Economies of Abundance: Ethics, Aesthetics, and (New) Monastic Communities - Deadline 2 July 2012
In contexts of economic scarcity and social upheaval, visionaries often develop communities of contrasting values. Alasdair MacIntyre calls for such communities at the end of After Virtue (1981), and books like Schools for Conversion: 12 Marks of the New Monasticism (2005) highlight their growing presence today. John McClure likewise documents neo-monastic communities as contemporary literary ideals in Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison (2007). Yet these contrast communities have a longer history, with examples like Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement and William Morris's holistic aesthetic and economic project. This session will explore the connections between social and literary refigurations of monasticism at several moments in history, especially considering their creations of ethical and aesthetic abundance in response to debt and injustice.
Please submit 250-word abstracts and CVs by July 2nd to Cynthia Wallace, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan (cwalla3[at]luc.edu).