Workshop Announcement

Understanding C. S. Lewis

English 470/586

A One-Credit Hour, Three Day Graduate/Undergraduate Workshop
(Also available for Continuing Education Noncredit)
Bowling Green State University
Thursday-Saturday, June 8-10, 1995

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies

How would you like to spend three days with C. S. Lewis and a few of his friends?

This workshop may be the next best thing! Understanding C. S. Lewis is designed to be a comprehensive introduction to one of the 20th Century's most versatile and engaging thinkers and writers: Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963). General readers, aspiring writers, teachers, pastors, and other professionals will gain insights into Lewis's prowess as a literary scholar, science-fiction novelist, Christian apologist, and children's fantasist. Participants earn one hour of graduate or undergraduate credit, or may enroll as a non-credit, continuing education student.

Workshop Leader:

The workshop is taught by Professor Bruce L. Edwards, the author of two books and numerous articles on the life and work of Lewis. Dr. Edwards, an ordained minister, is Director of BGSU's graduate program in English and wrote his doctoral dissertation on Lewis at the University of Texas at Austin (1981). He is thoroughly familiar with Lewis's varied career, and has lectured widely on Lewis's life and times at universities and churches across the U. S. and Australia. Dr. Edwards regularly features Lewis's works in his undergraduate and graduate classes at BGSU.

Workshop Topics:

• How best to read Lewis in order to become more fully acquainted with his many-faceted career.
• Lewis's writing techniques and how they serve the interests of writers and teachers.
• Lewis's early childhood and adolescence and the impact events therein had on his conversion and adult literary career.
• The relationship between Lewis's apologetics and his fiction.
• How to teach Lewis in the school, college, or church classroom, and why he may be the West's most important cultural critic at the end of the 20th Century.
• What the devotional reader of Lewis should know about his scholarly works.
• Who to read and not read about Lewis's work.
• Who influenced Lewis's writing and how he has influenced other careers.
• Lewis's relationships with the Inklings, that band of writers, including Tolkien, who critiqued each other's work--and ideas.
• The real story of "Shadowlands" and how Lewis's relationship with Joy Gresham affected both of them, both spiritually and socially.
• The controversy surrounding the posthumous Lewis's literary estate and canon.
• How to pursue publishable, popular, and scholarly work on Lewis and the Inklings.

Who should enroll in this workshop?

• Lewis enthusiasts and aspiring writers who would like a more global knowledge of his life and work, and who would enjoy meeting like-minded others and engage in mutual, thoughtful inquiry.
• Teachers who would like to know better how to introduce their students to Lewis and use his works in their classrooms.
• Pastors and church education directors who would like to understand the foundations of Lewis's thought and their relationship to contemporary theology.

INTRIGUED?

For more information, write or call:

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards
Professor of English
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
419-372-7541
e-mail: edwards@bgnet.bgsu.edu