So, I’m doing a little lecturing, here and there, over the next month or so. If you’re in the neighborhood, why not drop by?
(1) The first is on Tuesday, March 4, at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, at the spring conference of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. The talk is called “The Political Disaster of the Protestant Mainline,” and it’s at 3:30 in the afternoon, in Blanchard Hall, room 339. That will be followed at 7:00 pm by a roundtable in the Coray Auditorium, at which Jim Skillen, Floyd Flake, D. Stephen Long, and I will discuss “Christian Politics and Public Life.” The events are open to the public, and no RSVP seems to be needed.
(2) The second is on Monday, March 17, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Called “Living with the Dead: Why Cities Need Cemeteries and Nations Need Memorials,” it’s at 7:00 pm in the ICC auditorium . Cosponsored by the Tocqueville Forum at Georgetown and National Civic Art Society , the lecture is a specific application to civil architecture and urban design of the work I did in ” Death & Politics ,” the long essay on the centrality of grief to political theory that appeared this summer in First Things . The respondents will be National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia, the New Criterion ‘s Roger Kimball, and the architectural historian Denis McNamara. A reception will follow the lecture, I’m told. The event is open to the public, and no RSVP is needed, although you might drop them an email to say you’re coming, so they can get a rough count for the reception.
(3) The third lecture is on Friday, April 4, at the Radisson Hotel, in Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts. A luncheon talk from 12:00 to 2:00 pm, a plenary address for the annual conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses , it’s called “Finding Himself: David Copperfield’s Quest for His True Name”—an account of the way Charles Dickens uses naming in David Copperfield . (Have you ever noticed, for instance, that nearly every character in the book calls young David by a different name?) I understand that only limited space for guests is available, and you must arrange to attend by emailing or calling the telephone number on the association’s website .
As I say, if you’re in one of these necks of the wood and have nothing better to do on the day, why not drop by?
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