A May 19-20 conference at the Divinity School will celebrate the work of religious historian W. Clark Gilpin, who retires this year.
Gilpin, the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology, served as dean of the Divinity School from 1990 to 2000. As dean, Gilpin established the Martin Marty Center and oversaw key faculty appointments in the history of Judaism and other areas. He also has made significant contributions to the study of academic scholarship on theology.
“He is a superb colleague. He’s devoted a lot of his career to serving the Divinity School, and more broadly, the University of Chicago,” said Catherine Brekus, associate professor in the Divinity School, who helped organize the conference and has worked closely with Gilpin. “I think his legacy is very much present with us, in the quality of faculty that he recruited, the students that he’s educated and the contributions that he’s made toward thinking about the study of religion.”
Gilpin said he was “immensely grateful” for the conference. “One of the ceaseless privileges of teaching at the University of Chicago is constantly learning from faculty and student colleagues,” he added.
At the conference, “Writing Religion: Representation, Difference and Authority in American Culture,” Gilpin’s colleagues and former students will discuss the role of print culture in American religious life.
Although Gilpin is known for the breadth of his academic interests, writing is an important through-line in his work, according to Brekus. “Clark writes across a wide range of time periods and topics, but he has always been interested in how people write about religion: for example, how the written word has created boundaries between religious communities and shaped spiritual disciplines,” said Brekus. “He thought that he would really enjoy having a number of us reflect in different ways on writing religion.”
The conference will feature a panel discussion with Gilpin’s former students, including Jonathan Ebel, PhD’04; Kathleen Flake, PhD’00; Sarah Imhoff, PhD’10; and Kathryn Lofton, AB’00. Brekus and Curtis J. Evans, assistant professor of the history of Christianity, also will speak. Gilpin will deliver a lecture entitled, “Writing Transcendence: When Words Exceed Themselves in Nineteenth-Century America.”
“Writing Religion” will begin at 3 p.m. May 19 and will conclude at noon May 20 in Swift Hall. For more information, please visit http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/conferences/gilpin/index.shtml.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
