Track Leaders

Michael Murray, Chair

Michael Murray is the Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA). He received his B.A. at Franklin & Marshall College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has held fellowships from the Institute for Research in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion. In addition to a variety of articles in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion, he has published Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions (Blackwell, with Eleonore Stump), Reason for the Hope Within (Eerdmans), and has three books forthcoming: Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge 2008, with Michael Rea), Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Oxford, 2008), and The Spiritual Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives on the Origin of Religion (Oxford, 2008, edited with Jeffrey Schloss).

Dora Rice Hawthorne, Point

Dorothea Rice Hawthorne received her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Chicago where she also encountered (much to her delight) the ministry of InterVarsity. She has taught English Renaissance literature at Wheaton College, Great Texts at Baylor University, and ESL in China and loves to see her students making connections between the texts they read in class and their deep life questions. A mid-Atlantic sojourner in central Texas, she resides in Waco with her classicist husband Kevin and their two boys, where she lives out the joys and tensions of being full-time mother, part-time professor, and anytime Anglican lay leader.

Program Summary

The topic of human flourishing is a familiar one to students of the humanities. Aristotle’s query, “What is the good life?” explicitly and implicitly informs much of the work done in philosophy, literary studies, classics, and history, but the answers are as varied as the texts these disciplines address and the scholars who study them. Indeed, what precisely constitutes human flourishing is a highly contested question, and how we answer it shapes not only our theoretical approach to our discipline but the day-to-day reality of our lives as Christian academics.

The Humanities Track intends to address both theoretical and practical questions related to human flourishing. We will ask:

• What are the regnant conceptions of human flourishing that drive our disciplines and the practices of our guilds?
• To what degree do these conflict or align with Christian conceptions of flourishing?
• Practically speaking, how would a Christian notion of human flourishing manifest itself in our professional and personal lives?
• How might this notion challenge our definitions of academic “success”?

Additionally, we hope to explore how the humanities can contribute to human flourishing both within and beyond the academy by considering our roles as public intellectuals, teachers, and members of the church both locally and universally. Humanists are often regarded by the wider public as insular or (worse) irrelevant. How might recapturing a robust notion of human flourishing within the kingdom of God and ourselves as agents of flourishing help reshape our discipline and its public perception?

We plan to address these questions and others through pithy, focused presentations, group discussion by discipline, and personal testimony. Our hope is that the track will be time of fruitful reflection, invigorating exchange, and vocational renewal.

Track Presenters

Hal Bush is author of Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (University of Alabama Press, 2007) and American Declarations: Rebellion and Repentance in American Cultural History (University of Illinois Press, 1999). He has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture. Currently he is working on several articles concerning hope, eschatology, and the ethical and social dimensions of American ideology. He has begun work on a new book project about the cultural work of parental grief in the lives of key figures in nineteenth and twentieth century America, tentatively entitled Continuing Bonds. He is also founder and board member of The Daniel Foundation. He teaches American literature and culture at Saint Louis University. In his spare time he walks his dogs Buddy and Gus; plays guitar, golf, and basketball; or watches reruns of “Lost” with his wife, Hiroko.