LFP Update 17.4

November 2022

Welcome to the LFP Update, an e-publication from the Lilly Fellows Program to keep LFP representatives and others informed about the activities of 1) Lilly Network institutions, 2) present and former Lilly Fellows and, 3) the LFP office at Valparaiso University.

In this Issue:

• The 2022 Thirty-second Annual LFP National Conference
• The 2022 Twenty-second Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators
• Announcing the Winner of the Eleventh Biennial Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing
• Call for Nominations, The Tenth Biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award
• Call for Papers: Conference at Grove City College, “Christianity and Core Texts at Global/Cultural Crossroads
• Recent Conference “Vatican II and Catholic Higher Education: Leading Forward” Materials Available Online
• Facebook and Twitter

The 2022 Thirty-second Annual LFP National Conference

On October 28-30, 2022, the Lilly Fellows Program held its 32nd annual LFP National Conference, Implicit Racial Bias and the Academy, on the campus of Lipscomb University. We came together to reflect on the ways that implicit racial bias is present within ourselves and throughout higher education, and to ask how church-related colleges and universities might better employ the gospel narrative to expose and undermine implicit racial bias on our campuses.

Conferees heard powerful talks from Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University; Tabitha Jones Jolivet, Associate Professor in the School of Behavioral and Applied Sciences at Azusa Pacific University; and Forrest E. Harris, Sr., President of American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee and Professor/Director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies at Vanderbilt University. The conference was also enlivened by the joyous music of the Lipscomb University Gospel Choir, the Schrader Lane Church of Christ Gospel Choir, and Calvin and Odessa Settles.

The LFP will hold its thirty-third annual National Conference on October 20-22, 2023, at Aquinas College. The conference will address the theme, “Contemplating Integral Ecology for the Common Good.” Look for more information in the spring. Click here to download a flyer.

The 2022 Twenty-second Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators

On October 27-28, 2022, the Lilly Fellows Program hosted its Twenty-second Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators at Lipscomb University on Fostering Belonging: Renewing the Conversation about Race and Mission. The 2022 Workshop for Senior Administrators offered the opportunity for senior administrators at church-related colleges and universities to engage Dr. Willie James Jennings concerning his critique of the aims and purposes of higher education elucidated in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020). Administrators thought about how this critique impacts the way we understand our campuses, and then began to think about fostering belonging in a way that invigorates and renews the conversation about race, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion on our campuses by understanding how they connect to our deepest aims in student formation and Christian mission.

The Twenty-third Annual Workshop for Senior Administrators will be held at Aquinas College on October 19-20, 2023 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Check the website in spring 2023 for more information on next year’s workshop.

Announcing the Winner of the Eleventh Biennial Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing for 2022

On October 28, 2022, the Lilly Fellows Program announced Gordon Johnston, Professor of Creative Writing at Mercer University as the winner of the 2022 Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing for his book of poetry, Scaring the Bears. According to the committee of jurors, Scaring the Bears “is a book with stories to tell, visions to impart, and the music to convey them resonantly, passionately, and memorably.” The Lilly Fellows Program also honored one finalist for the award Paul J. Willis, Professor of English at Westmont College for his book of poetry, Somewhere to Follow.

The Arlin G. Meyer Prize is awarded biennially to a full-time faculty member from a college or university in the Lilly Network of Church Related Colleges and Universities. The 2022 Arlin G. Meyer Prize was awarded to an author of an original work of imaginative writing that emerges from his or her practice of the vocation of the Christian creative writer, in accord with the principles and ideals of the Lilly Fellows Program. In subsequent years, the Meyer Prize will honor those who practice in the fields of performing arts, non-fiction, visual arts, and musical performance.

Call for Nominations, The Tenth Biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award for 2023

The Lilly Fellows Program invites nominations for the tenth biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award for 2023. The biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award honors an original and imaginative work from any academic discipline that best exemplifies the central ideas and principles animating the Lilly Fellows Program. These include faith and learning in the Christian intellectual tradition, the vocation of teaching and scholarship, and the history, theory or practice of the university as the site of religious inquiry and culture.

Works under consideration should address the historical or contemporary relation of Christian intellectual life and scholarship to the practice of teaching as a Christian vocation or to the past, present, and future of higher education. Single authored books or edited collections in any discipline, published in 2019 to 2022, are eligible. The committee will receive nominations of academic faculty, clergy, and others. Authors or editors cannot nominate their own works. A Prize of $3000 will be awarded at the Lilly Fellows Program National Conference at Aquinas College, October 20-22, 2023. The deadline for nominations is March 1, 2023.

For more information and to nominate a book, click here.

Call for Papers: Regional Conference at Grove City College, “Christianity and Core Texts at Global/Cultural Crossroads”

The Grove City English Department invites participants and presenters to an in-person Lilly Fellows Program Regional Conference: “Christianity and Core Texts at Global/Cultural Crossroads,” held on campus at Grove City College on March 30-April 1, 2023. The conference will feature plenary addresses by graphic novelist and artist Gene Luen Yang and scholar Dr. Susan Van Zanten.

Describing the vexed position of the Christian in a postcolonial nation, Ghanaian theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye writes, “What is specifically Christian is irresistible. But Christianity in Africa began by confusing Christianity with European culture” (Inheriting Our Mothers’ Gardens 39). Christianity has often been mistaken for and sometimes presented as a purely Western phenomenon, but this has never been the case—Christian communities like the Ethiopian Church and the Saint Thomas Christians of India trace their roots back to the time of the apostles. This fact is becoming ever more apparent today as the demographic center of even Western Christianity shifts eastward and southward. If, as St. Paul says, the Gospel is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles,” then Christianity presents a challenge to the conventional wisdom of any culture or nation. Christianity is not inherently more compatible with Western culture than it is with any of the cultures of the East or the Global South. How might American scholars and American students, especially those who also find Christianity “irresistible,” understand and learn from Christian thinkers and treatments of Christian communities in these global texts?  

We invite scholarly or pedagogically focused 15-20 minute conference papers centered on the relationship between Christianity and a primary text or core work from a non-Western tradition, including works of literature, philosophy, theology, history, and the fine arts. Proposals (250-300 words) should be sent to cctconference@gcc.edu by January 13, 2023.

For more information about the conference, click here.

Recent Conference “Vatican II and Catholic Higher Education: Leading Forward” Materials Available Online

On October 13-15, 2022, Sacred Heart University celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, as well as the 60th anniversary of the University’s founding in the spirit of Vatican II. To celebrate this landmark moment in the history of Catholic higher education and the Catholic intellectual tradition, Sacred Heart University, sponsored by a grant from the Lilly Fellows Program, and supported by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities hosted a conference of thinkers, writers, and artists who will offer deep, creative, and interpretive reflection on the impact of Vatican II on Catholic higher education. Papers given by the four keynote speakers can now be found on our website:

• Massimo Faggioli, Villanova University
• Grant Kaplan, St. Louis University
• Susan Reynolds, Emory University
• Patricia McGuire, Trinity Washington University

Facebook and Twitter

As always, the LFP can be followed on Facebook and Twitter at @LFProgram and @Exilesfromeden.