Forgotten Voices in Literature and Religion – Conference
20th May 2024
Conference on Women Writers. Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, 5th July 2024.
Keynote speakers include:
- Dr Kathryn Lamontagne (Boston University)
- Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson (University of Cambridge)
- Professor Emma Mason (University of Warwick)
- Dr Maria Power (University of Oxford)
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to further the exploration of forgotten voices in literature and religion. It will consolidate and develop the work of two ongoing research projects: the Catholic Women Writers Project and the Women Religious Project.
The Catholic Women Writers Project discovers and republishes work by women writers of the Catholic Literary Revival, whose writing and theology have long been overshadowed by more famous figures in the movement such as Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. The Women Religious Project explores the work of these women in war torn societies and seeks to document their accounts and lived experience of conflict resolution and peace building, which has been largely ignored by mainstream histories. Both these projects focus on Catholic women in the twentieth century in Europe: the conference aims to continue dialogue in these areas and also to open out this groundbreaking research to seek comparisons in other historical periods, across other denominations, faiths, races, nationalities, and cultures – to explore other voices whose contribution to religious discussion in literature and culture has been forgotten or ignored.