announces
The George Herbert Society Seventh Triennial Conference
Trinity College, The University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
19-22 June 2025
Plenary Speakers:
Sharonah Fredrick, College of Charleston—Herbert and Latin America
Ishion Hutchinson, Cornell University—Herbert and the Caribbean
Gary Kuchar, University of Victoria, British Columbia—Herbert and Canada
Richard Strier, University of Chicago, Emeritus—Herbert, Colonial America, and the USA
Call for Papers
In The Country Parson (1632, 1652), George Herbert invites the idle younger gentry to venture themselves in “the new Plantations, and discoveryes” across the sea, while in The Church Militant (c. 1620, 1633), he envisions Religion, beleaguered, battered, and compromised in Europe and Britain, standing “on tip-toe in our land / Readie to passe to the American strand.” By 1638, the first known copy of Herbert’s Temple to cross the Atlantic was deeded by the Rev. John Harvard to the Massachusetts college that bears his name; and by 1702, Herbert’s words about Religion’s westward flight opened Cotton Mather’s historical manifesto Magnalia Christi Americana. Herbert’s highly consequential afterlife in the Americas had begun.
From 19-22 June, 2025, the George Herbert Society will gather for its Seventh Triennial Conference at Trinity College of the University of Toronto to consider Herbert’s reception and legacies in the Americas: his early and warm adoption by both New England Puritans and southern Anglicans and Methodists alike; his reception across a developing Canada before and after Confederation; his appropriation by advocates of transcontinental Manifest Destiny and Empire; his influence on writers from Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson to Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück; his place in the Caribbean imagination; and his reception in Latin America, both in translation and in English.
Nearly four hundred years after Herbert’s first arrival on “the American strand,” we will consider how the idea of the Americas informed Herbert and how, in turn, Herbert shaped the idea of “America,” and influenced the Americas themselves. Gathering at Trinity College, Toronto, and some of its sister institutions, our conference encourages papers and whole panels that will examine the reception and reputation of Herbert’s poetry and prose, both across the historical eras, and across the geographical and cultural regions of North and South America and the Caribbean; we also seeks papers and panels that reflect on how the myriad appreciations and appropriations, readings and misreadings, of Herbert have colored or shaped varied beliefs and practices on the two western continents—from religious traditions and cultural collisions to political actions and poetic movements. As always, we seek proposals from established scholars as well as from independent scholars, GHS newcomers, and graduate students.
Also as always, we welcome quality proposals in all areas of Herbert studies; however, we particularly seek those focusing on Herbert’s specifically “American” contexts and connections: the large Canadian, U.S., Latin, and Caribbean regions mentioned above; smaller or overlapping localities or communities within these larger regions; historical explorations of specific moments and of developments across eras; critical and scholarly responses and schools growing out of “New World” contexts and concerns; and Herbert’s role as cultural exemplar, spiritual pattern, poetic model, and/or political ideal—and perhaps in some cases as an antitype of these. Some topics of likely interest: Herbert’s relation to exploration, scientific and technological inquiry, literary criticism and canonicity, plantation, colonialism/anti-colonialism (especially his connections to the Virginia Company and the New England “errand into the wilderness”), the translatio imperii, imperialism/anti-imperialism, nation-building, established and popular religion, monarchy, representative government, Manifest Destiny, indigenous peoples, economic exploitation and growth, apocalypticism, divine judgment, and future hope/despair—and, just for good measure, Herbert’s appearances in odd and unexpected contexts and places. Some specific persons of interest: Queen Elizabeth I, Walter Ralegh, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, King James I, William Crashaw, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Edward Herbert, John Winthrop, William Bradford, John Rolfe, Rebecca Rolfe/Pocahontas, Nicholas Ferrar, King Charles I, John Harvard, other Cambridge Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, Anne Bradstreet, John Milton, Increase Mather, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, Francis Asbury, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, George Herbert Palmer, T. S. Eliot, Yvor Winters, Jorge Luis Borges, Rosemond Tuve, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Northrop Frye, Margaret Avison, Robert Lowell, Louis L. Martz, Joseph H. Summers, Amy M. Charles, Daniel Doerksen, Anthony Hecht, James Merrill, C. A. Patrides, Derek Walcott, Stanley Stewart, Helen Vendler, Mark Strand, Terry G. Sherwood, Stanley Fish, Ted-Larry Pebworth, Heather Asals, Chana Bloch, Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück, Claude Summers, Richard Strier, John Piper, Jonathan F. S. Post, Cristina Malcolmson, Sidney Gottlieb, Michael C. Schoenfeldt, Alan Shapiro, Carl Phillips, Luke Hathaway, Amanda Jernigan, and Ishion Hutchinson.
Abstracts in English of no more than 300 words accompanied by a brief CV should be sent to the conference organizers at herbconf@uncg.edu, by August 15, 2024.
Notifications of acceptance: October 15, 2024. Early submissions are welcome!
Anyone may submit an abstract, but only GHS members may deliver a paper. Information regarding accommodation and registration will follow in the autumn. For ongoing updates, see https://english.uncg.edu/george_herbert/
