All sessions take place in the Music Building, except where otherwise noted.

Wednesday, September 28

7:30pm Free Public Lecture, Northwest Building Auditorium

Thursday, September 29

8:45–9:15 Registration

9:15–9:30 Welcome + Opening Remarks

9:30–10:45 Session 1

Openers | Room 210 abstracts + bios 

  • Matthew Steem | G.K. Chesterton’s Defence of Leisure
  • Katharine Bubel | The Beatific Vision and the Reenchantment of Nature in Lewis’s Till We Have Faces

10:45–11:00 Break

11:00–12:15 Keynote Address | Room 210 

12:15–1:10 Lunch

1:15–2:25 Session 2

Talking Back | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Christopher S. Morrissey | Why Philosophy Needs Literature: The ‘Pure Play of Musement’ of C.S. Peirce’s ‘Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’ in C.S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Reason’
  • Norm Klassen | Lewis, Milton, Creatureliness, and Literary Creation

Undergrad Session | Room 201  abstracts + bios

  • Graham Boldt | The Crone Revisited: MacDonald’s Re-Invented Crone Figure
  • Madison Evans | Viewing Social Media through Values Emphasized and Explored by the Inklings
  • Leanne Witten | How Creativity Links Faith and Art in The Mind of the Maker and The Zeal of Thy House by Dorothy Sayers, and “Leaf by Niggle,” by J.R.R. Tolkien

2:25–2:45 Break

2:45–4:30 Session 3

Art for Good | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Joy Steem | A Call to Arts: George MacDonald’s Philosophy on Creativity
  • Laura Van Dyke | The “mere stress of glory”: Poetry and the Poet in Charles Williams’ Arthuriad

of Good + Evil | Room 201  abstracts + bios

  • John P. Bowen | “Looking along” and “Looking at” as a Key to Understanding C.S. Lewis’s Evangelism
  • Richard Angelo Bergen | “A Wrap of Horror”: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sub-creations of Evil
  • Rejoin session in Rm. 210 for Kirstin Johnson’s presentation (below)

MacDonald + Culture | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson | Literary Legacies, Contextual Art: Phantastes's Key of Cultural Challenge and Arthurian Reform

7:30-9:30 Play Reading (Freedom Hall, Robert N. Thompson Building)

Friday, September 30

9:00–10:50 Session 4

Personal Connections | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Ron Dart | The Art of Autobiography: C.S. Lewis and Bede Griffiths: Proto-Inklings
  • Paul J. Pastor | Kindred: Finding My Creative Path through C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams
  • Laurel Gasque | Owen Barfield: Friend and Teacher

Lewis + Music | Room 201  abstracts + bios

  • John MacInnis | The Importance of Music in C.S. Lewis’s Creative Life, Relationships, andWritings
  • Elizabeth Abbate | Myth Descending to Earth: Intersections of Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage and Lewis’s That Hideous Strength
  • Daryl Ritchot | “But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard”: Aslan, Pop Music and Educating the Moral Imagination 

10:50–11:10 Break

11:10–12:15 Session 5

Face-Self | Room 210 abstracts + bios

  • Rachel Telian | C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces: A Theological Exploration through the Visual Metabolization of Texts
  • Andrew TJ Kaethler | The Naked Self? C.S. Lewis and Human Identity

Love + Gender | Room 201  abstracts + bios

  • Joshua Randhawa | Is There Such a Thing as ‘Too Much Love’?: C.S. Lewis on Love’s Need for Will and Order
  • Sara L. Pearson | Charlotte Brontë in Narnia?: Intertextuality and Gender in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia 

12:15–1:10 Lunch

1:10–3:00 Session 6

Meanings | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Monika Hilder | ‘The Packed Reality of Heaven’: C.S. Lewis’s Imaginative Re-education of the Modern Pilgrim
  • Justin A. Bailey | Poetic Participation: Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction and the Rediscovery of Meaning
  • Barbara Bjelland | Portals to Another World: The Chronicles of Narnia and the Sacrament of Communion

Adaptations | Room 201  abstracts + bios

  • Aaron Frede | Reader Reception and Interpretation in the Film Adaptation of J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit
  • Jeff Tirrell | Staging The Great Divorce: Artistic Imagination as an Interpretive and Communicative Theatrical Lens for Understanding C.S. Lewis
  • Kevin Schut | Digital Inklings: Can the Christian Vision of Tolkien and Lewis Fit in a Video Game?

3:00–3:20 Break

3:20–4:00 Session 7 

And Music at the Close | Room 210  abstracts + bios

  • Richard G. Leonberger | Taking Swann's Road to Middle-Earth: The Myths, Music, and Words of Donald Swann and J.R.R. Tolkien
    • Richard G. Leonberger (voice) and John MacInnis (piano)