A Busy Week

Well, I’ve got a really busy week ahead of me. Of course, I still have Oral Comps preparation, which currently provides the underlying theme and daily structure of my life. In other words, that’s pretty much all I do. But not this week! No, sir! That is not enough of a challenge for me. Give me more to do! Pile it on!

No, all jokes aside, I’m participating in a couple of events this week that I’m really excited about. Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking in the Women’s Program at the Harding University Lectureship. My topic? “Is Jesus a Feminist?” Now, I didn’t choose the topic or the title, but when I was asked to speak on the subject, I was really excited about it. If asked, I might have chosen a more toned-down title, but you’ve got to admit, it does what titles are supposed to do--get attention. The subject, I think, is an important one that needs to be addressed seriously. Since I am a woman, and a Christian, and one of my concentration areas in my doctoral studies is Women’s Literature and Feminist Theory, “the woman question” is a subject I’ve thought a lot about and looked at from various of angles. Here’s a link to the schedule, if you’re interested:

Harding Women's Lectureship

Then, later in the week I’ll be going to the 2008 Conference on Christianity and Literature, hosted this year by Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. There, I’m presenting a paper on a related subject—I’m analyzing a text written by a French woman in 1405 in which she challenges misogyny and constructs an argument that anticipates the different modes of future feminist discourse, an argument which focuses on reason and education as a pathway to greater feminine virtue and morality, all the while operating within the prevailing religious framework.

One of the things that I’m really looking forward to at this conference is to be able to participate in a discussion of literature with people who see the arts through the framework of a Christian worldview. There will be sessions on Literature and: The Environment, Colonialism, Gender, Race, Consumerism, Culture, and much more. These are all big topics in literary studies, and I’ve spent the last several years in doctoral classes taking part in discussions about them, but I’ve been mostly surrounded by people with a post-modern worldview, people who think that the Christian worldview is, at best, ignorant and out-of-touch. This weekend conference will be a refreshing, and faith-affirming, change of pace. There are also sessions on Christianity and the Media, Christianity and the Occult, and Materialism: The Sacred versus the Secular, all topics that are engrossing, current, and important both to literary studies and to people trying to be Christians in twenty-first century America.

I know I won’t get as much done on my comps prep as usual this week, but sometimes you need to take part in activities that bring back the joy and make you remember why you took on the challenge in the first place.