About this Event
Acclaimed science fiction writer J.G. Ballard once said that the task of the science fiction writer is to look just around the corner into the future to see what is coming and to warn his fellows.
In this respect, the genre bears an unmistakable relationship to prophecy. Therefore, one could regard the science fiction writings of C.S. Lewis as a species of prophetic utterance.
Indeed, his Cosmic Trilogy is a fleshing out of the stark warnings which he made in his classic philosophical treatise, The Abolition of Man; in which, Lewis diagnoses a—if not the— principal malady of modernity: man’s seeming abandonment of a belief in the reality of objective truth. In Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, we see depictions of the consequences of this abandonment. We witness noble attempts to resist it; and, finally, we see the Babel-like catastrophe and comedy of errors which results from man’s attempt to claim for himself such godlike powers.
This symposium will evaluate the prescience of Lewis’s warnings—in his Cosmic Trilogy, and in The Abolition of Man, specifically, but also in his work more broadly—in the light of 20th and 21st century innovations in philosophy, education, science, and technology.
Mon 16th CHAPEL
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
REGISTRATION & COFFEE
🕑: 09:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Welcome & Introduction & Opening Blessing
Host: Stuart Horner, City Director, CSLI Belfast
🕑: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Key Note Address
Host: Rev Dr Malcolm Guite, Girton College, Cambridge
Info: Main Chapel - The Good Haunting: A tale of Britain & Logres - Reflections on That Hideous Strength, The Abolition of Man & my own Arthuriad
🕑: 11:00 AM - 11:20 AM
COFFEE BREAK
🕑: 11:20 AM - 11:45 AM
Pulling Down Deep Heaven
Host: Rev Christopher West, University of Aberdeen
Info: Main Chapel - Re-reading Belbury for the Digital Age
🕑: 11:45 AM - 12:10 PM
The Question of What Humanity is Going to be
Host: Professor Melody Green, Urbana Theological Seminary
Info: Main Chapel - That Hideous Strength & the Language of AI
🕑: 12:10 PM - 12:35 PM
Screwtape GPT
Host: Rev David Nixon, Independent Scholar
Info: Main Chapel - Spiritual warfare in the 21st Century illustrated from C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy
🕑: 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
LUNCH
🕑: 02:00 PM - 02:25 PM
Men Without Chests & the New Babel
Host: Alexander Roth, Villanova University/Oxford University
Info: CHAPEL - C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength as Prophetic Preludes to Pope Loe XIV's Magnifica Humanitas
🕑: 02:25 PM - 02:50 PM
Authentic Artificiality
Host: Dr Paul Coulter, Centre for Christianity in Society
Info: CHAPEL - The Enslavement of the Sovereign Self
🕑: 02:50 PM - 03:15 PM
Rather Like Spanish
Host: Dr Sharon Jones, Stranmillis University College
Info: CHAPEL - The intriguing Hispanic hints in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength
🕑: 03:15 PM - 03:45 PM
COFFEE BREAK
🕑: 03:45 PM - 04:10 PM
The Waterfall & the Void
Host: Dr Denise Vasiliu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza Romania
Info: CHAPEL - C.S. Lewis's Tao and Sartre's Being & Nothingness through Iris Murdoch's Sartre: Romantic Rationalist
🕑: 04:10 PM - 04:35 PM
Responding to the Conditioners
Host: Dr Scott Moore, Baylor University, USA
Info: CHAPEL - C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man & Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good
🕑: 04:35 PM - 05:00 PM
Language in the Trilogy
Host: Prof John Gillespie, UU/Union Theological College
Info: CHAPEL
🕑: 05:00 PM - 05:15 PM
SHORT BREAK
🕑: 05:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Elementary, my dear Hume!
Host: Dr David McIlroy, University of Notre Dame
Info: CHAPEL - Lewis's Logic about Mountains, Miracles & Myths.
🕑: 06:00 PM - 06:15 PM
Lewis Legacy Project Presentation
Host: Rev Helene Steed, St Mark's Church of Ireland
🕑: 06:10 PM - 06:15 PM
CLOSE
Tues 17th CHAPEL
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
REGISTRATION & COFFEE
🕑: 09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Key Note Address
Host: Rev Dr Michael Ward, University of Oxford
Info: Main Chapel - The Waterfall & the Seed: A Poetic Reading of the Abolition of Man
🕑: 10:35 AM - 10:45 AM
Jake Weidmann - Artist Reflections
🕑: 11:20 AM - 12:30 PM
UNION Chapel Service - FITZROY PCI
Host: Rev Dr Malcolm Guite, Girton College, Cambridge
Info: FITZROY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH SERVICE
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
LUNCH
Info: DINING ROOM - UNION THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE
🕑: 01:30 PM - 01:55 PM
C.S. Lewis, Anthropology & The Abolition of Man
Host: Rev Joe Kohm JD, C.S. Lewis Institute Virginia, USA
Info: Main Chapel
🕑: 01:55 PM - 02:20 PM
Creatureliness, Babel and the Abolition of Humanity
Host: Dr Reggie Weems, Independent Scholar
Info: in C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy
🕑: 02:20 PM - 02:45 PM
The Un-Making of Man
Host: Dr Andrew Bannister, Melbourne School of Theology/Wyclif
Info: CHAPEL - How words without the Word hollow us out
🕑: 02:45 PM - 03:00 PM
SHORT BREAK
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:25 PM
Surprised by Gender
Host: Dr Anne-Frederique Cabellero, Universite de Picardie Jul
Info: CHAPEL - The Case of Jane Studdock in That Hideous Strength
🕑: 03:25 PM - 03:50 PM
The Abolition of Woman
Host: Professor Lynne Marie Kohm, Regent University, USA
🕑: 03:50 PM - 04:15 PM
Contraception & Biopolitics
Host: Dr Yuriko Noda, Kagoshima Prefectural College Japan
Info: CHAPEL - A Prophetic vision of Community in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength
🕑: 04:15 PM - 04:30 PM
SHORT BREAK
🕑: 04:30 PM - 04:55 PM
Disordered Enchantments and the Ironic Imagination
Host: Professor Karen Coats, Cambridge University
Info: CHAPEL
🕑: 04:55 PM - 05:20 PM
Songs Out of the Silent Planet
Host: Sophie Jones, PhD Scholar, Union Theological College
Info: An exploration of the Musical Resonances of C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy
🕑: 05:20 PM - 05:30 PM
SHORT BREAK
Info: CHAPEL
🕑: 05:30 PM - 06:15 PM
That Fiendish Strength
Host: Emeritus Professor Stephen Williams, Union
Info: CHAPEL - C.S. Lewis on the Demonic Way
🕑: 06:00 PM - 06:00 PM
CLOSE
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:20 AM
COFFEE BREAK & Transition to Fitzroy PCI
Mon 16th Rm 4
🕑: 11:20 AM - 11:45 AM
What is the Tao?
Host: Professor James Chappel, Duke University, USA
Info: ROOM - 4 - On C.S. Lewis's Research Methods in the Abolition of Man
🕑: 11:45 AM - 12:10 PM
C.S. Lewis & B.F. Skinner
Host: Professor Joyce MacPherson University of Tennessee
Info: ROOM 4 - Can Education Abolish Man?
🕑: 12:10 PM - 12:35 PM
Children making Mudpies
Host: Dr Curtis White, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM 4 - C.S. Lewis & the Theology of Babel
🕑: 12:45 PM - 02:00 PM
LUNCH
🕑: 02:00 PM - 02:25 PM
The Real Power
Host: Rhys Laverty, Davenant Hall
Info: ROOM - 4 - The Eclipse of Politics in That Hideous Strength
🕑: 02:25 PM - 02:50 PM
C.S. Lewis vs The Conspiracy Theorists
Host: Joe Kohm III JD, C.S. Lewis Institute Virginia Beach
Info: ROOM - 4
🕑: 02:50 PM - 03:15 PM
The Abolition of Man
Host: Dr Dan Boucher, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM - 4 - The Space Trilogy & a Christian Philosophy of Government
🕑: 03:15 PM - 03:45 PM
COFFEE BREAK
🕑: 03:45 PM - 04:10 PM
The Trilogy
Host: Dr Tom Kubarych, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM - 4 - The Abolition of Man & the possibility of a regenerate scientific study of evil
🕑: 04:10 PM - 04:35 PM
Lewis's Remedy for a Broken World
Host: Prof Janice Brown, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM - 4 - That Hideous Strength & the Descent into Humility
🕑: 04:35 PM - 05:00 PM
Altars & Fire
Host: Dr Matthew Miller, C.S. Lewis Institute, Greenville, USA
Info: ROOM - 4 - What Lewis says can be done to stop the Abolition of Man
🕑: 06:00 PM - 06:00 PM
CLOSE
Tues 17th Rm 4
🕑: 01:30 PM - 01:55 PM
The Long Defeat of History Spatially Rendered
Host: Daniel Hubin, Univ. of Glasgow/Edin. Theolog. Seminary
Info: ROOM - 4 - A Tolkienian Reading of Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy
🕑: 01:55 PM - 02:20 PM
Out of our Solitary Planet
Host: Andrew Roycroft, Poet, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM 4 - "Elsewhere" & "Other" as means of Intellectual Critique in C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy
🕑: 02:20 PM - 02:45 PM
Memento Mori in the Cosmic Trilogy
Host: Dr Teodora Driscu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Romania
Info: ROOM 4
🕑: 02:45 PM - 03:00 PM
SHORT BREAK
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:25 PM
C.S. Lewis Prophetic Praeparatio Evangelica
Host: Dr Matthew Houston, Union Theological College
Info: ROOM - 4 - and Religion in the United Kingdom 1939-1945
🕑: 03:25 PM - 03:50 PM
Lamenting the Loss of Imago Dei
Host: Rev Dr Ryan David Hawk, Independent Scholar
Info: ROOM - 4
🕑: 03:50 PM - 04:15 PM
Moral Formation & the Re-Enchantment of the African Mind
Host: Rev Aseka Taabu, C.S. Lewis Institute Nairobi, Kenya
Info: ROOM - 4
🕑: 04:15 PM - 04:30 PM
SHORT BREAK
🕑: 04:30 PM - 04:55 PM
Four Nations
Host: Dr David Clare, MIC Limerick, Ireland
Info: ROOM - 4 - C.S. Lewis's Ulster Irish attempts to redefine Britishness in That Hideous Strength
🕑: 04:55 PM - 05:20 PM
Every people has its own haunter:
Host: Peter Linkins, MIC Limerick
Info: ROOM - 4 - Post Colonial Tensions in Irish Anglican Gothic
Event venue & nearby stays
Union Theological College, 108 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, United Kingdom
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