STILL LOST IN THE COSMOS: Walker Percy & the 21st Century

CALL FOR PAPERS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUBMISSIONS!

REGISTRATION FORM NOW AVAILABLE. *Note - if you are paying by credit card, you will need to enter your credit card information to complete the registration form (payment by check is also an option and if you are paying by check this does not apply to you). If you are not ready to submit your payment, please wait to register. 

Hosted by: The Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing at Loyola University New Orleans
Where: The Conference will take place on the campus of Loyola University, New Orleans, which is located in the Uptown area directly across from Audubon Park. October is peak tourist season in New Orleans, so please make your hotel reservation early.  Loyola recommends these hotels.  Please also enjoy the wonderful food New Orleans has to offer.  Zagat recommends these restaurants in the area.  Be sure to make your dinner reservations early.
When: The Conference will begin at noon on Friday, October 11 and continue through late afternoon Saturday, October 12. An optional trip to St. Joseph Abbey in Covington is planned for October 13. 
Who: We enthusiastically invite panelists and community members to participate in this two-day conference.

Registration for panelists: The registration fee for panelists for the conference, which will include a reception and the keynote address on Friday evening, access to all the panels, and additional events will be $100. The bus to St. Joseph Abbey will be an additional fee of $25.00. Partners/spouses of panelists will be charged only $25 for access to the entire Conference, to be collected at the door.  Click here to access the registration form. 

Optional Trip to St. Joseph Abbey, Percy’s Spiritual Home:
There will be an optional trip on Sunday, October 13 to St. Joseph Abbey in Covington (about an hour and a half from New Orleans) where Percy often visited and is now buried. The trip will include Mass for those who wish to attend, and a visit to Percy’s grave. There will be an additional fee of $25 for transportation costs. The bus will leave Loyola at 8:30 a.m. and it will return to Loyola at 1:30 p.m.

Proposals (CALL FOR PAPERS NOW CLOSED): We welcome both session proposals and individual paper abstracts addressing any topics relevant to Walker Percy’s non-fiction book Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. Presentations should be twenty minutes. 
 
Description of Conference:
Inspired by Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos, the second biennial Walker Percy Conference seeks to explore the themes and issues generated by Percy’s lively analysis of the modern condition. 

Walker Percy has many special ties to Loyola, including his brief stint on the faculty in the 1970s, when he “discovered” the manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and then helped to excerpt it for Loyola’s well-respected literary magazine, New Orleans Review. 

Keynote Speaker: Paul Elie
Among other things, he is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own:
An American Pilgrimage, a biography of four American Catholic writers:
Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk; Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker; Flannery O'Connor, a "Christ-haunted" Catholic; and Walker Percy, a doctor who wrote fiction and philosophy. To learn more about Paul Elie, you can go to:
http://www.loyno.edu/wpc/paul-elie-keynote-speaker 
http://www.georgetown.edu/news/paul-elie-storycorps.html
http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/paul-elie

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

  • The Meaning of Cosmos: Walker Percy and Science Fiction
  • Cultural Protestantism and Religious Catholicism: Percy’s heritage and conversion
  • Percy and psychology: Percy and Jung, Percy and Freud, or Percy and Behaviorism, etc.
  • The Self-Help Book: From Self to Soul
  • Walker Percy and Semiotics
  • Walker Percy’s Fiction and Transcendence
  • Walker Percy, Science, Science Fiction, Faith and Belief
  • Walker Percy: Life, Death, and the Cosmos
  • Lost in the Cosmos: Thirty Years Later
  • Teaching Percy to Post-Millennial Students
  • Percy vs. Sagan: Spiritual and Secular Visions of the Cosmos
  • Thought Experiments: Percy and Postmodern Fiction
  • Ideas of the Self from the Cave to the Cosmos
  • The Lonely Self: Man (and Woman) Lost in the Cosmos

Please direct any questions to:
Dr. Mary McCay, Director: (504) 865-3389 email: wpc@loyno.edu
Rhoda Faust, Administrative Assistant: (504) 864-7041 email: wpc@loyno.edu
Still lost? Check out NPR's An Existential Guide For When You're Really 'Lost'

We hope you will join us!