In a move calculated to put the triennial C.S. Lewis Foundation Summer Institute within easy reach of the bulk of its constituency, the foundation will hold its upcoming week-long Summer Institute at Williams College in Williamston, Mass., from July 7 – 16, 2006. More than 2,000 alumni have participated in one or several of the previous six triennial “Oxbridge” summer institutes held by the foundation in Oxford and Cambridge, England, over the past 18 years. But never before has the foundation offered this weeklong feast for spirit, imagination and intellect in North America.
This year’s Institute, entitled “Love Among the Ruins: the Renewal of Character and Culture,” will address the renewal of character and culture at the individual spiritual, intellectual and active level, and also at the wider community and civic levels, in a mix of engaging and challenging presentations.
“We are trying something new this year,” says Stan Mattson, Ph.D., founder and president of the Redlands, California-based C.S. Lewis Foundation. “By holding our Summer Institute in the United States rather than in England, as we have done for the past nine years, we hope to reach out to those who have wanted to attend but could not do so before. This is a unique opportunity to refresh mind and spirit amid our daily, relentless engagement with prevailing culture.” The Foundation’s past conferences in England have typically drawn more than 700 attendees each week, mainly from the states.
This year’s program includes internationally acclaimed speaker Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health; Atessa Afshar, one of few Iranian Muslim women working in fulltime Christian world ministry; Malcom Guite, chaplain and fellow of Girton College in Cambridge, England; Thomas Howard, prolific author and professor of English emeritus at St. John’s Seminary College in Boston; Jeanne Murray Walker, Institute Writer-in-Residence and professor of English at the University of Delaware; James Como, professor of rhetoric at City University of New York and author of C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table; Joseph Pearce, professor of English literature at Ave Maria University and noted biographer of modern Christian literary figures; James Emery White, president-elect and professor of Theology and Culture at Gordon-Conwell Seminary; Nigel Goodwin of the London based Genesis Arts Trust; Ben Patterson, Chaplain of Westmont College, Santa Barbara; Dick Staub, award-winning broadcast journalist and nationally-recognized author; Karen Mulder, art historian of the University of Virginia, and Armand Nicholi, Jr., clinical professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who has served on the Harvard Medical School Faculty for 26 years and recently hosted the PBS documentary series on Lewis and Freud.
In addition to seminars on Lewis, the Inklings, the Great Books, popular culture, and other subjects, there will be workshops on the visual arts, dance, theatre, and creative writing. There will also be a Children’s Track that will focus on a theme from Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and a “College Briefing” for high school juniors and seniors. Artistic performers include Michael Kelly Blanchard, accomplished songwriter and soloist with 10 albums to his credit, and Tony Lawton, founder of The Mirror Theatre Company, renowned for his powerful one-man performance of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Thomas Brooks, chair of the Department of Music at Gordon College, conductor of the Gordon College Choir and Chamber Singers, co-director of music at the historic Park Street Church in Boston, and president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, will conduct the Institute choir. For the past three years, Dr. Brooks has conducted the Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island All-State Music Festival. An evening concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at their famed summer home at Tanglewood is included, as are performances by the Shakespeare Theatre Festival – Merry Wives of Windsor – and the Williamstown Theatre’s performance of the musical comedy Anything Goes.
For more information or to register, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.cslewis.org, or call toll free 1-800-CSLEWIS.
About the C.S. Lewis Foundation: Founded in 1986 by a small group of Christian scholars who were inspired by the life and legacy of renowned English professor, author and speaker C.S. Lewis, the C.S. Lewis Foundation is dedicated to advancing the renewal of Christian thought and creative expression throughout the world of learning and, by extension, the culture at large. The Foundation owns and maintains “The Kilns,” Lewis’ long time residence in Oxford, England, now home to the C.S. Lewis Study Centre. For more information, please visit www.cslewis.org.