An online conference has been announced which will reflect on war from the perspective of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien – in a conversation with Dr. Paul E. Michelson, Dr. Joe Ricke and Dr. Jennifer Woodruff Tait hosted by Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, and followed as usually by a Q&A session and further networking time.
Date and Time
Date: June 7, 2022
Time: 7:00-8:30pm (Romania); 12:00-1:30pm (Eastern); 5:00-7:30pm (UK)
Moderator
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson is a George MacDonald scholar who lives in the Ottawa Valley, Canada. She lectures internationally on MacDonald, the 19th century, the Inklings, and Faith & the Arts. Co-editor of Informing the Inklings (and forthcoming sequel), she has published many chapters and articles in the field, and appears in the documentary, The Fantasy Makers (featured at the 2018 Lewis and Friends Colloquium). Currently completing a book on MacDonald, she also authored the Forewords and Afterwords to the Romanian translations of MacDonald’s The Golden Key and Barfield’s The Child & the Giant.
She is on the Advisory Board of Inklings Journal VII, a founding Board Member of the C. S. Lewis & Kindreds Society of Eastern & Central Europe, and co-chair of the George MacDonald Society. She directs Linlathen – a Theology & Arts conference and lecture series based in rural Ontario.
Panelists
Dr. Paul E. Michelson
Dr. Paul E. Michelson is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Huntington University, where he began teaching in 1974. He has been three times a Fulbright fellow in Romania (1971-1973, 1982-1983, 1989-1990; and holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University.
His areas of interest and expertise include historiography, Romanian history in the 19th-21st Centuries, Totalitarian and post-Totalitarian societies, the History of Venice, and the work of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. He served as secretary of the Society for Romanian Studies for nearly 40 years and was secretary of the Conference on Faith and History for ten. His book, Romanian Politics, 1859-1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol (1998) was selected by CHOICE MAGAZINE as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1998 and was awarded the 2000 Bălcescu Prize for History by the Romanian Academy.
He recently delivered keynote addresses at the Romanian Academy’s 1918 commemoration in September 2018 and at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj 1918 conference in October 2018. He is currently finishing a history of Romanian historiography, 1880-1940, and continues to work on a history of the Romanian 1848.
Dr. Joe Ricke
Joe Ricke, Ph.D., Rice University is an independent scholar and director of the Inkling Folk Fellowship, an international group of scholars, readers, seekers, and artists, meeting via Zoom every Friday at 4 p.m. (EST). He was previously Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis & Friends at Taylor University, where he organized and directed the highly acclaimed Lewis & Friends Colloquium in 2016 and 2018 (“best Inkling conference on the planet,” Devin Brown). At Taylor, Dr. Ricke curated the Brown Collection, and, in early 2020, oversaw the acquisition of the historic McCaslin Collection of Lewis materials. He has presented and published numerous essays and book chapters on Shakespeare and early drama, the Inklings, and Christian higher education. He has co-edited three books and, since 2012, has organized the Lewis and the Middle Ages panels at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. His poems have appeared in various journals and book collections. As a singer/songwriter, he performs as Joe Martyn Ricke and with The Ricke Brothers.
Dr. Jennifer Woodruff Tait
Jennifer Woodruff Tait (PhD, Duke University) is the managing editor of Christian History magazine, the author of The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism. She lives in Berea, Kentucky, with her husband, Edwin, and their two daughters.
