Mark your calendars! The George Herbert Society Seventh Triennial Conference George Herbert and the Americas Trinity College, The University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada 19-22 June 2025 |
In The Church Militant (1633), George Herbert envisions Religion, beleaguered, battered, and compromised in Europe and Britain, standing “on tip-toe in our land / Readie to passe to the American strand”; and 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. During 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 New England Puritans and southern Anglicans and Methodists; his role in forming the self-concept of Anglophone Canada; his appropriation by advocates of transcontinental Manifest Destiny; his influence on North American writers from Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson to Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück; and his less-studied popularity in Francophone and Latin America, both in translation and in English. Delegates will enjoy the hospitality of Trinity College, some of its sister institutions, and the rich cultural and culinary feast of central and metropolitan Toronto. More information to come on plenary speakers, a call for papers, conference registration, lodging, and special activities at https://english.uncg.edu/george-herbert-society/.