8:30 a.m

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Registration Opens

9:00 a.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Opening Remarks

9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #1: Ordained Destinies and National Ecologies in Three 19C British Poems

Moderator: Susan Oliver (University of Essex)
Allison Dushane (Angelo State University), “‘Preternatural Agency’: Coleridge’s Sybilline Leaves and Ethics in the Anthropocene”
Sam Baker (University of Texas at Austin), “Ann Radcliffe’s Stonehenge: A Gothic Poem for a Secular Age”
Devin Griffiths (University of Southern California), “Walking Dover Beach”

10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Brunch

Noon – 2:00 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

linked session with Lancaster University (UK)

Keynote Discussion: Theological Inheritances in our Current Ecological Crises

Moderator: Robert Creech (Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University)

Susan Bratton (Baylor University)
Michael Northcott (University of Edinburgh)
Norman Wirzba (Duke)

2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Break

2:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #2: Ecological Interconnection and Sociality

Moderator: Sean Dempsey (University of Arkansas)
Max Hohner (Eastern Washington University), “Birds of a Feather” – Dickens, Darwin, and the Mutual Aid of Our Mutual Friend”
Molly Lewis (Baylor University), “Ruskin and the Myth of Mechanical Progress”
Paul Martens (Baylor University), “Kierkegaard’s ‘Birds of the Air’: Learning to Live with the Grain of the Universe”
Elizabeth Travers Parker (Baylor University), “John Ruskin’s Birds and the Beatitude of Creation”
Matthew Whelan (Baylor University), “John Clare’s Ecotheological Critique of Enclosure”

4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m.

Field Trip: World Hunger Relief Farm

World Hunger Relief alleviates food insecurity and malnutrition through sustainable agriculture and community development. The WHR Farm supplies organically grown food locally and has a long history in training interns to apply sustainable farming around the world, while also offering educational programs on sustainable agriculture, environmental responsibility, and world hunger issues.

Registration is required (limit 30 participants).

This is a real farm experience! Please wear closed-toed, flat-heeled shoes, consider bringing a water bottle, and bear in mind that the toilets are no flush (to conserve water and model composting). You might wish to bring a parasol or umbrella for the heat and sun.

6:30 p.m.

Dinner at World Hunger Relief Farm

Registration is required (limit 40 participants).

We will eat under open-air shelter on the farm. Please wear closed-toed, flat-heeled shoes and bear in mind that the toilets are no flush (to conserve water and model composting).

8:30 a.m

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Registration Opens

8:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #3: American Wildernesses and Ecologies

Moderator: Jeremy Elliott (Abilene Christian University)
Jeremy Elliott (Abilene Christian University), “Echoes of Gnosticism in John Muir’s Ecological Vision”
Sara Frear (Houston Baptist University), “‘Toward the Edge of Town’: Gifford Pinchot and the Domesticated Wilderness of Carol Ryrie Brink”
Jordan Sillars (Baylor University), “‘Voices to proclaim his praise’: Nature, Text, and Divine Revelation in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans”

10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Refreshments

An exhibition related to this conference is on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room, “‘Every common bush afire with God’: Divine Encounters in the Living World.” During this break, the curator, Molly Lewis (Baylor PhD student), will be on hand to address questions.

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

linked between all conference sites

Keynote Panel: Ecology and Religion in 19C Literary Studies – Four Case Studies

Gary Handwerk (University of Washington), “Ecologies and Economies of Nature: Malthus and Beyond”
Joshua King (Baylor University), “Christ and Carbon: Earth as Human in Aurora Leigh”
Patrick R. O’Malley (Georgetown University), “New Woman, New Creed: Spiritual Evolution in Sarah Grand’s Heavenly Twins Trilogy”
Emma Mason (University of Warwick), “Divine Pastoral: Wordsworth and the Weak Things of the World”

1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Late Lunch

3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #4: Religion and Agrarian Ecology in Liberty Hyde Bailey’s “Earth Philosophy”

Moderator: Melinda Creech (Independent Scholar)
Gil Waldkoenig (United Lutheran Seminary), “Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Religion and Church Affiliation”
John Linstrom (NYU), “Outlook to the Backgrounds: The Idiosyncratic Rhetoric and Spirituality of Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Earth Philosophy”
Jeffrey Bilbro (Spring Arbor), “Earthly Religion and Church Religion: Bailey, Berry, and the Shifting Landscape of Belief”

4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m.

Field Trip: Urban REAP

Located in urban north Waco, this complex provides sustainable food and energy and trains others to do the same. Registration is required (limit 30 participants).

6:00 p.m.

Dinner: World Cup Cafe

Associated with and in part supplied by Urban REAP. Registration is required (limit 40 participants).

8:30 a.m

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Registration Opens

8:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #5: World Ecologies, Missions, and Contact Zones

Moderator: Sara Frear (Houston Baptist University)
Elizabeth Chang (University of Missouri), “Hydrology, Famine, Salvation: Victorian Missionary Writing from China”
Johan Elverskog (Southern Methodist University), “What the West Got Wrong about the East: Asian Religions are Not Environmental”
Pankaj Jain (University of North Texas), “Making of Indic Environmental Ethics in the Late Nineteenth Century”
Andrew Ronnevik (Baylor University), “Ojibwes, Missionaries, and the Land”
Justin Thompson (University of Maryland), “An Evangelical Erasure: Imperial Violence in Louisa Atkinson’s Writings”

10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Refreshments

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

linked session with Lancaster University (UK). The Lancaster side of this meeting will be run as a Global Futures event through Lancaster’s Institute for Social Futures

Keynote Roundtable: “From Texas to Lancaster: Challenges with Food, Water, and Fracking”

Moderator: Andy Tate (Lancaster University)

Michael Berners-Lee (Lancaster University)
Gordon Blair (Lancaster University)
Smith Getterman (Baylor University)
Caroline Jackson (Lancaster City Council)
Ryan McManamay (Baylor University)
Doug Nesmith (Baylor University)
Joe Yelderman (Baylor University)

1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Luncheon

2:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

linked session with Georgetown University

Roundtable: Poetry, Religion, and Ecology in 19C Studies

Manu Samriti Chander (Rutgers)
Meredith Martin (Princeton)
Michael Tomko (Villanova)
Gauri Viswanathan (Columbia)
Daniel Williams (Columbia)

5:30 p.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Dinner

7:00 p.m.

Foyer of Meditation (main floor)

Concert: “Pulses of the universe”
Directed by Carlos Colón
A blend of original choral and instrumental music that celebrates the earth in dialogue with ancient hymns, Victorian poetry, and Waco’s Cameron Park.

8:30 a.m

Seminar Room, Room 125 (bottom floor)

Registration Opens

8:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #6: Victorian Poetry, Ecology, and Religion

Moderator: Lesa Scholl (Kathleen Lumley College)
Christopher Adamson (Emory University), “Nature’s Eschatological Transcendence in Hardy’s ‘Aquae Sulis’”
Melinda Creech (Independent Scholar), “Hopkins and Ecotherapy”
Esther Hu (Boston University), “Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Ecotheological Poetry”
Justin Sider (University of Oklahoma), “Landscapes of Pre-Raphaelite Literalism”
Todd O. Williams (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania), “Strategic Trans-Species Empathy and Divine Mercy in Christina Rossetti’s ‘Brother Bruin’”

11:00 a.m. – Noon

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Featured Presentation: “Seasonal Disorder: Temporality, British Romanticism, and Climates of Anxiety
Dr. Melissa Bailes (Tulane University)

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Luncheon

1:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #7: Imagining and Responding to Natural Disaster

Moderator: Justin Sider (University of Oklahoma)
Thomas Breedlove (Baylor University), “Speaking the World in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man”
Elizabeth Howard (University of Minnesota), “Catastrophic Glories: Natural Disasters and G.M. Hopkins’s Aesthetic Theodicy”
Alicia McCartney (Baylor University), “Shipwreck Ecotheodicy in Wordsworth’s Later Poetry”
Lesa Scholl (Kathleen Lumley College), “Limits of Relief: Alice Meynell and the Messina Earthquake of 1908”

3:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Lecture Hall, Room 122 (bottom floor)

Panel #8: Transatlantic Ecopoetics and Rhetorics

Moderator: Molly Lewis (Baylor University)
Sean Dempsey (University of Arkansas), “Romantic Revisions, Grace, Substance, Soul”
Denae Dyck (University of Victoria), “‘formative energy in the clay’: Creative Wisdom and Ecological Poetics in John Ruskin’s The Queen of the Air”
Susan Oliver (University of Essex), “Curtis’s Botanical Magazine and Romantic Plant Poetry: Seeking Spirituality in Real-Life Flowers”
Rodney Stephens (Howard Payne University), “From Ahab’s Typhoon to Huck’s Summer Storm”

5:30 p.m.

Cox Reception Hall (bottom floor)

Closing Reception