Call for Papers: Early Christianity and Flourishing Workshops at the XIX International Conference on Patristic Studies at Oxford (August 5-9, 2024)
Co-organizers: Thomas Breedlove (Baylor University), Brendan Case (Harvard University), Kylie Crabbe (Australian Catholic University), Matthew Crawford (Australian Catholic University), Alex Fogleman (Baylor University), Sarah Gador-Whyte (Australian Catholic University)
Abstract: Human Flourishing is a burgeoning subject across academic disciplines and a growing global concern among politicians and policymakers. Yet, debate continues both concerning what constitutes human flourishing and how best to measure it. What does it mean for human beings to live well—to truly thrive? What are the contexts—social, political, personal—that facilitate the best ends for human beings? While these questions are increasingly taken up with new energy in the social sciences, there are a wide range of valuable contributions that scholars of early Christianity might make to this discussion.
For the 2024 Oxford Patristics Conference (August 5–9, 2024), we are soliciting papers for one or more workshops on the topic of early Christianity and human flourishing. We invite proposals on any topic related to early Christianity and flourishing but are particularly interested in papers related to the following three themes:
- Impediments to Flourishing: What habits, structures, circumstances, and ideas make flourishing difficult? And what can we learn from these impediments about the nature of flourishing? Did the acknowledgement of impediments to flourishing at times call forth revised accounts of what constitutes human wellbeing?
- Ecologies of Flourishing: Flourishing is not only about individual wellbeing but also pertains to a nexus of inter- and extra-personal relationships. How do early Christians reflect on the way that communities and places are related to human wellbeing?
- Virtue and Flourishing: Aristotelian philosophy made virtue central to the achievement of flourishing. How do early Christians expand, contract, or transform the ideas and/or practices surrounding the correlation of virtue with flourishing? How is the cultivation of virtue related to subjective as well as objective measures of human health—feeling well as well as doing well?
Abstract Submission Deadline: July 9. Please submit a title and 250-word abstract to OxPatsFlourishing@gmail.com by July 9. Our steering committee will review submissions and notify applicants of decisions by July 16 to allow time for participants to take advantage of early bird registration which closes on July 31. (NB: If your proposal is not accepted to this workshop, you may still submit it through the general submission portal by the August 31 deadline.)
Invited participants will still need to submit individual abstracts through the Oxford submission system by August 31, but linked with this workshop (or what their submission portal calls “symposia”). We will also submit a separate proposal for the whole workshop that outlines the rationale, speaker names, and paper titles. Conference conveners will notify us of approval or rejection of the workshop by October 31, 2023.