Keynote Speaker: Jason Baxter, Ph.D. | Wyoming Catholic CollegeDr. Baxter is academic dean and associate professor of fine arts and humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. His primary research interests include medieval ideas of beauty, the long-lived legacy of the thought of Plato, and the poetry of Dante. He is also interested in medieval mysticism, humanism, and the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dr. Baxter has been an invited speaker at universities across the country, speaking on the modern relevance of the liberal arts, as well as topics on Dante, such as the role of lyric poetry in Dante’s Paradiso and Dante’s theology of love.
Plenary Speaker: Thomas Hibbs, Ph.D. | President, University of DallasThe first alumnus of UD to be president, Dr. Hibbs has served as dean of the Honors College and distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University since 2003. Dr. Hibbs has spent most of his career writing, teaching and designing/implementing academic programs; he has 30 published academic articles, and two are forthcoming. He has written, edited or provided introductions for 12 books. including three on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He has also written more than 200 movie reviews and dozens of essays and book reviews for publications such as National Review, Catholic World Report, First Things,The Weekly Standard and others.
The Braniff Graduate Student Association of the University of Dallas is pleased to announce the 6th annual Braniff Conference in the Liberal Arts. This year the conference tackles the fundamental intersection of nature, the natural, and human flourishing. Our shared Western heritage is rich in understandings of the natural world: across epoch, discipline, and cultural boundaries, great minds have scrutinized the relationship between the natural world and our own thriving. Nature has been intermittently conceived as threatening and salvific, crude and refined, a principle of all activity and a limit to be transcended. The natural—and its concomitant concepts the unnatural and the supernatural—has served as an argumentative standard by which whole societies have articulated themselves in law, mores, and sentiments. As our contemporary discourse turns to militarize conceptions of the natural world, the Braniff Graduate Student Association calls on scholars to present new engagements with the myriad facets of nature and its relationship to human flourishing--whether that confirms some previous understanding of nature or interrogates the concept afresh. This year, the conference will begin with a poetry reading on Friday night, at which presenters and local poets will be invited to present some of their original work which engages with the conference theme.
The conference will take place at the University of Dallas, located in Irving, TX.
We invite scholars working in the liberal and the fine arts to submit abstracts of no more than 500 words that consider nature and/or the natural from the perspective of their discipline, a particular author, or from an interdisciplinary approach. Preference will be given to those working in the liberal and fine arts disciplines including—but not limited to—philosophy, literature, politics, theology, history, psychology, painting, sculpting, print-making, and cinema, and drawing from the classical, medieval, modern, or contemporary period. The conference committee will invite select presenters to submit their essays or poetry to Ramify: The Journal of the Braniff Graduate School of the Liberal Arts.
Please submit abstracts to udbgsaconference@gmail.com. Abstracts should be prepared for blind review. Please include a separate cover letter with your name, paper title, email address, and institutional affiliation.
Abstracts are due no later than Friday, August 16, 2019. Presenters will be notified of their acceptance by Monday, September 9, 2019 and will be asked to submit their full papers, suitable for a 15- minute presentation (no more than 2500 words), by Monday, October 21, 2019.
Dallas-area native and Door Number 9 designer Elisa Choffel Low, BA '03, will have her latest dress design showcased on the red carpet at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, Sept. 22. The silver open-back vintage-style gown includes a striking chainmail jewelry inset created in collaboration with Toronto jewelry designer Kyra Matsui.
+ Read MoreOn Friday, Sept. 13, the university community welcomed George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the father of two UD alumnae. Celebrated for his two-volume biography of St. John Paul II and many other intellectual contributions, Weigel presented an exploration of the current Catholic situation in light of a new interpretation of the past 250 years of the church's interaction with social, cultural, economic and political modernity.
+ Read MoreGabe Dickey, DBA '19, recently successfully defended his dissertation, titled "Exploring the Human Side of Audit Quality: Team Engagement and Partner Leadership Behaviors," for UD's Doctor of Business Administration. Dickey has spent his career in the accounting profession, the vast majority as a certified public accountant working in auditing. He began UD's DBA program three years ago, drawn in by his interest in broader business issues and the program's practitioner-oriented focus.
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