"Varieties of Secular Experience" is a Teagle Foundation Conference to explore how secular assumptions enable and limit students’ questions of meaning and purpose.
Sponsored by Bucknell University, Macalester College, Vassar College and Williams College
Conference sessions are:
- “Secularity, Meaning, and the Liberal Arts,” an invited lecture by Rebecca Chopp, President and Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Colgate University
- “Varieties of Secular Experience,” a student roundtable
- “Politics of the Secular and the Religious,” a faculty panel
- “Pedagogy of ‘Big Questions’ in Secular Education,” classroom case studies
The conference includes:
- A Thursday evening keynote by Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, and author of Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, 2005) and Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and their Discontents (Beacon, 1988)
- A closing session, “Transforming Campus Life?,” where Stephanie Paulsell leads discussion about changes in educational practices suggested by our discussions. Paulsell is Associate Dean for Faculty and Curricular Affairs and Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies, Harvard Divinity School.
Each day of the conference, the program begins at 9:00 a.m. The final session on the second day, Friday, November 14, ends at 12:30 p.m.
We welcome individuals as well as campus teams of faculty, administrators, chaplains, students, and trustees who are interested in developing conversations at and about the secular boundaries on their own campuses.