chris Morrissey and student Zihao Wang. TWU Fosmark Collegium,
7 - 8:30 p.m. Poster
Tuesday, September 25, 2018:
Inklings Institute of Canada, "Allegory in Narnia, or being Edmund and finding Jesus." Richard Bergen, Ph.D. Candidate, TWU: Fosmark Graduate Collegium,
7 – 8:30 p.m. Poster
May 11—June 9, 2018.
“Tolkien.” By Ron Reed. Pacific Theatre, Vancouver B.C.
http://pacifictheatre.org/season/2017-2018-season/mainstage/tolkien
February 13, 2018
C.S. Lewis on Love? Eros? Friendship?
Joshua Randhawa, MAIH student, and Dr. Jason Lepojärvi
January 31, 2018: “Creative Writing with Dr. Matthew Dickerson”
Dr. Mathew Dickerson has published works of fantasy literature, medieval historical fiction, and creative narrative non-fiction. He read excerpts of his own creative works, and share reflections on his approach(es) to creative writing (both fiction and non-fiction) as well as experiences with publishing.
October 18, 2017: “Evelyn Underhill and C.S. Lewis: Literary and Contemplative Affinities.”
Professor Ron Dart
Sept. 18, 2017: “Transhumanism?”
Madison Evans and Professor Bob Doede
June 12 2017
SFU’s Philosophers’ Café & Inklings Institute of Canada/Department of English Event.
What do you think about C.S. Lewis’s views on love? Moderator: Jason Lepojarvi.
May 27 2017
Christianity & Literature Study Group, ACCUTE, Congress 2017, Ryerson University, Toronto.
Spiritual Warfare in Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy:
Norm Klassen (Waterloo), “Language and the Paradox of Nature and Grace: Spiritual Warfare in That Hideous Strength.”
Monika Hilder (Trinity Western), “With a Gun or a Prayer? Paradoxical Warfare in C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy.”
Greg Maillet (Crandall), “Logres, Logos, and the Spiritual Language of Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.”
Mar 8, 2017
SFU’s Philosophers’ Café & Inklings Institute of Canada/Department of English Event.
Mythology and Science: Intersections Moderator: Monika Hilder.
In his essay “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” C. S. Lewis points out that the “myth” of “popular Evolution” (or “Evolutionism”) predates the biological theory, and he argues that science met the “imaginative need” that already existed. Lewis speaks of the science of evolution as the best hypothesis on the market, and at the same time asks us to rethink the “deep reasons for its popularity.” Why did we want evolution? What is the nature of myth, narrative, meta-narrative, the philosophy of modern science, and the various ways of knowing? As fantasy author Madeleine L’Engle encouraged her readers, we must “live into the questions that we all have”: “Some of these questions don’t have finite answers, but the questions themselves are important. Don’t stop asking, and don’t let anybody tell you the questions aren’t worth it. They are.”
February 20 2017: “Celebrating Story: Creative Responses to the Fiction of George MacDonald.”
Come out to enjoy students’ creative writing responses to MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes!
September 28 – 30, 2016: “Arts & The Inklings.”
A joint conference of the Inklings Institute of Canada and the School of the Arts, Media + Culture Trinity Western University. This interdisciplinary arts conference invites presentations on topics relating to and stimulated by the work of the group of Oxford authors known as The Inklings—including C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as friends such as Dorothy L. Sayers, and their literary mentors, earlier writers such as George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton. Keynote Speaker: Dr. Michael Ward, University of Oxford, Author of Planet Narnia.
March 2016 - Ron Dart: "C.S. Lewis and Bede Griffiths: Chief Companions on the Faith Journey"
Lewis, in the final chapter of Surprised by Joy, called Griffiths “my chief companion…..with whom I kept up a copious correspondence”. Griffiths was, probably, the most important Christian contemplative theologian of the 20th century who engaged in Christian-Hindu dialogue. This lecture reflected on the layered friendship between Lewis and Griffiths.
Ron Dart has taught in the political science, philosophy, religious studies department at University of the Fraser Valley since 1990. Ron has published more than 30 books, and is on the national executive of the Thomas Merton Society of Canada. Ron corresponded with Bede Griffiths.
Listen to the Lecture.
January 2016 - Stephen Dunning taught a four -week course for the School of Life and Ministry (SOLAM) at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church (ANIC).
He explored the role art plays in the spiritual development of both the audience and the artist and examined selected works by C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers.
November 2015 - "Owen Barfield on Idolatry"
Laurel Gasque discussed, “My Friendship with Owen Barfield.” Dr. Havers presented “Barfield’s Biblical Critique of Idolatry”; Dr. Doede and Dr. Dunning presented “Nietzsche and Barfield: Overcoming Idolatry.”
October 2015 -"Tea Party for Alice in Wonderland’s 150th Birthday"
“The Logic of Alice” and “The Logic of George MacDonald.” Tea served with presentations, followed by discussion led by Drs. Chris Morrissey, Monika Hilder, and Stephen Dunning.
September 2015 - “Why the Inklings Matter Today.”
Discussion led by English professors Monika Hilder and Stephen Dunning.
May - June 2015- The Oxford Inklings: Christianity and Literature Study Group Sessions, Congress, Ottawa, Ontario
Inklings Institute of Canada sessions on the Oxford Inklings. How did they critique culture in their day through literature—for example, in the areas of science, politics, theology, social justice, education, and the environment—and how might their insights prove potentially transformative for our contemporary world? How and why did these authors ignite hearts and minds? What is their invaluable legacy? Congress Website
May 2015 - The Inkwell Workshops, sponsored by The Word Guild. Regent College. A full and enriching day of writing workshops. TWU professor and Co-Director of Inklings Institute of Canada Dr. Monika Hilder gave two workshops: 1. “Writing as an Act of the Moral Imagination: Representations of Goodness in C.S. Lewis’s and George MacDonald’s Fiction.” and 2. “The Use of Gender Metaphor in C.S. Lewis.”
March 2015 - Two public lectures by Jason Lepojärvi, Research Fellow in Theology, St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford, on C. S. Lewis's theology of love.
"Aslan's Mother: C. S. Lewis's Theological Blind Spot?" (Regent College)
"Agape versus Eros: C. S. Lewis and Anders Nygren on the Meaning of Love" (UBC)
January/February 2015 - "C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton: Soul Friends"
Ron Dart, St. Matthew's Anglican Church
C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton were, without doubt, two of the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th Century. Both men held each other's writings in high esteem -- each, in their own spheres of influence, grappled with the meanings of their faith journey and its implications for public life. This lecture series examined why Lewis and Merton can be considered saints and fellow travelers for all seasons of our faith pilgrimage.
January 2015: "Adaptations of The Hobbit: Killing the book?"
Drs. Chris Morrissey, Ned Vankevich, Stephen Dunning, and Monika Hilder discussed J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and various media adaptations
October 2014: "The Inklings and Psychoanalysis."
Psychology professor Chuck MacKnee, English professors Holly Nelson, Monika Hilder, Stephen Dunning, and MAIH student Mr. Nicolas Noble gave presentations on various Inklings writers and their views on Freud and psychoanalysis.
Special Guest, Damon Calderwood, Actor for C.S. Lewis in Freud's Last Session, made a Guest Appearance. Listen to the recording.
September 2014: "For the Glory of God and the Love of Man: Why the Inklings Matter Today",Monika Hilder, TWU Alumni Weekend, English Dept. Reunion.
August 2014: “Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy,”
Magdalen College, Oxford.
Chair: Stephen Prickett. Drs. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, Malcolm Guite, and Monika Hilder were among the plenary speakers at the George MacDonald Society Conference.
January 2014: “The Freud-Lewis Connection: Is Life Mere Sex is There ‘Joy Beyond the Walls of the World’?”
Public lecture for, New Westminster Public Library, with Monika Hilder.
November 2013: “C.S. Lewis Birthday Party”
An evening of fellowship that included readings, a panel discussion, and film with Drs. Chris Morrissey, Monika Hilder, and Stephen Dunning.
November 2013: "Jack's Joy in the Journey."
C. S. Lewis Birthday Party, Trinity Western University Bookstore, with Richard Bergen.
November 2013: C.S. Lewis Symposium and Commemoration,
Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, with Drs. Judith Wolfe, Malcolm Guite, and Michael Ward.
October 10 and 17, 2013: CBC Ideas (Radio 1) Inklings Documentary
Inklings Institute of Canada members contribute to documentary, “C.S. Lewis and the Inklings,” on CBC Radio IDEAS.
Part one: Alister McGrath; Monika Hilder; a Canadian father and his two daughters sharing their love of the Chronicles of Narnia; and Malcolm Guite. http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/09/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings/
Part two: Alister McGrath, Malcolm Guite, Monika Hilder, and Ralph C. Wood. http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/17/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings-part-2-1/
Regent College, Public Lectures
July 2013: Ralph Wood, "G.K. Chesterton and Christopher Hitchens: Old Convert vs. New Atheist"
July 2013: Malcolm Guite, "The Word Made Flesh: Christ and the Imagination"
June 2013: Alister McGrath, "The Life and Impact of C.S. Lewis"
June 2013: Congress 2013, Victoria B.C., through (allied with), Co-Directors, Monika Hilder (Chair) and Stephen Dunning ,“C. S. Lewis’s Puddleglum: the Movement Beyond Mere Stoical Resistance”, with colleagues Murray J. Evans, “C. S. Lewis and Coleridge, Revisited", and Mervyn Nicholson, “Why C. S. Lewis Isn’t a Christian”, participated in a session dedicated to the Belfast-born author, C. S. Lewis.