Transformative Language: Literacies of Mind, Body, and Soul

Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature

Samford University

Birmingham, AL

October 22-24, 2026

Submission Deadline:  July 1, 2026

Registration Deadline: September 1, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Jason Baxter (Director for the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine University) 

The year 2026 marks the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s first printed translation of the English New Testament. Tyndale’s New Testament introduced scores of words and phrases into English vernacular and impacted language, text, and literature and religious practice into the modern age.  Sitting at the crux of both the Reformation and the Renaissance, this translation of the New Testament into the common language and its subsequent publication had a monumental impact on both spiritual formation and intellectual knowledge. It helped establish an idiom suited to both public hearing and private reading, shaping the cadence, vocabulary, and narrative voice that would dominate English literature and religious expression for centuries.  Even when we are not using “Tyndale’s words,” we are often using Tyndale’s English.

The movement of printed text across space and time furthermore transformed the way knowledge itself was created, consumed, and deployed in both secular and religious contexts. This singular event in history raises questions about the relationship between language, literacy, and the formation and transformation of the human mind, body, and soul.  

We invite individual papers and panel proposals related to the topics below.  We also welcome individual and panel proposals for readings of original creative work related to the conference theme. Other proposals concerning the relationship of Christianity and literature, including panel proposals and creative works, are welcome. 

• Language and literacy as spiritual formation and transformation
• Scriptural, homiletic, and theological language and literacy
• Reading and writing in the Renaissance and Reformation 
• Languages and literacies of antiquity and modernity
• Historical and cultural contexts of language and literacy
• Embodied nature of language and literacy 
• Embodied and disembodied language and literacies
• Knowledge-making and the use of language
• Impact of print and digital technologies on literacy and language
• Formation and transformation of language and literacy over time
• Lost and recovered languages or literacies 
• Slow and fast literacies
• Languages and literacies of translation
• Formative and transformative practices of reading and writing 

Submission Guidelines: 

• Abstracts should be 250-300 words
• Presentations should fit into a 20-minute panel time slot; roundtables of 60 minutes
• All submissions should be sent by July 1, 2026. Submission Portal Link: Click HERE

Undergraduate students must submit their entire paper for consideration; eligible undergraduate papers will be entered into the national CCL Undergraduate Writing Contest for a cash prize. Graduate students are encouraged to apply for the CCL Travel Grants for Conferences. For more details on these undergraduate and graduate opportunities, visit https://www.christianityandliterature.com/awards.

Registration:

• Conference Registration Link: Click HERE
• CCL Membership (must join/renew before conference): https://ccl.press.jhu.edu/membership/join

For more information or questions, please contact Sarah Durst (sdurst@samford.edu) and Laura Schrock Crawford (lcrawfo1@samford.edu).