Yale Divinity School Ethics Imagination and the Art of Living

Thursday 9/19 | Cosponsored past Commonweal Mag

8:xxx AM	Welcome and Opening Remarks \| Beane Hall, Lewis Towers 13th Flooring (111 E Pearson St.)
8:45 AM-10:15 AM	Concurrent Session #1 A. The Catholic Imagination in Dystopian and Science Fiction \| Beane Hall, Lewis Towers 13th Floor David Baird Kimberly Dennis Fr. Stephen Gregg Phillip Henderson Chair: John Hawkins B. Women'due south Voices in Catholic Literary and Artistic Traditions \| Regents Hall, Lewis Towers 16th Floor Cynthia Wallace Lauren Barbato Timothy Dulle Chair: Colby Dickinson
x:30 AM-12:00 PM	Concurrent Session #2 A. CUA Contemporary Catholic Writers: I Reading Group'south Search for the "Radical Eye" in the Cosmic Literary Landscape \| Beane Hall, Lewis Towers 13th Floor Bethany Besteman Robert Sherron Jonathan Wanner Chair: Jessica Schnepp B. Fine art and Act: Performing the Catholic Imagination \| Regents Hall, Lewis Towers 16th Flooring Colin Cutler Eve Tushnet Renee Roden Chair: Michael P. White potato C. From "Parker'southward Back" to Fleabag: Modes of Self-Disclosure and Divine Encounter in Contemporary Narrative Fine art \| Wintrust Hall, Schreiber Centre 908 (sixteen East Pearson St) Michael O'Connell Jane Wageman Andrew Summerson Chair: Kathleen McNutt
12:00 PM-1:30 PM	Lunch \| Wintrust Hall, Schreiber Centre 908 Hosted by Commonweal Magazine Commonweal Editors in Conversation with Dana Gioia, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Philip Metres, and the Assembled Crowd.
1:30 PM-1:50 PM	Poetry Reading \| Beane Hall, Lewis Towers 13th Floor Emily Stoddard
two:00 PM-3:30 PM	Concurrent Session #3 A. Searching for God in the Postmodern Earth: Fiction, Poetry, and Boob tube \| Beane Hall, Lewis Towers 13th Floor Julianne Dolan Mitchell Emma McDonald Stephen Tardif Chair: Philip Metres B. Dynamics of Belief and Unbelief in Modern and Contemporary Fiction \| Regents Hall, Lewis Towers 16th Floor Bill Gonch Brent Little Trevor Williams Joseph Simmons, S.J. Chair: Cathy Buescher

Speaker Bios

	David Baird graduated with a BA in English literature from Wheaton College, IL, an MA in Theology and Philosophy from the University of Oxford, and an MLitt and PhD in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts from University of St. Andrews. His inquiry explores the intersections of theology and culture, with item attention to story and film. Electric current projects examine the early writings of G.K. Chesterton, the theology of Holy Saturday, and the theological significance of postapocalyptic zombie fiction. While at Oxford he served as president of the C.Due south. Lewis Gild, and he is currently banana subject editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies. He has published poetry with Sehnsucht and The Christendom Review, film reviews with Thinking Religion and The B.C. Catholic, and is currently working on his first novel.
	Lauren Barbato is a fiction writer, announcer, and kickoff-year doctoral student in Religion at Temple Academy. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers Academy-Newark, and has received scholarships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for Creative Arts, Virginia Middle for Creative Arts, and the Customs of Writers at Squaw Valley. Her fiction has appeared in The Hopkins Review, Blackbird, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Equally a announcer, she recently completed the book Faithful Providers: Stories and Reflections from the Frontlines of Abortion Care for Catholics for Choice. Both her writing and doctoral studies focus on the Catholic Church and reproductive justice.
	Bethany Besteman is completing a PhD in English Literature with a focus on the Renaissance at the Cosmic University of America where she completed her MA in English language language and literature. At Catholic she has served as the the Graduate Assistant Managing director of the Writing Centre and has taught undergraduate courses in writing and literature and collaborated on curriculum pattern equally the Assistant Director of the Writing Program. She currently serves as the secretarial assistant of the Contemporary Catholic Writers (CCW) reading and word grouping. Bethany also works as a tutor at the U.s.a. Naval Academy Writing Center. She received a BA in English language and History with honors from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
	Colin Cutler is a banjo-slinging wanderer currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at York St John University. He has a BA (Literature) from Patrick Henry Higher, an MA (English language) from UNC-Greensboro, and will exist teaching English at Universitatea Lucian Blaga (Romania) on a 2019 Fulbright. He has had articles published in Mythlore, Seabee Magazine, and The Armed forces Engineer, poetry published in Beyond the Walls, and his 3 albums tin can exist constitute on colincutlermusic.com. He has been active in several community arts projects, is an Army veteran, and is working on his side by side album as his MA dissertation: American Inferno volition be a re-setting of Dante's Inferno to the American heartland in a musical and dramatic implosion of past and future.
	Kimberly Dennis is a graduate student at Boston College in the School of Theology and Ministry, working toward a Master of Theological Studies degree. Her degrees in English (BA), and Education (MA), along with years of experience working in ministry building and educational settings contribute to her interest in the intersectionality of theology, literature, and instruction every bit they coalesce in the faith germination process. Earlier moving to the East Declension, she taught English and served as Director of Campus Ministry at a Cosmic high school in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where she was born and raised.
	Julianne Dolan Mitchell is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology and a Presidential Beau at the University of Notre Matriarch. Her inquiry focuses on philosophical theology and the intersection of theology and the arts. Her dissertation project seeks to construct a theology of human inventiveness building on the philosophy of Jacques Maritain. Prior to joining the doctoral program at Notre Dame she was a speechwriter in Washington, D.C.
	Tim Dulle is a doctoral candidate in the Theology Department at Fordham University, studying the History of Christianity. His piece of work focuses on the cultural history of Roman Catholics in the The states since World State of war II. His dissertation will consider how the life, teaching, and work of popular-artist nun Corita Kent (agile 1951-1986) intersect with and illuminate narratives about the experience of Roman Catholics in U.S. culture. His areas of involvement include U.Southward. religious history, the sociology of religion, Catholic Social Teaching, and more specifically, individuals such as Corita, Dorothy 24-hour interval, John Muir, Andrew Greeley, and (of course) Flannery O'Connor.
	Stephen A. Gregg is a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas, in Texas. After undergraduate studies in classics and in medieval studies at the University of the Southward, in Sewanee, Tennessee, he entered the Cistercian monastery in 2006. He completed a licentiate in patristic theology at the Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome and is now a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas, where he is writing a dissertation on divine beloved and beauty in the poetry of Edmund Spenser. At both the University of Dallas and the Cistercian Preparatory School, he has taught courses in English literature and grammar, music, Latin, philosophy, and theology.
	Brent Petty is a Lecturer in the Department of Catholic Studies at Sacred Eye University in Fairfield, CT, and holds a Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago and a M.T.S. from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry building. He is the co-editor (forth with Marking Bosco, S.J.) ofRevelation and Convergence: Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (Cosmic University of America Press, 2017). His virtually recent articles have appeared in Organized religion and Literature, Logos, and Philosophy and Theology.
	Emma McDonald is currently a doctoral candidate in Theological Ethics at Boston College. Her areas of interest include sexual ethics, the conscience, and the office of narrative in ethics. She received her Chief of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity Schoolhouse in 2019, where she studied ideals and literature. While at Yale, she explored how brusque stories and poetry could contribute to moral discourse and imagination, particularly in medical ethics. Emma likewise spent a semester interning atCommonwealand served as a Fiction Editor for the Yale Constitute of Sacred Music's literary arts journalLetters. She received a B.A. from Middlebury Higher in Religious Studies in 2016.
	Michael O'Connell is Associate Professor of Humanities at Siena Heights Academy in Adrian, Michigan. His scholarship focuses primarily on the intersections of religion, particularly Catholicism, and gimmicky literature. His essays - on Flannery O'Connor, Alice McDermott, J.F. Powers, and David Foster Wallace - have appeared in Renascence, Religion and the Arts, American Catholic Studies, and Christianity and Literature, and he has a chapter on acedia in The Pale Male monarch in the forthcoming "David Foster Wallace and Religion: Essays on Faith and Fiction." He is currently working on a study of violence in contemporary American Catholic fiction.
	Renée Darline Roden is a New York City-based author and playwright. Renée has a B.A. in theatre and theology from the University of Notre Dame, where she also received her M.T.S. in systematic theology in 2018. Renée's theatre career began by writing her first play at historic period ten: a single folio with no dialogue, written on a 1985 IBM Actionwriter 1 Typewriter. Every bit a performer, she has appeared with the Tony Honour-winning Minneapolis Children's Theatre Visitor, The Playwright'southward Center, Upright Egg Theatre Company, andthe egg theatre at the Theatre Royal Bath. Equally a playwright, her work has appeared at the University of Notre Dame, Open Booth Theatre, the Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place, and Triskelion Arts. Her writing has also appeared in Americ a, Commonweal, How lround, Church building Life Journal, and Veritas Journal. She has taught theatre to children and young adults at Stages Theatre Visitor, Providence University and Cristo Rey New York High School. She logs sightings of grace at Sweet Unrest, which one reader praised: "looks like it was designed past a grandma."
	Jessica Schnepp is a PhD candidate at The Catholic Academy of America where she is writing a dissertation on grotesque narrative construction in the novels of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Anthony Burgess, and Evelyn Waugh. Her commodity, "The Catholic Grotesque: Antoni Gaudí'due south Sagrada Familia and Flannery O'Connor'southward Wise Blood," was recently published in English Studies. At Cosmic University, she has served as Graduate Banana Managing director of the Writing Plan and in the Intensive English Plan and has taught undergraduate writing, literature, and ESL. Jessica founded the CUA Contemporary Cosmic Writers Grouping (CCW) after attending the offset Catholic Imagination conference, hosting 40+ book discussions and public events featuring twenty+ writers, scholars, and filmmakers at Catholic Academy between 2015-2019. She currently lives in New York where, in between conferences, she hibernates with her dissertation-in-progress and stays involved with CCW in an advisory capacity.
	Joseph Simmons, SJ, is a priest of the Midwest province of the Gild of Jesus, currently studying in England. Joe completed an MA in Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, focusing his thesis on Charles Taylor's "buffered self" and the verifiability of religious experience. Later on Joe studied theology at Boston College. His licentiate thesis, Via Litteraria: Marilynne Robinson'due south Theology Through a Literary Imagination, drew on William Lynch to articulate a theology of the Christian imagination. Joe is currently pursuing a doctorate in modern theology at the Academy of Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward (Christ Church). Joe is exploring the fertile place where belief and unbelief touch in the writing of Virginia Woolf, Julian Barnes, Marilynne Robinson, and Graham Greene.
	Robert Sherron is a PhD student at the Catholic University of America. His enquiry focuses on 20th and 21st century religious literature.
	Emily Stoddard is a poet and writer in Michigan. Her writing appears in Ruminate, Tupelo Quarterly, Radar, Dark Mountain, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Pilgrimage, Common cold Mountain Review, New Poetry from the Midwest, Whitefish Review, and elsewhere. Every bit a leader of the Amherst Writers & Artists Method, she founded Voice & Vessel, a studio that supports fellow writers through workshops and coaching. More than at www.emilystoddard.com.
	Andrew Summerson is pastor of St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Whiting, Indiana, where he is lecturer in theology and philosophy at nearby Calumet College of St. Joseph. He holds a doctorate in Patristic Theology from the Pontifical Patristic Institute "Augustinianum" in Rome. He has also been a guest commentator for papal events for Vatican Radio and has published widely on the Fathers of the Church and the Christian Due east.
	Stephen Tardif is an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto where he teaches in the Christianity & Civilisation Program. He has been a fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard Academy and a visiting scholar at the Academy of Arts and Sciences. His publications include manufactures and essays on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, and James Joyce, and his current volume project explores the connexion between literary form and cocky-formation in Victorian England. He likewise serves as the co-editor of The Hopkins Quarterly.
	Eve Tushnet is the author of Gay and Cosmic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Religion (Ave Maria Press, 2014), Amends: A Novel (CreateSpace, 2015), and Voluntary Compliance (Clickworks Printing, forthcoming). She also edited the album Christ'southward Body, Christ's Wounds: Staying Catholic When You've Been Hurt in the Church (Wipf & Stock, 2018). She writes and speaks on topics ranging from men's figure skating to the Eucharistic devotion of people on the margins, and from friendship every bit kinship to dominance in horror films. Eve lives in her hometown of Washington, DC. Hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.
	Jane Wageman is a teacher and writer living in South Bend, Indiana. She received an MA in English from the University of Notre Dame, where she completed a thesis on the part of sympathy and 19th-century plot structures in Zadie Smith's piece of work. Her current research focuses on family narrative and identity formation in contemporary fiction. She is likewise completing a novel nigh post-college adults, rootedness, and the challenges of forming community.
	Cynthia R. Wallace is Associate Professor of English language at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where she specializes in Cosmic writers, researching and teaching on the intersections of religion, ideals, gender, and race in contemporary literature and theory. Her work has appeared in the journals Literature and Theology, Religion and Literature, Christianity and Literature, Contemporary Literature, and African American Review and in collections on Vatican 2 and Denise Levertov. Her book Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering was published in 2016 by Columbia Academy Press.
	Jonathan Wanner is a doctoral candidate of Renaissance literature at the Catholic Academy of America. His chief academic interests involve Shakespeare and the Metaphysical Poets, especially their ties to prayer and mysticism; other topics of consideration include theories of poetic knowledge, ironic logic, and pedagogy of rhetoric and composition. When he is non didactics, he enjoys writing poetry and plays.
	Trevor B. Williams currently pursues a Ph.D. in Theology at Villanova University and is interested in Christian anthropology and symbols of spiritual death. He finds inspiration in comparative projects that illuminate sources from the Catholic tradition, especially equally they tin chronicle to Pope Francis' call for an "authentic humanism." Trevor recently published an article on David Burrell's critique of theodicy (New Blackfriars), completed a volume chapter on the in-game cosmology of the Elderberry Scrolls V: Skyrim, and is working on another chapter that treats The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as a postmodern danse macabre. Last twelvemonth, his essay "Peace and Joy in Augustine" placed as a runner-up in the Joy and Adolescent Organized religion & Flourishing Essay Contest (Yale Center for Organized religion & Civilization). He comes to this briefing with a newspaper that touches on literary expressions of unbelief and how they can help liturgy to characterize our secularity.