Union hosted the Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature in the Grant Center on April 19-21. The primary theme of the conference was “Of ‘Gods and Monsters’,” celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The focus of the conference was the intersection of theology and fiction, with Frankenstein as the motif.
English professor Roger Stanley organized the event with the help of the humanities administrative assistant, Susan Johnson. In 2015, John Netland suggested to the English Department that the conference be held at Union.
“It’s a big deal,” Stanley said. “There are six regions of Christianity and Literature, some bigger than this, some smaller, but we are proud to hold the southeast this particular year and hopefully in future years to come. We’ve been planning this many months out and it is coming to fruition this weekend.”
Both students and faculty from Union presented papers at the conference, as well as many people from out of state. Each presenter had to work especially hard to prepare their papers and tailor them for the conference. Sophomore English major Lillie Salazar was one of these students. Her paper explored the importance of the domestic in Frankenstein, and how Shelley honors the roles of women and shows the importance of family relationships.
“I read a seven page paper that I had written for an English class,” Salazar said. “For the most part, I prepared by reading the paper out loud, cutting out words and unimportant information until I was able to meet the 15 minute mark. This was surprisingly difficult because I wanted to add information rather than take it away.”
Another student who presented at the conference was Grant Brown, a freshman who traveled all the way from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He had been searching for an “in” to the world of academia through his college, and when he found the call for papers for the SCLC, he sent in a paper.
“My paper is on the work of a French philosopher of Henry Birdsong and his ideas of vitalism, so the idea that matter is a self organizing entity that exists out of scientific articulation and how that applies to the life of Victor Frankenstein,” Brown said.
The entire campus has had a hand in preparing for the conference. Art professor Melinda Posey had her students design a total of thirteen three-dimensional pop-ups to decorate for the event, and the theatre department produced an adaptation of Frankenstein earlier this month.
