This year, Covenant College had the honor of hosting the Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature. The conference was October 10-12 and featured speakers from across the region, including several Covenant students and professors.
The theme of the conference was “Growing Younger”: Literature and Child-like Faith, in honor of George MacDonald. The keynote speaker was poet and president of the George MacDonald Society, Malcolm Guite.
Photo taken by Chapel Department
During the conference, astute scholars and students from around the world were invited to share their articles and papers. Sophie Sunder ’25 was one of the Covenant College students who presented a paper. Sunder’s paper, “Savoring Miracles: ‘Dandelion Wine,’ Time, and ‘Ecclesiastes,’” examined themes of time and memory in Ray Bradbury’s novel, “Dandelion Wine.” She wrote the paper for a class last semester and revised it over the summer in preparation for the conference. Reflecting on the experience, Sunder herself presented a child-like willingness to learn, saying, “Academia opens the door for listening opportunities, not just opportunities for being heard … I didn’t feel pressure to sound smart; rather, I was eager to listen to other, smarter thinkers.”
English majors in particular were excited about the conference being on campus. Not only was this an enlightening conference with many different papers and speakers, but also having English scholars from around the world was exciting and a wonderful opportunity for connection. Caroline Broderick ’26 said, “It was fantastic! Very thought-provoking.” Her favorite session was Creative: Fiction at which there were readings from Paul Luikart, Robert Erle Barham and Cliff Foreman. Luikart read flash-fiction pieces, while Barham and Foreman both read excerpts of novels. When asked which reading was her favorite, Broderick could not choose between the three, but she mentioned that she enjoyed hearing about Foreman’s bromance with Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was the inspiration for one of his novels.
The conference’s guest of honor, Guite, is an astute scholar, priest and poet. He gave not only the keynote speech but also led a poetry workshop, gave a chapel talk, and held a poetry reading. In the poetry workshop, Guite dissected a few of his own sonnets. He spoke intelligently about and brought many insights into how rhythm, meter and content all come together to make a poem work. Guite spoke encouragingly and charmingly and was very willing to share from his experience.
Guite’s chapel talk on the Friday morning of the conference was warmly received by students as well. In this chapel talk, Guite went over his collection of sonnets written on the Lord’s Prayer. As a poet, Guite said that he wanted to use his poems to make the Lord’s Prayer not a mundane practice but to shed light into its holiness and beauty. Trey Amell ’27 said, “He brought an energy that we don’t really see in chapel too often, and it’s always amazing to hear people’s art and their perspective on different things.” Amell is a poet himself, and he said that Guite’s sonnets “gave [him] a lot of inspiration,” a sentiment shared by many attendees and presenters at the conference.
Thumbnail photo taken by Chapel Department.