Guide to Concurrent Sessions, ITMS 2023

Opening Sessions - Thursday, June 22 - 1.00 PM - 2.15 PM
Session 1 - Friday, June 23 - 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Session 2 - Friday, June 23 - 2:15 PM -  3:45 PM
Session 3 - Saturday, June 24 - 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Session 4 - Saturday, June 24 - 1:30 PM -  2:45 PM

THURSDAY, JUNE 22
1.00 PM - 2.15 PM

1. First Timers' Orientation Session

  

2. Creating a Community of Merton Scholars

  

3. Emerging Scholars Panel

Laurin Ernst - "'Sing about me, I'm dying of thirst.': Kendrick Lamar through the Lenses of Thomas Merton and Johann Baptist Metz."

Oliver Mesmer - "Interspirituality, Contemplation, and Social Action: The Practices of Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh as Guide Stars for Present-Day Communities of Faith."

Ethan Strouse - "Sacramental Listening: Exploring the Church as Feminist, Sacramental, and Synodal."

  


FRIDAY, JUNE 23
10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

 

1.  Humanity and the Human Condition

a.  Mary Frances Coady – "Waking from a Dream of Separateness’: Thomas Merton and Caryll Houselander."

b.  Jason Taylor – "Merton’s Use of Arendt’s Human Condition in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander."

 

2. Merton at the Redwoods

a. Ellyn Crutcher – "Merton’s 1968 Retreat at Redwoods Lets ‘Some Fresh Air In."

b. Dominiek Lootens – "Gracie M. Jones and Thomas Merton at the Redwoods: Spirituality and Ecowomanism."

 

3. Merton’s Prophetic Monasticism

a. R. Zachary Karanovich – "Thomas Merton, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Misunderstanding Monasticism."

b. Paul M. Pearson – "From One Wise Master to Another: St. Benedict’s Influence on Thomas Merton’s Prophetic Spirituality."

 

4.  Workshop 1

Brother Paul Quenon & Judith Valente – "'Like Hugging An Angel:' Merton, Emily Dickinson & Mary Oliver."

  

5. Workshop 2

Merton and Levertov: Art, Poetry, and Contemplation

  

6. Meditation

Bernice Marie-Daly - "She Who Is."

 


FRIDAY, JUNE 23
2:15 PM – 3:45 PM
 

  

1.  Literary Explorations

a. John Gillespie – "A Hidden Wholeness: Merton, Rilke, and the Reconceptualization of the Divine."

b. Thomas Malewitz – "My Argument with the Gestapo: Exploring Merton’s Traumatic and Imaginative Narrative Through the Lens of Magical Realism."

c. Patrick F. O’Connell - "'A Character and Beauty of Its Own': Merton and the Wisdom of Chartres."

 

2. Merton and Flannery O’Connor

a. Mark Meade – "An Unpublished Merton Poem on Flannery O’Connor’s 'Good Country People' and Christian Existentialism in Her Fiction."

b. Janie Harden Fritz – "Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton: Dialogic Spirituality."

 

3. "Hagia Sophia" and the Spiritual Journey

a. Viktar Niachayeau – "Seeking Sophia: Thomas Merton and the Prayer of the Heart."

b. Huili (Kathy) Stout – "Merton's Sophia and the Chinese Tao: A Dance of Two Names."

  

4.  Reality, Relationality, and the Self

Phil Garrity – "'The Tyranny of the Should': Examining Parallels between Thomas Merton's 'True Self' and Karen Horney's 'Real Self.'"

- "Dialogue with Reality: Reimagining the Contemplative."

 

5.  Workshop

Jeff Kiernan – "A Mighty Hunger in My Soul: A Prayer Service of Silence, Music and Words Inspired by the Correspondence of Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton."

 


SATURDAY, JUNE 24
10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

 

1.  Merton's Influence on His Readers

a.  Alan Kolp – "The Mertonian Influence on Ilia Delio: From Monk to a Dancing Star."

b.  Patti Sayre – "Alone Together: The Solitary Ties that Bind Thomas Merton and Elena Malits."

 

2.  Merton, Drugs, and Counterculture

a. Jim Robinson – "Both 'Hippie Monk' and Distanced Critic: Thomas Merton and the 1960's Counterculture."

b. David Odorisio – "'Not Drugs but Night': Thomas Merton on LSD and the Psychology of Religious Experience."

 

3. Merton, Poetry, and Photography

a. Kevin Burke – "The Beginning of Wisdom: Theological Assonance between Merton and Levertov."

b. Julia Prinz  – "Sophia Reaching: What Do You See?: A Study in the Photography of Thomas Merton."

 

4. Workshop 1

Brian Harnetty – "Words and Silences: From the Thomas Merton Hermitage Tapes."

  

5. Workshop 2

Robert Ellsberg – "'It's the Direction that Matters': How Sister Wendy Beckett Changed Her Mind about Merton."

  

6.  Meditation

Jennifer Trently – "Creative Response to Merton's Hagia Sophia."

  


SATURDAY, JUNE 24
1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

                                   

1.  Self-Discovery, Sanctity, and Mystical Mutuality

a.  Vaughn Fayle – "Merton, Weil and Duncan: Sophia's Mystical Mutuality that Displaces Us."

Callie Tabor – "'Fully Functioning' in Holiness: Women and Sainthood in Conversation with Thomas Merton and Sr. Thea Bowman."

 

2.  Healing Divisions

a. Susan Mancino and Natalia Tapsak – "Dialogic Welcome in Communities of Difference: Lessons from Day and Merton."

b. Anne R. Pearson – "Solutions to Systemic Racism: Thomas Merton in Conversation with Women of Colour."

 

3.  The Contemplative Lens

a. Aaron Godlaski – "Neither This, Nor That: Merton's Non-Dual Communion with Nature."

b. Megan Way – "Supply, Demand and the Sacred: Applying Thomas Merton's Wisdom to the Principles of Economics."

 

4. Workshop

William Hart McNichols, John Dadosky, & Christopher Pramuk – "Icons as Living Portals to the Divine Feminine."

  

5. Creative Presentation

 

 


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